Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final

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."

Comments

Re:So what was the code from?

[TrisexualPuppy]

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.

Re:Memeory Leaks

[Drummergeek0]

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.

Re:Useless Summary

[__aardcx5948]

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.

Re:So what was the code from?

[ls671]

> I get a new Firefox update.

Have you tried disabling updates if that's what you want ?

Preferences -> Advanced -> updates...

Re:Memeory Leaks

[bschorr]

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...

Re:Performance issues off flash drives

[minvaren]

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.