Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 3.5 Reviewed; Draws Praise For HTML5, Speed
johndmartiniii writes "Farhad Manjoo has a review of Firefox 3.5 at Slate.com this week. From the article: 'Lately I've been worried about Firefox. Ever since its debut in 2004, the open-source Web browser has won acclaim for its speed, stability, and customizability. It eventually captured nearly a quarter of the market, an astonishing achievement for a project run by a nonprofit foundation. But recently Firefox seemed to go soft.' The worried tone in the beginning of the review gives way to excitement over the HTML5 features being implemented, saying that thus far Firefox 3.5 'offers the best implementation of the standard — and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language.'" The final version could be here at any time; Firefox 3.5 is still shown as a release candidate at Mozilla's home page. Update: 06/30 15:31 GMT by T : No longer marked as RC; the Firefox upgrade page now says 3.5 has arrived.
according to this test is seems quite alright...
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Yeah they will actually, most sites will use javascript to test for the ability to use them however.
I suggest you take a look at Kroc Camen's "Video for Everybody" HTML5 video element implementation. Not a hint of Javascript is necessary to implement it, and it's very cross-platform. It can play back in OGG, Flash, Quicktime (even on the iPhone), WMA, or alternatively provide a download link. http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
Setting browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to something other than -1 should make memory use somewhat less aggressive (I haven't dug into it very deeply, but I don't think FF adjusts the number of pages any when the number of open tabs gets huge, and as I understand it, the setting is per tab, so you might actually have several hundred rendered pages in memory when you have 120 tabs open).
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Firefox 3.5b4 was released on 04/24/2009 11:07:00 PM, according to the checksum dates. Enjoy.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It's a setting in your OS, dude, not in FF. Like most programs, FF just implements the existing PRINT framework.
I think firefox 3.5 IS here now. I just went to getfirefox.com on osx and ubuntu and both show graphical links to download firefox 3.5. Downloading and going to 'about firefox' shows no indication that it is a release candidate.
"The Mozilla Foundation accepts donations as a source of funding. Along with AOL's initial $2 million donation, Mitch Kapor gave $300,000 to the organization at its launch. The group has tax-exempt status under IRC 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code, though the Mozilla Corporation subsidiary is taxable." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation
It is still open source. Not sure where hackers come into this. It accepts donations, which is not the same as funding.
And nonprofit does not mean they don't "make money off firefox".
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Setting browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to a small number (when FF detects 1 Gig or more of ram, it defaults to 8) should give you something in between (i.e., the pages will need to be pulled from the cache and rendered, but the number rendered pages in memory will be much smaller and the data will not have to be pulled from the network). More detail here:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No, but they do receive donations, plus money from a deal to put Google as the default search. Google is not the only one donating.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Have you tried to use bookmarks to keep track of your sites instead of using tabs....
.. all joking aside....
Ok
A feature I stumbled on in firefox is the ability to open all bookmarks in a folder. So I've arranged my bookmarks into daily/weekly/monthly folders based on topics. Then I middle click the folder and all the pages open up. I arrange the pages that usually open first at the top of the folder, and those that take longer at the bottom. It only takes a few seconds before I start seeing pages, and by the time I'm done with the first one, the rest are open.
Then I just close them as I'm done with them.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
That worked out really well. I read the blurb, it said it was available. Did the check for updates, it downloaded and restarted, and then I went into the story.
All upgrades should be so easy!
Like this?
The opera menu item at the top is much better than the "Open All in Tabs" at the bottom of the bookmark folder? Personally, I don't really see a difference, but I guess there could be an issue with someone not having the attention span to read all the way to the bottom of the menu. Middle clicking on the folder is just an interface shortcut.
But the (protected) content people want happens to be in Flash, and because of that specific ability, I am willing to bet that publishers will be reluctant to use anything as open as HTML5.
You can bet YouTube will. Chrome supports <video>, YouTube has test pages that use it, and for that matter the editor of HTML 5 is employed by Google. If <video> really is better, which it theoretically should be, other sites will be pushed to support it for feature parity and consistency with the biggest player out there.
Some people will still try using encumbered formats. There's no way to stop that. Some people serve images instead of HTML for the same reason. But <video> is a step in the right direction for the web regardless.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
apparently being sure is a bit tough
Being sure before you load it is difficult. Being sure after is trivial. It might take longer for fail-over to happen if you have to try opening the video with a plugin and then handle failure only when it reports it, but it's still better than just displaying a non-working video UI.
One of the ideas of the video tag is that you should be able to nest them with different video formats and have the first supported one work, then fail-over to a flash video or Java applet video player if none of them works. This isn't possible if the handler is reporting success when it fails to load the video.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News