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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.
The main thing i want to know is if they've (finally) fixed the memory issues yet. Namely, if i keep a lot of tabs open for awhile (yes, i know, bad habit) and then close those tabs, will Firefox free up the memory (frequently over a gig of it) without requiring me to shut it down and restart it?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
use telnet for browsing the internet.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Yeah they will actually, most sites will use javascript to test for the ability to use them however.
the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language
Although, I would be happy if Slashdot would work right with the existing standards.
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
Correction: "...and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure NOT to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language..."
(That's better.)
I dunno what web designer in his/her right mind is going to make a web page that only 1 in 4 people can view.
Surely Mozilla developers should be trying to better emulate what the MOST popular browser does so that people won't be discouraged from using theirs; rather than creating yet more incompatibility???? Aren't they just playing into Micrsofts hands? MS is sure to just go ahead and create MSHTML 5.0 which is completely incompatible with HTML 5.0. What will they do then?
Wave there hands madly in the air, I suppose.
... send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Without installing any kind of plugin JavaScript is supported by virtually every modern desktop browser and a growing number of mobile browsers. Yes some websites use JavaScript to do annoying things like resize/move windows, but most browsers let you limit what a website is allowed to do.
Umm Flash on the other hand requires you to install a 3rd party plugin that may not work well (or at all) depending on what platform/browser you use.
IIRC the HTML 5 spec doesn't even say that JavaScript is "required" to play videos, it's just used for the UI.
In Firefox 3.5, the bard class has been totally revised, and you no longer need to "intuit direction" to browse the web.
As of now, if you got to Mozilla's page and choose to download Firefox, you get version 3.5 :
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Yes, they've done a lot of work to reduce the number of fsync() calls used. There are numerous bugs filed tracking that work. More work is still planned, but it should already be in better shape than 3.0.x was.
Do not download FF from anywhere except the main FF site. :P
And FF3.5 is up now for download. Pretty snappy, speed-wise. :)
Julie Moult is an idiot.
"Nonprofit" doesn't imply a lack of revenue.
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.
Am I the only one who doesn't see the multiplicity of real competition as a threat, but rather as the greatest success of the Mozilla Foundation? Had it not been for Firefox, Opera would still cost money, Google Chrome wouldn't exist, a few people who paid way too much for their computers would be running Safari, and most (l)users would be stuck with the latest version of IE -- IE6. Thank you, Firefox, for reigniting the browser wars, and here's hoping that this time around the wars will be fought with functionality, stability, security, and speed, rather than with a new incompatible extension to JavaScript every week.
Le français vous intéresse?
Uhm, yes, they pulled in 75 million. So?
"A nonprofit organization (abbreviated NPO, also not-for-profit) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organization
Nonprofit does not mean "doesn't make any money".
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Still only a 93% on acid3. Better, but not good enough.
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.
Shrug. I block flash too, so what's the difference? Flash player is as big a potential security exploit as javascript.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Please excuse me for being a paltry light user of Firefox... but aren't you an outlier in this particular case? The most tabs I ever have open on Firefox is three, maybe four. IMHO, you're a power user and while your comments are insightful, I have to wonder whether or not your insights are of relevance to the average user of Firefox? I'm all for improvement, but if the improvement is only noticeable when you've got 30+tabs open a day and are burning through close to a gig of RAM to keep everything operating... then what good is the improvement to the average user?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
"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.
It's not technically true, it's completely true. Don't the Mozilla foundation have tax exempt status?
All non-profits have to make enough money in one way or another to fund operations, after all people can't generally afford to work for free and suppliers expect compensation for their supplies. Google would be in a world of hurt if it clamped down on Mozilla as that would definitely trigger a swift DoJ investigation into anti-trust violations.
>I squirted milk out my nose when I read that.
Had you been drinking milk at the time or are you just really wierd?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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.
Okay, at one time, there were standards around CSS and DOM being implemented, and Microsoft implemented a version of those standards before they were standards, and became the Defacto Quirks Mode way things were done for a long time, and that was deemed Evil.
Now there are standards around HTML5 being proposed, but probably 10 years off, or at least way off, and Firefox and Google are implementing a version of these standars before they are standards, and are trying to become the Defactor Quirks Mode way things are done for a long time, and that is deemed Good.
If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Microsoft may have billions of dollars, but I'd be interested to see how much of that went to the IE budget pre-Firefox. I tend to think not much, given the quality of IE6. Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox, and use it whenever I need to go to a site Elinks can't handle, but I don't think it's all that "amazing" that a project set up by Netscape and funded by Google could compete with a project that Microsoft had abandoned. Especially since the Opera devs probably worked in similar (or worse) conditions, and Opera has been better than Firefox for years. (TFA's author might claim that this is less amazing because Opera is for-profit, and I think that's silly.)
Le français vous intéresse?
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!
A quick addition: Right clicking on the video offers a link "save video". How neat is that? :(
I know again that companies DRM-crap and 100+ years copyrighted PROPERTY won't be pleased with this, but so what. Youtube, vimeo et.al. are full of amateur videos etc that would benefit from this.
And again from a users perspective this option is a godsend. Shame that the copyright-craze has gone too far
I know it's a real long shot, but I don't suppose they added an option to turn off the awesomebar?
I have seen that problem as well. Very annoying.
Another problem is that you can do print preview, and you can choose to print a selection... but you can't preview what will print if you print only the selection. This would be very useful when you want to make sure the selection will print as you expect, or if you want to scale the print to fit on a certain number of pages.
Even better, what if they made the print preview interactive? The user could cut out blocks they don't want to print, or select certain sections to print. Currently, I accomplish this by using Firebug to delete unwanted structures from the page before I print.
May I really ask who or what Firefox developers fight(!) with? Like or not, MSI is the way to get into Enterprise, a signed MSI is even better. In fact, most of .exe installers you see these days are actually MSI packaged in .exe.
It is really interesting that they insist on not shipping MSI versions of their software, at least in a FTP folder like "alternate_installers" which admins will pull msi from. It became even more interesting since I found this: http://wix.sourceforge.net/ , yes open source from MS, hosted by Sourceforge and it actually works. What does MSI do? Hurt feelings of the developers there? I really can't understand. It is basically RPM for Windows which gives some bonus features like repair etc. to ordinary users but it is huge deal on enterprise.
ps: Same thing on OS X but we are kinda fine with Drag&Drop installs while it even matters at home sized networks. A .pkg would be way better. Anyway, no gigantic enterprise sized OS X networks around like the Windows ones.
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.
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