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Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 Released

Posted by timothy on from the waiting-in-the-wings dept.

An anonymous reader writes with word of the release of the first alpha of Firefox 3.6, "intended for developers and testers only." "As with Firefox 3.5, there are improvements to the performance; pages render faster, and pages with JavaScript code run much faster with the new Tracemonkey engine. Although this Firefox version carries the code name 'Namoroka' Alpha 1, it is also currently referred to as Firefox.next. And like other Firefox Alphas, it does not bear the Firefox logo. This release uses the Gecko 1.9.2 engine and will likely include several interface improvements in later versions, such as new graphical tab-switching behavior, which was removed from 3.5 with Beta 2." Update: 08/09 03:54 GMT by T : Read more at InaTux.com.

13 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. No link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What? Is it me or there is really no link just a teaser?

  2. I am on OS X 10.5.7. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Firefox 3.5 was terrible. Every few seconds, no matter what I did, it would pause, and I would have to watch a beachball spin. Really bad.

    Further, tabs should be attached to the pages they represent, not floating around at the top, in limbo. That was the worst design decision I have seen in ages.

    And finally, at least on the Mac, the "close this tab" button should be on the left of the tab, for consistency with everything else. Not on the right.

    1. Re:I am on OS X 10.5.7. by FooBarWidget · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And finally, at least on the Mac, the "close this tab" button should be on the left of the tab, for consistency with everything else. Not on the right.

      Uh, what? Everything on OS X has the close button on the right of the right. iTerm, Textmate, etc all have their 'X' on the right of the tab, not left.

    2. Re:I am on OS X 10.5.7. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The whole concept of tabs, in the first place, was that of a tabbed folder, like a 3-ring binder with those little plastic tabs so you can find your place. That was the visual "metaphor" that was being followed. By visually detaching the tabs from the pages they control, the metaphor is broken, and the eye does not follow as naturally from the page to the tab, or vice versa.

    3. Re:I am on OS X 10.5.7. by pizzach · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The whole concept of tabs, in the first place, was that of a tabbed folder, like a 3-ring binder with those little plastic tabs so you can find your place. That was the visual "metaphor" that was being followed. By visually detaching the tabs from the pages they control, the metaphor is broken, and the eye does not follow as naturally from the page to the tab, or vice versa.

      Please remember that there are reasons for both ways and that you are debating which is less wrong. Not which is right. The tabs attaching to the toolbar is supposed to show that the buttons effect that particular tab which is also a very important thing to represent in the gui. Ideally, the tabs should be on the very top of the window like Opera and now Chrome.

      Or alternatively you can use abstract PC for the tab connecting to both effect so no one is happy. :)

      --
      Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
  3. RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Oh wait... I guess editors don't even do that!

  4. "pages render faster" by Hadlock · · Score: 1, Insightful

    How much faster can you get than "instant"? I'm still using 3.0 on a dual core windoze machine and everytime I hear someone say "its faster than the previous version" I think, "hunh?". Browser speed is not something that has come to mind since 2005 at least. Maybe they're talking about render speed on old 1ghz celerons burdened with norton antivirus and tons of spyware on 512mb of ram.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
    1. Re:"pages render faster" by wizardforce · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you know, not everyone has a new computer and frankly I am glad that at least some developers don't make the same assumption you just did. This is especially important considering the rising popularity of smaller notebooks that even bare Windows XP has trouble booting.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:"pages render faster" by Killer+Orca · · Score: 3, Insightful

      you know, not everyone has a new computer and frankly I am glad that at least some developers don't make the same assumption you just did. This is especially important considering the rising popularity of smaller notebooks that even bare Windows XP has trouble booting.

      How old are these machines that some people are running? My families oldest computer is from 1997 and runs Windows 95, should people expect that to be supported? If you slimmed down an XP install to run on older hardware and it can't handle a modern web browser is that the creators' fault? I can understand your grievance about netbooks, some are just plain underpowered for 3 tasks at once and you need to use the applications that it can handle, but how long is hardware supposed to be supported by software? 10, 20, 30 years?

    3. Re:"pages render faster" by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the mentality of devs is that the hardware can take the bloat just give it some time and as far as I am concerned it's a cancer slowly eroding away at what software should be. quick, clean and efficient. BUt really, why shouldn't software be capable of running on hardware for over a decade- we've got a 12 year old compaq sitting in the basement that has less hard drive space than my ram is and yet it can surf the net just fine... The problem comes when devs start to think that they shouldn't be tasked with improving code efficiency because they aren't coding for older hardware. Well all I can say is maybe they should. If an old geezer compaq can hack it just fine on the internet today why can't newer versions of software that do the same basic things cope as well?

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  5. Re:Graphical tab switching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I hope it's not about showing thumbnails while switching...
    Honestly, I don't get how all the recent window thumbnails craze is supposed to improve usability. That method is pretty much optimized for people having a total of 3 windows open, each a different color. But try distinguishing between 30 text documents with that...

  6. Only one feature is really NEEDED by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A plugin like Flash should not be ABLE to lock up the browser. No, that's not the fault of Flash, it's the fault of the browser that _allows_ it to happen. The browser should be in control of the plugin, not the other way around.

  7. Re:Gotta Love Slashdot Linking by bcmm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It says HTML Formatted (by default, if you're logged in) right under the input box.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.