Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final

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Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 12, 2010 @03:34AM from the onwards-and-upwards dept.

CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."

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So what was the code from? by SharpFang · 2010-01-12 03:40 · Score: 1

Inglorious Netscape days, or sneaked in by some saboteur into Mozilla/Firefox?

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45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
1. Re:So what was the code from? by oahazmatt · 2010-01-12 03:44 · Score: 1
  
  Inglorious Netscape days, or sneaked in by some saboteur into Mozilla/Firefox?
  I thought the new, hip thing to do was blame it on your contractors.
  
  --
  Those who believe the Internet is private,
  find their privates are on the Internet.
2. Re:So what was the code from? by Rogerborg · 2010-01-12 04:04 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Dollars to dimes, the Microsoft code was from a Chinese contractor who stole it from Netscape.
  
  --
  If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
3. Re:So what was the code from? by ozmanjusri · 2010-01-12 04:05 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  It was reference code made widely available by a Microsoft technical evangelist in 1999. The contractor's probably a CEO by now, and quite capable of assigning blame of his own accord.
  
  --
  "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
4. Re:So what was the code from? by TrisexualPuppy · 2010-01-12 04:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Actually kind of makes me wonder. I keep getting updates pushed like crazy, and just about every time that I restart my browser (running a pretty stable system, so it may be days or weeks), I get a new Firefox update. You push off the updates and say "never" or "ask me later," and you are completely ignored because it starts updating when you restart your browser regardless of what you checked. Incredibly patronizing. Makes it hard to run an old version. There may be security risks with old versions, but at least they're generally known a little better than the ones known in the new versions that are being crammed down your throat on a daily basis.
  
  Then for some of my clients' intranet sites, there's this thing about not being able to turn off security for "risky" (certificate broken) sites that pose no threat but I have no control over and have to add an exception for every time. The browser.ssl_override_behavior setting is there, but it is completely ignored now, just like the "never update" option.
  
  Every new version of Firefox removes my control a little more, and it has gotten really old. It makes me wonder what version 3.6 is going to bring--if anything--and why they keep changing things for the sake of changing them.
5. Re:So what was the code from? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:14 · Score: 0
  
  It was MSDN sample code.
6. Re:So what was the code from? by ls671 · 2010-01-12 04:39 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  > I get a new Firefox update.
  Have you tried disabling updates if that's what you want ?
  Preferences -> Advanced -> updates...
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
7. Re:So what was the code from? by Provocateur · 2010-01-12 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  I have a prehistoric Moz sitting on an old distro that I have kept since it picked up my webcam before the next release started ignoring it. Back then it wasn't 'self aware' to phone home and check for updates. Didn't see the point as I was using the distro less and less, but the Moz skin http://themes.mozdev.org/themes/negativemod.html sure is beyond compare, and I've kept it that way since.
  Hmmm considering one poster below said to stick to 'browsers of that era' if your RAM is 'of that era', I think I'd get FF 1.0+ :) just to make this skin work again (and out of spite).
  
  --
  WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
8. Re:So what was the code from? by Hurricane78 · 2010-01-12 05:30 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I don’t know, but on Gentoo, since you update your software trough the package manager, auto-update of the software itself is disabled. so I get an update, whenever I choose to update whatever I choose to update. And if I want it, I can simply add e.g. “<www-client/mozilla-firefox-3.5.6” to my /etc/portage/package.mask, and I will never get any further updates, even when I update the whole system.
  That’s the one big thing that Windows lacks, that is more important than all of the bloat, the weak window manager, and the annoying idiot-proofness: The lack of a package manager and a repository.
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
9. Re:So what was the code from? by CAIMLAS · 2010-01-12 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  Ya know, you could just deny Firefox from writing to its own installation directory. That would be the ideal way to prevent such a thing, yes?
  
  --
  ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
10. Re:So what was the code from? by BZ · 2010-01-12 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  The former.
11. Re:So what was the code from? by Hurricane78 · 2010-01-12 07:11 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Huh, how is that a troll?
  Because I said how crappy windows is? Want proof:
  Bloat: Windows 7 uses a minimum of 9 GB of hard disk space, has every component of the system tainted with DRM encryption, and even MS itself recommends the seriously understated 2GB of ram. Nuff said. :)
  Weak window manager: Try KDE4 and/or CompizFusion. Not the colorful effects. The shortcuts. The comfort functionality. The configurability. The ease of use.
  Idiot-proofness: How about needing “god mode”, just to get normal access to your settings. How about it telling you you’re too dumb to look into the windows/system* folders? How about all this clippy-like shit? How about the start menu denying you having your own organization? How about the root of the file system being a fake “my computer” with tons of non-existing folders and weird tricks below it? Like the Desktop folder below your home directory being somethow “my computer”? Sorry but you have to be retarded to like that, as it only hinders you from understanding what you need to understand, to use that computer.
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
12. Re:So what was the code from? by jesser · 2010-01-12 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  You push off the updates and say "never" or "ask me later," and you are completely ignored because it starts updating when you restart your browser regardless of what you checked.
  There are no "never" or "ask me later" buttons on the dialog I think you're talking about. There's a "Restart Firefox now" button and a "Later" button. The "Later" button installs the update the next time you start Firefox.
  
  Incredibly patronizing.
  Perhaps, but the alternative is far worse for the vast majority of users.
  
  Makes it hard to run an old version.
  If you want to test multiple versions, or manage Firefox versions for all of an organization's computers, it's best to turn off Firefox's built-in updater. Then you don't even have to deal with prompts.
  
  --
  The shareholder is always right.
13. Re:So what was the code from? by 0ld_d0g · 2010-01-12 08:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Heres my guess:
  Statistically out of every 10 Windows users 7 will be average (mom, dad, grandma, etc) , 1 user will be a moron and will fall for every phishing and malware attack, 1 will be a moderately advanced user and 1 will be a fairly advanced user / developer.
  When you're dealing with that kind of audience, your goals are *vastly* different than highly customizable operating systems like Linux. Your criticisms are minor and superficial. Given *ANY* UI decision you can find users that disagree with it. Calling it proof is frankly laughable.
  If you're interested in why windows is "bloated" you can read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx
  As far as RAM is concerned, firefox itself is going to consume/require several hundred megs for an average user visiting youtube and other misc. flash heavy websites. That said, I don't have a clue what the actual RAM usage levels are of Win7 vs Ubuntu 9.10
14. Re:So what was the code from? by paeanblack · 2010-01-12 10:17 · Score: 1
  
  The lack of a package manager and a repository.
  Steam works quite well as a package manager and repository. Sure, it caters specific class of packages, but so does Gentoo's repository.
  Will they both expand? Eventually.
  Don't be blind to the existence of competent package managers under Windows simply because they don't smell like Portage or have /etc/portage/package.* files for you to dick around with.
15. Re:So what was the code from? by AmberBlackCat · 2010-01-12 10:53 · Score: 1
  
  Is there a way to disable the disabling of my Flash plugin when they decide it's not safe for me?
16. Re:So what was the code from? by BZ · 2010-01-12 15:08 · Score: 1
  
  For a soft-block, the user is prompted whether to disable the known-vulnerable plug-in.
  There are also provisions for a hard-block. This would be _very_ unlikely to happen unless a plug-in had an announced security vulnerability being actively exploited and disabling it doesn't break too much, so not likely at all for Flash. If it did happen, there is no user-facing UI to turn off the block. That said, you could edit blocklist.xml in the Firefox install to remove the relevant entry. Or edit nsBlocklistService.js in said install, of course...
17. Re:So what was the code from? by uiuyhn8i8 · 2010-01-12 22:11 · Score: 0
  
  >running a pretty stable system, so it may be days or weeks
  Jesus, I hope you are running windos or something if you consider weekly reboots stable. For the record, my Linux system practically never goes down. It's the power outages that takes it down perhaps once a year. Desktop machine that is. And I use a window manager that only manages windows (ctwm) and not the entire system, which I suspect is the reason it never dies. The servers are on UPS and are usually up for a couple of years before we upgrade redhat on them or upgrade hardware.
well super by wampus · 2010-01-12 03:44 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Is it possible to check for updates as a normal user on Windows yet?
1. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 03:48 · Score: 0
  
  Is it possible to check for updates as a normal user on Windows yet?
  Umm, why? You can't install it as a normal user...
2. Re:well super by yakumo.unr · 2010-01-12 03:50 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  No because this is a Release Candidate. 'Normal' users using release (final) software, only get update notifications for release software.
  Anyone on the beta update channel would have seen this RC available as a normal update any time from several days ago.
3. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 03:51 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Isn't the whole point of being a normal user on Windows that the OS shouldn't let you install those updates?
4. Re:well super by wampus · 2010-01-12 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  Lots of other apps know how to elevate to administrator using UAC. Even a notification that an update is available would be swell. Graying out the check for updates menu item.... not so swell.
5. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 03:59 · Score: 0
  
  No.
6. Re:well super by wampus · 2010-01-12 04:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Ahh, slashdot. Come for the condescension, stay for the pedantry. Unpriveleged users don't get offered or notified of updates in 3.5. You can't even use the built in facility to manually check for an update. It is actually less secure to use Firefox as an unpriveleged user than it is to run as an admin unless you actively go and see what the latest release is.
7. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:05 · Score: 0
  
  Isn't the entire point of running Linux as a normal user that you can't update anything?
8. Re:well super by BForrester · 2010-01-12 04:05 · Score: 1
  
  If you need to have an updated version (or install extensions, etc.), use the portable version. It's meant to be installed to USB, but it works just fine from a local drive.
  http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
9. Re:well super by Mr.+Shiny+And+New · 2010-01-12 04:09 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I can install it as a normal user. Here's how:
  1. Log into Windows as a normal user.
  2. Double click installer.
  3. Windows prompts you to elevate automatically. Enter password for elevation.
  4. Install. Close down FF if it runs after install because it is running as admin.
  Then, as a normal user, start Firefox. You are logged in as your normal user and running the browser you just installed. But mysteriously FF's update feature is completely turned off. It doesn't even WARN you that there is an update pending, never mind downloading it, or downloading it and asking to elevate privs so that you can install it or ask an admin. The feature is so fully disabled that you can't even ask it to check for updates. This means that I have to rely on hearing about updates through some third-party channel, such as /., then remember to start Firefox as an admin to manually make it check for updates. This is so fundamentally broken that it's clear not a single FF developer uses a normal user account on Vista or 7.
10. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:09 · Score: 0
  
  Is it possible to check for updates as a normal (gksudoed) user on Linux yet?
  Oh, no because the Linux upgrade of Mozilla products lags behind horribly, and you have to run some piece of shit, hacked up bash script to pick apart some tar.gz files downloaded from nightlies.
  What a fucking mess.
11. Re:well super by wampus · 2010-01-12 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Gaining write access to the appropriate parts of the system isn't the problem. Finding out that I'm three security updates behind on my home machine is.
12. Re:well super by Yvan256 · 2010-01-12 04:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You know who else knows how to elevate?
  The Daleks.
13. Re:well super by tepples · 2010-01-12 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  Why can't a normal user install the software to his own home dir^W^W user profile?
14. Re:well super by ls671 · 2010-01-12 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but a notice for normal users that an update is available and that they should notify their system administrator would be nice I guess. Enabling updates for normal users might seem nice from a home desktop user perspective but it is a no go in corporate environments.
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
15. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:54 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Firefox is horrible to administer in corporate environments already. Adding a hidden pref that is only settable at the system level wouldn't make this any worse.
16. Re:well super by yakumo.unr · 2010-01-12 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  Actually as I get prompted for UAC elevation on updates I hadn't realised this was a problem and just assumed your original post was written with condescension and/or bad English.
17. Re:well super by yakumo.unr · 2010-01-12 05:08 · Score: 1
  
  And no I hadn't even glanced at your UID till just now.
18. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 05:13 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  That joke is so irrelevant and pathetically stupid that I now feel dumber having read it.
19. Re:well super by theCoder · 2010-01-12 05:27 · Score: 1
  
  The Firefox install I have on my Windows machine at work gets updates all the time, and my account isn't a local admin. In fact, I just started it, and it applied updates from the last time it was running. I also used the "check for updates" menu item to find that there was another version available (I don't usually use that machine, which is why there were so many updates).
  It is running XP. Maybe this is a Vista/7 problem? Or maybe it's because I installed Firefox using the user account, so that account has write access to the files?
  
  --
  "Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
20. Re:well super by V!NCENT · 2010-01-12 08:00 · Score: 1
  
  Under Linux you can su and/or sudo and under Windows you can right-click and run-as... (it prompts for the password, if the account has one).
  Stop this useless discussion...
  Admin is for administering the system and updating. User is for using the system set up by the administrator.
  
  --
  Here be signatures
21. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 08:35 · Score: 0
  
  I would welcome this on linux too, running firefox from mozilla means i have to run all of firefox as root every so often vs prompt for update, reboot launch firefox-updater (they already use a different launcher for the update anyway) as root (sudo/UAC/mac privileged escalation), drop privelage and get me back to my browser, seams retarded.
22. Re:well super by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 09:42 · Score: 0
  
  The correct steps would be:
  Notify new version is available, click button to update.
  Button is clicked, UAC prompts for elevation, THEN update is downloaded, then installed.
  Reason being, Mallory could download an executable and modify it such that when Terry (your trusted admin) comes over to install said software update malicious code gets inserted into the system with root privledges.
23. Re:well super by Ethanol-fueled · 2010-01-12 09:53 · Score: 1
  
  Come for the condescension, stay for the pedantry. Unpriveleged users...
  stay for the pedantry. Unpriveleged
  pedantry. Unpriveleged
  Unpriveleged
  unpri-vileged, adj. not restricted to a select group or individual.
24. Re:well super by Kjella · 2010-01-12 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I can sort of see two use cases here. On many corporate installs the version is intentionally held back, and then you don't want the user to be bugged on every launch about upgrades that he can't and aren't supposed to install. I have had that at times and it's very frustrating. I do understand it sucks for anyone being their own admin though.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
25. Re:well super by Korin43 · 2010-01-12 14:06 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe they should take the Microsoft approach and just ignore bugs for a couple months and hope they go away..
26. Re:well super by Mr.+Shiny+And+New · 2010-01-13 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  I fully agree that the corporate use-case is different. However Firefox is notoriously annoying to corp admins because they want to customize the install and manage it using a software distribution system. Microsoft provides an IE customization and management kit that allows this, but Mozilla does not have anything similar for Firefox. If they had that it would be the natural place to put in such a feature.
  I can understand, though I disagree with, the logic that says regular users shouldn't install updates and we won't even try to elevate. But there is no way to even be notified of updates at all. There isn't even an easy way to get to the update website to visually check. You're just left in the dark. If my parents ever buy a new computer, I would want them to run as a regular user, however with this limitation I don't know if I can recommend it.
27. Re:well super by Mr.+Shiny+And+New · 2010-01-13 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  Well, presumably some code-signing can alleviate those concerns, but if not, downloading-after would be fine. At least it would be _possible_ to update it somehow, instead of the asinine way it works now.
Thanks /. by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:01 · Score: 0, Funny

I needed a good orgasm.
My legs are still shaking.
Memeory Leaks by ironicsky · 2010-01-12 04:03 · Score: 1, Troll

Did not read the article, but as long as they finally fixed the memory leaks I'll be happy.

What memory leaks you ask?
I have 1 tab open(This slashdot article)... my only add on is the Google Toolbar.
Firefox 3.5.7 is using a whopping 174Mb of ram.

Firefox doesn't properly clear out memory of closed tabs.
1. Re:Memeory Leaks by Drummergeek0 · 2010-01-12 04:09 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Seconded, I tend to leave my browser window open at all times on my machine, and every other day or so the mem usage hits over 1GB and slows my computer slows to a crawl. It would be wonderful if they fix that because I am seriously considering changing browsers because of it.
  
  --
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
2. Re:Memeory Leaks by Enderandrew · 2010-01-12 04:12 · Score: 1
  
  I'm at work using IE 7. I just closed down to one tab after heavy use, and IE is still at 64 megs of physical memory, and 180 megs of virtual memory. Sound like Firefox wins there.
  The only browser I've seen that can properly close memory from closed tabs is Chrome.
  Firefox INTENTIONALLY AS A FEATURE (not a memory leak) does keep fully rendered pages, with full history and the cache of X rendered pages, for some time after you close the tab. You can right-click on the tab bar and reopen recently closed tabs. I actually love that feature and miss it all the time in IE. However, you can probably turn off the feature with about:config if you need to.
  
  --
  http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
3. Re:Memeory Leaks by mejogid · 2010-01-12 04:28 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Firefox at this point is really quite reasonable with its memory use - I can't get my head around the continual complaints. The only area where it's appreciably worse performing than Chrome is in UI responsiveness and this has significantly improved in 3.5. It also has far faster back/forward navigation through the cache and (although I don't have figures for this) it feels faster at displaying pages without extremely heavy javascript. There's also less flicker - most pages load in one paint rather than loading in sections. Besides that, web browsers have a lot of useful RAM caching they can do (your history, uncompressed images etc) - it hardly makes sense to keep browser usage below 174MB when even netbooks come with 1-2GB and that RAM can be used effectively to speed up the browser. Frankly, if you're too stingy to splash out on a stick of RAM use xterm with lynx or another browser from the era when that amount of RAM was normal.
4. Re:Memeory Leaks by adiether · 2010-01-12 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  Closing a tab, hitting CTR-ALT-DEL, and looking at how much memory Firefox is using is NOT a good indicator of a memory leak. A better indicator is how long and how much can you use Firefox. I can't remember the last time I ran up against Firefox being unusable because it was bloating. Also, to lay blame at Firefox's feet you would need to turn off all your plugins such as Flash, Quicktime, Java, etc.
  
  In a low RAM environment, Firefox is much more aggressive at keeping RAM usage down. Most computers these days have lots of RAM. Programs should use it.
5. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:33 · Score: 0
  
  The only browser I've seen that can properly close memory from closed tabs is Chrome.
  I'm using Chrome 4 on Linux. I just closed all but one tab, and adding up the resident memory for all four chrome processes listed in the System Monitor, I see that Chrome is using about 120 MB of RAM. For some reason, about:memory says Chrome is using only 88 MB.
  I think the real memeory leak is repeating the meme that Firefox has memory problems that other browsers don't have.
6. Re:Memeory Leaks by bschorr · 2010-01-12 04:44 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Every now and then I'll bounce the FireFox app (close it, tell it to save and quit so it comes back up with the same tabs, restart it) and it generally comes back up using about 75% less memory than it was using when I closed it.
  
  Though I can't point to any actual crashes that have resulted from it, seems like it would just be best practice for FireFox to be at least somewhat respectful of system memory (I do run other apps too ya know?) and try to keep itself tight when possible. If it were only 10% then I probably wouldn't care, but when I can open the same handful of tabs in 75% less memory...
  
  --
  -B-
7. Re:Memeory Leaks by TooMuchToDo · 2010-01-12 04:49 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  RAM is cheap. My desktop rig has 8GB. I don't mind firefox using 500-1024MB as long as my browsing is snappy and I can get to old closed tabs for some time (hence the high memory usage).
8. Re:Memeory Leaks by FudRucker · 2010-01-12 04:49 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  RE: "Firefox 3.5.7 is using a whopping 174Mb of ram."
  
  and with most systems having at least 1 to 4 gigs of ram 174 megs is what?
  
  a pimple on a hippo's butt?
  
  --
  Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
9. Re:Memeory Leaks by FlyingBishop · 2010-01-12 04:53 · Score: 1
  
  That's a feature, not a bug. Firefox maintains its own memory cache. If you're that desperate for memory... you should be using Opera Mini or Dillo or something.
10. Re:Memeory Leaks by xtracto · 2010-01-12 04:58 · Score: 1
  
  Google Toolbar may be leaky. However I guess the initial amount of memory for Firefox is actually high (higher than say, Opera or IE).
  Right now I am using Firefox 3.5.5 on Win XP. I have 3 windows open:
  Window 1 with 13 tabs including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Notebook and Slashdot.
  Window 2: 19 Tabs (some wikipedia, Eurostat sites, etc)
  Window 3: 2 tabs Google search.
  In addition I have the following extensions:Adblock Plus, Delicious bookmarks, DOM inspector, downthemall, fireftp, grasemonkey, pricedrop, sage, scrapbook stop-or-reload button, stylish, tab mix plus, tinymenu treestyle tab, xmarks.
  All that makes 476,620K as measured by Process Explored "Private Bytes" field. I would not say it is a lot of memory =oP. This machine has 2 GB of RAM. and According to RAMPage I have 700 MB free. (and I've got a total of 25 windows opened including Word, Excel, Forefox, Outlook, Explorer, etc) distributed in 4 VirtuaWin virtual desktops.
  
  --
  Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
11. Re:Memeory Leaks by xtracto · 2010-01-12 05:02 · Score: 1
  
  Oh yeah... I forgot to add that I have been using the same firefox session for over one week now (since the beginning of the year) as I do not close or turn off the computer but hibernate.
  Firefox has come a long way from its leaky days. I was frustrated by the leaking but nowadays it feels OK for me.
  
  --
  Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
12. Re:Memeory Leaks by Kaetemi · 2010-01-12 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, say, I open a few hundred tabs to Google.com. Every new tab adds more MB ram used. When I close all those tabs, no ram is freed at all. Usage can easily go up to a GB of ram with opening and closing the page enough times. When I open a new tab to Google.com again, more ram is used. That's definitely not a normal cache, it's a memory leaking cache. It's not because it's a cache that it doesn't need to limit it's ram usage.
  And they should use the hard disk instead for such a ridiculous > 1GB cache, especially since I also need to be able to run 3ds Max or Adobe Premiere while Firefox is running.
  Currently Firefox is using 377MB ram. This is the only tab open.
  
  --
  Kaetemi
13. Re:Memeory Leaks by lordmatrix · 2010-01-12 05:13 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  8GB RAM is 120 EUR. Thats a month of quality food for a single person. Saying hardware is cheap is wrong because it's not cheap. Not for the majority of the people.
14. Re:Memeory Leaks by TooMuchToDo · 2010-01-12 05:19 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I reject your argument. Just because that's the cost of food for a month, doesn't mean that's expensive. That RAM will be good for several years (at least 3). Assuming you amoratize the cost over 3 years, that's only 3.34 EUR/month. So while there is an upfront investment, you don't have to pay 120EUR/month for RAM like you do for food.
15. Re:Memeory Leaks by electrosoccertux · 2010-01-12 05:27 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  And, as usual, WORKS FOR ME.
  And most people, that is.
16. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 05:30 · Score: 0
  
  Three words: "Reopen closed tab"
  Firefox stores the parsed page tree in memory along with images and crap for all recently closed tabs as well as the page contents of the last 5 (or was it 10?) pages behind the BACK button for every tab (this also includes closed tabs since if you restore the closed tab it will also restore the BACK history). Even then, this is ignoring the in-memory disk-cache which is 10% available memory [Yes, variable sized as a percentage].
  Naturally, a lot of tabs will mean a lot of memory used. High usage is not the same as a leak.
17. Re:Memeory Leaks by tepples · 2010-01-12 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  My desktop rig has 8GB.
  Netbooks and old (paid-for) PCs tend not to even have enough slots for 8 GB of RAM.
18. Re:Memeory Leaks by tepples · 2010-01-12 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  And they should use the hard disk instead for such a ridiculous > 1GB cache, especially since I also need to be able to run 3ds Max or Adobe Premiere while Firefox is running.
  Just open the other program, and Windows will automatically move the cache to the hard disk where you say it belongs. It's called a swap file.
19. Re:Memeory Leaks by TooMuchToDo · 2010-01-12 05:37 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Good point. But it's silly to argue amount performance if you're using less than 4GB of RAM (which netbooks and older desktops will accommodate).
20. Re:Memeory Leaks by Hurricane78 · 2010-01-12 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  As is noted for at least one or two years, you can disable that behavior.
  Also 174 MB (I don’t think you meant megabits ;) is not that much, if you calculate the size of the actual data, in its *uncompressed* form with a full parse tree. Do some calculations. You’ll be surprised at how big that actually becomes.
  I’d like to see some memory map for Firefox anyway. Since when Opera can do it, so should Firefox. ;)
  My guess is, that Opera has something like a offscreen buffer that is in memory for all inactive tabs. So they don’t have to draw anything.
  And my main guess is, that the reason for Firefox’s bloat, apart from Flash having more memory leaks than IE has holes, is simple: XUL. Or in other words: Tons of XML files (a format known for excessive bloat), which means tons of parse trees, with parse trees for the attached JavaScript events/triggers, and all that attached to the unnecessarily complex XPCOM interface.
  Which from a software design standpoint certainly is a very nice thing, becase it’s so platform-independent, and because it’s so flexible.
  But I fear they went too far, and now it’s caught in the horrible anti-pattern of the inner-platform effect.
  So what it needs, is less layers (/ inner platforms), or at least a layer-combining compiler. (XUL+JS to efficient machine code.)
  Or to talk more general: We need something generic like HTML, but for application interfaces, that is compilable to machine code. Doesn’t QT/KDE do that already?
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
21. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 06:12 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  The only browser I've seen that can properly close memory from closed tabs is Chrome.
  I'm using Chrome 4 on Linux. I just closed all but one tab, and adding up the resident memory for all four chrome processes listed in the System Monitor, I see that Chrome is using about 120 MB of RAM. For some reason, about:memory says Chrome is using only 88 MB.
  Because a lot of the memory is shared between the processes, so you're counting some libraries and such multiple times when only one copy actually exists in memory. See this blog post for more details. The only reliable way to test how much memory it's using is to kill it and see how much memory is freed, if you don't trust about:memory.
22. Re:Memeory Leaks by tepples · 2010-01-12 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  But it's silly to argue amount performance if you're using less than 4GB of RAM
  For how many years has this been true?
  
  (which netbooks and older desktops will accommodate).
  Eee PC has only one DDR2 SO-DIMM slot for 2 GB of RAM, and a lot of them ship with a smaller stick in place. More importantly, Mozilla Corp wants to target Firefox toward 1. older machines that shipped with operating systems now in the extended support phase, and 2. handheld devices (Fennec).
23. Re:Memeory Leaks by metamatic · 2010-01-12 06:18 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  I'm guessing you don't use Linux. Firefox on Linux is a dog compared to the Chrome betas, even with 4GB of RAM in the machine.
  
  --
  GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
24. Re:Memeory Leaks by sconeu · 2010-01-12 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  My Eee900 maxes out at 2GB, according to the docs (and yes, I do have a 2GB stick in there).
  
  --
  General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
25. Re:Memeory Leaks by mejogid · 2010-01-12 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  Granted, but that's because relatively few linux developers are making an effort with Gecko/Firefox. In particular, Gnome has undergone a 2 year transition to Webkit that so far is showing very limited performance improvements and has meant that many projects have seen no real user visible changes (especially epiphany, which has not been changed noticeably since it reached parity with Firefox 2 a couple of years ago). It's quite sad that a FOSS icon has been largely rejected by the linux community and that it now performs worse there than on closed platforms.
  Regardless, I use epiphany on Gnome because it feels much more native and slicker than firefox or chrome, even if it's still wanting for features.
26. Re:Memeory Leaks by TangoMargarine · 2010-01-12 07:21 · Score: 1
  
  It's all in your head. It's Microsoft's fault. This is not the RAM you are looking for...
  
  --
  Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
27. Re:Memeory Leaks by TangoMargarine · 2010-01-12 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I do that a lot too. What would be kind of cool is if there was an (opt-in) option where you can set FF to notify you when it hits a certain RAM usage and ask if you want to restart it. But that would involve the devs admitting there actually is a problem...
  
  --
  Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
28. Re:Memeory Leaks by tokul · 2010-01-12 07:31 · Score: 1
  
  1. How many pages browser has in memory?
  2. Have you tried it without google ad-on?
  3. Firefox with just one add-on. Fine. How many plugins you have in firefox?
29. Re:Memeory Leaks by V!NCENT · 2010-01-12 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  Firefox keeps track of what you visited while running (cashin, can be turned of... *sigh*), so when you are 'closing' your tabs and you decide to re-open it or go backwards or forwards everything responds faster. If you close Firefox it doesn't have the cache in the memory anymore...
  RAM these days is dirt cheap. Preloading is what makes Vista and 7 use so much memory and I gladly run Linux with preload. Because guess what? On newer hardware these tweaks make your system actually faster. I hate uninformed people whine about things that are only their problem because they can't afford to upgrade their PC every 5 years (get a Dell PC for 299 dollars or something, jesus...)
  
  --
  Here be signatures
30. Re:Memeory Leaks by Just+Some+Guy · 2010-01-12 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  Firefox 3.5.7 is using a whopping 174Mb of ram.
  Put another way, that would be gobbling up an Earth-shattering 2.83% of the RAM in the desktop I'm typing this on. They should drop everything and get that down to no more than 1.4% of my installed RAM.
  Yeah, I know: best practices, bloat, netbooks, old computers, etc. Those are all perfectly valid reasons why all software should be well-crafted and should limit wasted resources. I just can't get excited about the raw numbers involved in this case.
  
  --
  Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
31. Re:Memeory Leaks by V!NCENT · 2010-01-12 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  The entire reason for chaching in RAM these days with broadband is because it's a 1000 times faster (literaly) than the HDD. A swap is for poot-man computers that have their RAM completely full...
  
  --
  Here be signatures
32. Re:Memeory Leaks by Reality+Master+101 · 2010-01-12 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  No offense to you, but you're parroting the Firefox team's take on this, and it's utter crapola. Firefox at this moment is taking 638 megabytes on my system, and I normally restart it when it hits 1 gigabyte. That is ABSURD. This is just normal browsing.
  I've basically concluded that the Firefox team basically can't fix it. It's not like this hasn't been a problem for a long-ass time. There is absolutely no reason Firefox should cripple computers if you don't close it after a certain amount of time. There is just no excuse. That is plain and simple bad design.
  And yes, I HAVE played with the memory caching settings. That's how I got it to "only" take 1 gigabyte.
  
  --
  Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
33. Re:Memeory Leaks by ultranova · 2010-01-12 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Besides that, web browsers have a lot of useful RAM caching they can do (your history, uncompressed images etc) - it hardly makes sense to keep browser usage below 174MB when even netbooks come with 1-2GB and that RAM can be used effectively to speed up the browser.
  
  You know those awful Office/Java/whatever preloaders? Those things that load the program in question when the computer starts, so that when you attempt to start the program, the already-running instance just opens a new window? The ones that end up increasing the start time to minutes when they're all fighting over RAM, and make the computer swap constantly even when there's seemingly just one lousy text editor running?
  Those preloaders were thought up by someone who had your attitude.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
34. Re:Memeory Leaks by EvolutionsPeak · 2010-01-12 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  Quite true. I love FF on Windows, but on my Linux box at work I have to reboot it fairly often due to its memory consumption being > 1GB
35. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 09:24 · Score: 0
  
  You should let Canonical know about that so they can update this page.
  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements
  "Recommended" RAM is 384 Megs.
  My guess is nobody has even tried running Ubuntu on 384 Megs. I have. It SUCKED BALLS.
36. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 10:48 · Score: 0
  
  Also 174 MB (I don’t think you meant megabits ;) is not that much, if you calculate the size of the actual data, in its *uncompressed* form with a full parse tree.
  True and false. True for what you say, but false because it doesn't quite work that way.
  If I completely close Firefox down, and reopen and restore about 20 tabs, FF uses somewhere around 180 MB to 220 MB of RAM. If I were to completely clear everything out and restart with only a basic Google search page and no other tabs (which I haven't done in ages, mind), I believe it used about 80 MB of RAM. To have only a single tab open and be using 174 MB of RAM does seem excessively bloated when compared to that.
  FF just crashed on me earlier today, so I don't have my usual few days of usage built up, but at the moment with 29 tabs open it's using 482 MB of RAM. Even if the number of tabs goes down, I fully expect it to hit 1 GB within a couple days.
  Which isn't to say it's all bad. Interestingly enough, in the time it took me to write this all out (in a text editor, not FF), FF's memory usage dropped to 401 MB, so there is a certain amount of memory freeing going on. It's just that in the long term, the amount freed doesn't match up with the amount used.
37. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 11:16 · Score: 0
  
  It may be (uneducated guess) a result of the ability to restore tabs and closed windows. That is ctrl+shift+t T opens the last closed tab (it also keeps all previous pages visited in that tab), and can do so more than once. same with windows, ctrl+shift+N.
  On this, when banks ask you to close your browser windows, if you are actually concerned, you'd need to completely shut down Firefox in order to actually lose the session.
38. Re:Memeory Leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-13 02:35 · Score: 0
  
  Ooh, ooh, ooh, the anecdote game! I want to play too!
  I've got a crappy old P4 laptop with only 256MB of RAM. Loading up only Chrome and surfing to Gmail, basically slows the entire system down to a crawl, as the javascript heavy site has sucked out pretty much every available meg of RAM, but hey, keep thinking that the internet is this sleek, slim little entity that doesn't require gobs of RAM regardless of browser.
  As another anecdote, it's a little better in Linux with Chromium, but having Gmail and Facebook open at the same time also basically means that all available RAM is used up.
Useless Summary by Necroman · 2010-01-12 04:08 · Score: 4, Informative

The summary rambled on about bug fixes and other things that tend not to matter to the end product of FF3.6. Most of the people that read slashdot understand the release process for software. You releases a beta/RC, fix some bugs, release the pre-release. If all is good, you release the final product.
It would have been more useful to cover new features and things that would interest the end-user. At least that's my point of view on the topic...
Useful info from the article:

Among the new features in Firefox 3.6 are built-in support for the scaled-down browser skins dubbed "Personas;" warnings of out-of-date plug-ins; support for new CSS, DOM and HTML 5 technologies; support for full-screen video embedded with the video HTML tag; and support for the Web Open Font Format (WOFF).
TraceMonkey has also been refreshed to boost JavaScript performance, something Mike Shaver, Mozilla's chief engineer, bragged about last week on Twitter. "I am excited about upcoming JS [JavaScript] engine work, and I don't care who knows it," Shaver tweeted.

--
Its not what it is, its something else.
1. Re:Useless Summary by __aardcx5948 · 2010-01-12 04:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Agreed!
  I've been running beta5 and RC1 since it came out, this could very well be the final product from what I've experienced. Everything works, including all plugins (or are they called extensions, addons, or components...?).
  Much faster startup time (yes, this matters) and switching between tabs seem faster than ever. It's almost Chrome-like in speed now.
2. Re:Useless Summary by Bj�rn · 2010-01-12 04:20 · Score: 1
  
  It would have been more useful to cover new features and things that would interest the end-user.
  Here you go. It's for beta 1, so it's a bit old though.
  
  --
  Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
3. Re:Useless Summary by Provocateur · 2010-01-12 04:45 · Score: 1
  
  Personas have been in Firefox before, then discontinued. You'll see a lot of submissions there from those days. I'm glad that it's back, but I am hoping for a utility that could make the earlier personas work in this updated version.
  
  --
  WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Firefox seriously broken - the 5.0 curse by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:12 · Score: 1, Insightful

The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox.
For a piece of software that's been actively developed for so many years, Firefox has way too many bugs that cause it to crash. The memory footprint seems to be getting bigger and bigger with each release and Firefox is noticably slower compared to Opera when it comes to rendering and general GUI responsiveness. I don't want to start any flame wars, I'm just sharing my experience and point of view, it just seems to me that Firefox has been on an unfortunate development path that will lead to its death before it hits version 5.0, much like Netscape.
Some of you know that FreeBSD 5.x was a very unfortunate branch plagued with serious bugs. Can you recall any other pieces of software that suffered under the 5.0 curse?
Performance issues off flash drives by Maxo-Texas · 2010-01-12 04:19 · Score: 1

After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
Did I miss a switch somewhere? It has to be related to some new performance feature because the flash drive continuously flashes with 3.1+ and doesn't flash at all with 3.0.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by advid.net · 2010-01-12 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
  Me too. I'm suspecting the url/keyword database, the one with the file keeping up growing.
2. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:54 · Score: 0
  
  I wonder if it has to do with that Awesome (*tries to stop rolling eyes) toolbar, keeping tabs on searches and keywords. Join the hate club, members joining up at a rate that's in direct proportion to that url/keyword database you've got there.
  I'm kinda split myself, love-hate.
3. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by minvaren · 2010-01-12 05:10 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It's the fact that they use SQLite to store so much data. Putting the firefox profile on anything but a local hard drive causes it to become completely unresponsive on a regular basis. I haven't seen any plans by Mozilla to fix this yet, but this completely kills Firefox in any work environment with roaming profiles.
  
  --
  Big! Strong! Wow! Tada-O!
4. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by asdf7890 · 2010-01-12 05:14 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
  That'll be the writing to the urlclassifier3.sqlite, file amongst others. I sorted this on my Ubuntu setup (running on a netbook with an internal SSD that had *very* bad write performance) by moving my profile to a RAM drive on boot (and rsyncing it back to the on-disc copy on shutdown and every now and again via cron). You might be able to do something similar on Windows if you have a decent RAM drive implementation but you are unlikely to have that in most circumstances where you are using a portable install of a browser. You could try explicitly enabling write caching for the USB device, but again you may not have the right perms for that in all cases when using a portable setup and it isn't a great idea anyway.
5. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by Upsilonish · 2010-01-12 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  It's the fact that they use SQLite to store so much data.
  Tell me about it. For a long time the data quota on the linux computers at my university was 30MB (for undergraduates at least). I kept going over the quota mysteriously, and eventually found that firefox had created a (hidden) 20MB sqlite file to store data for its "block reported attack sites" function. They've since raised the quota to 80MB, I suspect because everyone else was having the same problem and most didn't work out why.
6. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by Bacon+Bits · 2010-01-12 08:56 · Score: 1
  
  If you go into Options and turn off storage of History then the performance issue all but disappears. A good idea for a thumb drive, but doesn't make much sense if you're mapping profiles over a network.
  
  --
  The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
7. Re:Performance issues off flash drives by Maxo-Texas · 2010-01-12 10:01 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you.
  This reduced the scale of the problem by about 90% or more.
  It's strange that this same feature doesn't hit firefox 3.0 in this fashion.
  
  --
  She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
New Gecko 1.9.2 in FF 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:22 · Score: 1, Informative

I love the new Gecko features, especially -moz-linear-gradient and -moz-radial-gradient. Huge bandwidth savings for gradient loving web developers out there.
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Firefox_3.6_for_developers
1. Re:New Gecko 1.9.2 in FF 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:31 · Score: 0
  
  How is this better than using IE specific features?
2. Re:New Gecko 1.9.2 in FF 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 05:50 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  It's a standard.
  http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-images/#radial-gradients
3. Re:New Gecko 1.9.2 in FF 3.6 by BZ · 2010-01-12 07:04 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There are two main differences between this and the old way IE did its IE-specific features:
  1) This implementation is based on a public draft of a W3C REC-track document, which is worked on in public in collaboration with other browser vendors, web developers, and anyone else who cares to join the public www-style@w3.org mailing list. In fact, the gradient syntax was changed radically between beta 1 and beta 2 of Gecko 1.9.2 based on feedback and discussion on said mailing list.
  2) The feature is clearly marked as Gecko-specific, so it doesn't pollute the namespace for future standardization (e.g. the properties are not called "linear-gradient" and "radial-gradient") and makes it clear to anyone using it that it will only work in Gecko and break in other browsers. This last property makes it less likely that someone will just use it, test only in Gecko, and accidentally break other browsers by just failing to think about testing in them.
  But yes, using it as an _author_ for things outside progressive enhancement is of course bad. But even the progressive enhancement uses are a start: they can give valuable feedback on that www-style mailing list I mention if there are serious problems with the current spec draft.
Go get it. by el_jake · 2010-01-12 04:26 · Score: 1

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

--
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Slow... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 04:36 · Score: 0

With so many smaller faster alternatives, Chrome, Opera, etc...

One has to ask in Firefox even relevent anymore?
1. Re:Slow... by Dan+Ost · 2010-01-12 04:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  That's an odd question considering that Firefox continues to gain market share.
  Perhaps you should ask yourself if "smaller" and "faster" are really the dominant factors driving users to switch browsers.
  
  --
  
  *sigh* back to work...
2. Re:Slow... by fprintf · 2010-01-12 05:00 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Until Opera and Chrome get usable, working AdBlock+ and NoScript, then there are no good alternatives to Firefox.
  
  --
  This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
3. Re:Slow... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 05:01 · Score: 0
  
  Various Addons
4. Re:Slow... by Ksevio · 2010-01-12 05:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Guess you've never really used Opera since it has the equivilants of those add-ons built in.
5. Re:Slow... by shutdown+-p+now · 2010-01-12 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  That's an odd question considering that Firefox continues to gain market share.
  That doesn't by itself tells you much except that people still don't like IE. If you get 3 IE users switch to Firefox, and 2 Firefox users switch to Chrome in the same time, then Firefox share grows overall, but one could argue that it's not a good sign for Firefox if it's got such a high dissatisfaction rate in proportion to the size of its user base.
6. Re:Slow... by TangoMargarine · 2010-01-12 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  Plugins.
  
  --
  Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
7. Re:Slow... by Dan+Ost · 2010-01-12 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, one could make that argument, but for now, let's just assume that as long as FF market share continues to grow in the presence of its competitors (IE, Opera, Safari, Chrome, etc), that it must still be a relevant browser which answers the question in the post I was responding to.
  
  --
  
  *sigh* back to work...
8. Re:Slow... by Revenger75 · 2010-01-12 09:28 · Score: 0
  
  I haven't checked up on NoScript, but I'm currently using Chrome Beta with AdBlock. I haven't had a single problem with Chrome, unlike Firefox which comes bundled with features like memory leaks and countless crashes.
9. Re:Slow... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 10:11 · Score: 0
  
  Opera's built-in ad and JavaScript blocking isn't nearly as convenient as Adblock+ or NoScript.
How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by blind+biker · 2010-01-12 04:39 · Score: 1

I don't quite understand how the Chrome guys do the updates, but it seems like dark magic: I never noticed ever needing a restart, but still, the executable is being updated, too. I have no clue how that is achieved.

--
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
1. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by silentjay · 2010-01-12 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  its the google update service running in the background doing it.....
2. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by at_slashdot · 2010-01-12 04:56 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  If you do it manually it prompts you to restart it to benefit from the update, otherwise it does it in the background (if you run Windows, in Linux you need to use the package manager to upgrade it)
  
  --
  "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
3. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by Webz · 2010-01-12 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  This is an unsupported guess.
  There's probably two versions of the executable: ones you have already running hot and one that's on the file system. If you update Chrome, it's probably updating only the reference copy on the file system and not the one you're running. So if you shut down all of your instances of Chrome, and then start one up again, it uses that new copy without mentioning anything to you.
  What would really be neat is if you could run different versions of Chrome simultaneously so that given the organic lifetime of your tabs, you could seamlessly use the new Chrome and phase the old Chrome out (given that each tab is a process).
4. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by tepples · 2010-01-12 06:27 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I never noticed ever needing a restart, but still, the executable is being updated, too.
  Chrome runs a process per open page to isolate crashes. I'm guessing that as long as binaries of different versions communicate by passing well-defined messages and only binaries of the same version share memory, multiple versions of the Chrome engine can run at once.
5. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by BZ · 2010-01-12 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Yep. That is exactly how they do it. They update the renderer executable on-disk, then switch to the updated version it the next time they need to start a renderer process.
6. Re:How does Chrome do it? No re-start needed. by HoboCop · 2010-01-12 08:57 · Score: 1
  
  I've seen the executable in the localsettings/application data folder on windows. Likely it's copied & executed from there on startup.
Still no Web Socket support by heathm · 2010-01-12 04:49 · Score: 1

Firefox continues to fall behind Chrome. Unfortunately, there's no web socket support in this release.
1. Re:Still no Web Socket support by BZ · 2010-01-12 06:35 · Score: 1
  
  There's no web socket support in a shipping Chrome either, last I checked, just in the developer channel builds (the equivalent of Firefox nightlies).
  Do you want a list of things Firefox has that Chrome doesn't in terms of web capabilities? ;)
PC that's already maxed out at 2 GB by tepples · 2010-01-12 05:35 · Score: 1

That RAM will be good for several years (at least 3).
Including the new motherboard and 64-bit operating system that the RAM requires, and the new CPU that the motherboard requires? I didn't think so.
1. Re:PC that's already maxed out at 2 GB by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-12 06:24 · Score: 0
  
  Don't be silly. Almost all motherboards sold in the last few years have been for 64 bit cpus because neither Intel nor AMD care about 32 bits anymore. x86 is dead, long live x86_64.
2. Re:PC that's already maxed out at 2 GB by colinrichardday · 2010-01-12 10:29 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm. . ., Ubintu 9.10 only cost the price of an issue of Ubuntu User.
3. Re:PC that's already maxed out at 2 GB by tepples · 2010-01-12 10:48 · Score: 1
  
  Ub[u]ntu 9.10 only cost the price of an issue of Ubuntu User.
  Say I regularly use applications designed for Windows that won't run in Wine, or peripherals that don't have a Linux driver because I bought them before I knew that the manufacturer refused to release specs. For those, I'll still need Windows.
4. Re:PC that's already maxed out at 2 GB by colinrichardday · 2010-01-12 13:23 · Score: 1
  
  Well, you should have said that in the first place.
Does it support SVG animation yet? by gr8_phk · 2010-01-12 06:06 · Score: 1

Just wondering.
1. Re:Does it support SVG animation yet? by compro01 · 2010-01-12 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  AFAICT, SVG animation won't be in until Gecko 1.9.3, which should be in Firefox 3.7. Not sure if there is anything for this in the 3.7 pre-alpha.
  You can find more info on the SVG implementation status here.
  
  --
  upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
IE-specific vs. Mozilla-specific by tepples · 2010-01-12 06:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

Unlike IE-specific features, Mozilla-specific features have a better chance of getting into the other three major engines (Safari based on Apple's WebKit tree, Chrome based on Google's WebKit tree, and Opera based on Presto) and into W3C drafts.
1. Re:IE-specific vs. Mozilla-specific by MBC1977 · 2010-01-12 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  So basically your saying if Mozilla does it its good... and if Microsoft does it its bad.
  
  I mean lets be honest here. I mean because it seems, anyway Microsoft goes, its bad, just because the "public" did not have a say so. Which to me is absurd but hey, lol this is Slashdot right.
  
  --
  Regards,
  
  MBC1977,
2. Re:IE-specific vs. Mozilla-specific by tepples · 2010-01-12 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  No, I'm just saying Microsoft has a habit of not contributing to W3C working drafts until at least "last call" stage.
Why no Linux x86_64 Firefox releases yet??? by trutative · 2010-01-12 06:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

I am always dismayed by the lack of Linux x86_64 Firefox releases.
I can download current releases of OpenOffice for Linux x96_64.
Why is it so hard to find Firefox for x86_64???
1. Re:Why no Linux x86_64 Firefox releases yet??? by supersloshy · 2010-01-12 07:23 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  IIRC, lots of popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, have 64-bit versions of Firefox in their repositories (and with Ubuntu 64bit, it ships with it). If you're running the 64-bit version of Firefox, you might want to google the 64-bit flash plugin and how to install it if you use Flash at all (it works fantastic!).
  
  --
  "Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
2. Re:Why no Linux x86_64 Firefox releases yet??? by trutative · 2010-01-12 09:01 · Score: 1
  
  But if you are running a slightly older distribution (OpenSuSE 10.3 or 11.0 for instance) and do not want the hassle of upgrading or changing distributions then having the new release available in a repository for Ubuntu does not really do me any good.
  What is the point of making a newer release of Firefox directly available from the Mozilla site so I can update just that piece of my system without having to wait for it to be released as part of a whole OS distribution?
3. Re:Why no Linux x86_64 Firefox releases yet??? by BZ · 2010-01-12 15:18 · Score: 1
  
  Firefox 3.5 is slower when built 64-bit instead of 32-bit, because the jit shipped in that doesn't generate 64-bit instructions yet. It doesn't really make sense to ship a 64-bit build it if has worse user experience than a 32-bit one.
  Firefox 3.6 will have a 64-bit-capable jit. So at that point all that's needed to make 64-bit a tier1 platform is setting up the test infrastructure for it, hiring more people to do the QA for it (or finding more volunteers willing to do it, of course), and so forth. It'll probably happen (especially as some other platforms, like Mac OS X 10.4 are dropped), but it's not quite as simple as compiling and then tossing the binaries up on the FTP server. That last _can_ be done, but they're likely to have bugs that the 32-bit binaries don't have, just by virtue of having gotten less testing....
4. Re:Why no Linux x86_64 Firefox releases yet??? by BZ · 2010-01-12 15:24 · Score: 1
  
  > Firefox 3.6 will have a 64-bit-capable jit
  Er, apparently not quite. It's there, but still not working well enough, so not enabled by default. Or so I'm told.
Does This Fix The Flash CPU Issues? by BfA · 2010-01-12 07:14 · Score: 1

I'm running a E4500 Core 2 Duo and continuously saw my one core at ~50% with Firefox 3.5 and Flash 10. Luckily, I have that second core so I can still function. On my latest Windows 7 x64 build then I installed Firefox 3.6 b4 and Flash 10.1 Beta... still happening. Is this issue strictly a flash issue or is it also involving Firefox as well? Anyone have any idea when this issue will be fixed? PS The issue still happens in both Firefox b5 and RC.
1. Re:Does This Fix The Flash CPU Issues? by supersloshy · 2010-01-12 07:24 · Score: 1
  
  Flash issue, for sure. However, to be sure you might want to test out flash in IE, Chrome, Safari or some other browser and see how Flash performs.
  
  --
  "Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
5 of the 7 add-ons I use don't work by dthomas2 · 2010-01-12 09:50 · Score: 1

I use a set of development add-ons, most of which
I believe are being actively maintained.
downloaded Mozilla 3.6rc1 yesterday and found
only Firebug 1.4.5 and Firecookie 0.9.1 seem compatible
Mozilla doesn't report Torbutton 1.2.3 as being incompatible,
but using it results in a javascript exception.
Mozilla reports these 4 as being incompatible
Live HTTP Headers 0.15
Page Speed 1.4
YSlow 2.0.2
Zend Studio Toolbar 2.2
1. Re:5 of the 7 add-ons I use don't work by Paradigm_Complex · 2010-01-12 11:28 · Score: 1
  
  Each version of Firefox has had a slightly different way to turn off the add-on compatibility checking, but this method method should work for all of them, including the current RC. First, an explanation for how/why this works:
  
  The add-ons include an XML file which indicates which versions the add-on is intended for. This is what Firefox checks when it runs to ensure the add-ons are compatible. You can edit the add-ons and "lie" about which versions of Firefox the add-on is intended for, and Firefox won't complain any more. This doesn't mean the add-on will work, though, and if you do this please don't complain about Firefox being unstable or having memory issues. In my experience, every add-on that has worked on Firefox 3.5 works on Firefox 3.6RC1 without any noticeable problems. YMMV - I haven't used any of the add-ons you've listed as incompatible.
  
  If you're savvy with shell scripting, it's pretty easy to automate this, but since I don't know what OS you're running I'll give you the OS- and tool-agnostic instructions:
  
  Download the extension you want (don't install it quite yet, just download it to a folder - right click, save as...). Despite the extension, the Firefox add-on is actually just a .zip file. Unzip it (this may require you rename it to .zip if you're not savvy with all your tools quite yet). There should be a file called "install.rdf" - edit this with your favorite editor. Despite the extension it's just XML, and don't worry if you don't know XML - you don't really have to. Look for the tags "em:minVersion" and "em:maxVersion". Increase the Firefox version between the "em:maxVersion" tags to something more then what you need, such as "3.7" or "4.0". Then just save the file, and re-zip the entire unzipped structure. Be wary you don't nest the file (ie zip -> folder -> items), the "index.rdf" and it's cohorts should be at the highest level in the zip. Rename to have the ".xpi" extension.
  
  Do this for all your Firefox extensions you want to work with the latest version of Firefox. Now, when you tell Firefox to install these it will just assume the "index.rdf" file is telling the truth and the extension will work with the current version of Firefox. Before installing, make sure you remove your old, non-fixed-up add-ons so there's no conflict. Finally, go to your address bar and navigate to where the fixed ".xpi" file is. That is, instead of going to "http://..." just go to "C:/..." on Windows or "/..." if you're on Unix. Firefox is smart enough to know what protocol to use. It should install like it would from a website, except this time without complaining about the add-on being incompatible.
  
  Yes, this can be a bit tedious for a lot of extensions if you're not used to scripting or don't use a badass text editor like vim. There may be a faster way, but it's likely it won't work in the next-next version of Firefox while this one should always work.
  
  --
  "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Untrue as to convenience + ease-of-use by Anonymous Coward · 2010-01-13 21:37 · Score: 0

"Opera's built-in ad and JavaScript blocking isn't nearly as convenient as Adblock+ or NoScript." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12, @05:11PM (#30743544)
How difficult is right-clicking on a page, & using the popup menu items of EDIT SITE PREFERENCES to control cookies, frames, popups, scripts, or other content types, as well as the browser type you identify as?
(Couple those built-in features of Opera with a custom HOSTS file, which uses 0 cpu cycles (unlike browser add ons, which also have their share of security vulnerabities issues too @ times) since it is only a filter really! HOSTS files are also easily edited via any text editor like notepad.exe (or easily turned on/off by simply renaming the HOSTS file), and you have complete & easily controlled & edited access to most anything "web" online using a HOSTS file, AND on a "per-site" basis (& then your firewall + antivirus/antispyware combination does the rest pretty much)).
APK
P.S.=> Plus, generally, Opera has been found faster OVERALL than Mozilla/Firefox browsers (and even on Javascript processing, in the past, such as is shown here -> http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#win and did so again, even more recently (06.2009) here too -> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49302491,00.htm
However, afaik & lately, FF took the lead in javascript processing ONLY afaik, but has it? See, check this site's results on that note of javascript processing speeds also -> http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/ ...
Thus, Opera 10.50 MAY change that back to Opera taking the lead there once more IF ff took another "temporary lead" too!
Opera 10.5 is available here -> http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/index.dml/tag/10.5 for testing that on your own...
(Even though javascript is the "gateway" to most of what has been infecting people the past few years now more than older methods of infecting others online by malware makers/hackers-crackers etc. et al)... apk