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For Firefox 4, You'll Need To Wait Until 2011
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla said that it will not be releasing Firefox 4 RC, or the final version, before early 2011. Apparently, the bugfixes in the current beta take up much more time than anticipated. Mozilla is working on the feature freeze release Beta 7, which has 14 bugs left. The beta 7 is about six weeks behind schedule and will be released 'when it is ready,' according to Mozilla. It seems as if the original schedule, which estimated that Firefox 4 RC would be released in the second half of October was a bit too optimistic. Microsoft, by the way, released a new IE9 platform preview (PP6) at PDC 20910 today."
The problem with 64-bit browsers is that you need 64-bit plugins. Most people only install 32-bit plugins and some plugins may not have 64-bit plugins (chicken-or-egg problem... no-one pushes 64-bit browsers due to plugin compatibility, no-one makes 64-bit plugins due to browser compatibility). But now with Chrome and Firefox's plugin process model this could be easily worked around though by having both 32 and 64-bit plugin host binaries and launching whichever one you need, then the browser could use both types.
What are you talking about? I've been using 64-bit browsers in Linux for years!
I remember reading, here on slashdot, earlier this year that Google is going to be on stable version of 8 by the years end.
Yes, actually.
Flash 10.2 is 64 bit. Preview 2 is already out. :)
I have most of my addons working on Minefield 64-bit 4.0b7pre (released 08-24-2010)
I disabled "Add-on compatibility checking"
Even though a few of them show as incompatible, they seem to work normally.
The exceptions are Xmarks & Web Developer which don't seem to behave.
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I encourage everyone using beta 6 to use the nightly version (http://nightly.mozilla.org/) as their main FF experience. The JS is 10 times faster on most public benchmarks and the boomarks and profile data are not affected even when switching back and forth between 4.0 and 3.6.
I have both installed: 3.6 that comes with my Linux distro and 4.0 unzipped in my home folder and being updated every morning automatically.
Sorry...I'll correct my post:
Uh. Firefox. I've had 64-bit FF running on my Ubuntu laptop for over a year, now. Add-ons work fine. *Plugins* can be tricky, but the common ones, Flash and Java, both have 64-bit versions.
>>>Firefox folks seem to think "beta" means "Let's add new features every couple of days". I've been using Minefield... and it got a lot less stable once it hit the "beta" stage
That's weird. I've been using SeaMonkey, based upon the same mozilla/gecko core, and its beta is rock solid. I haven't been able to crash it, or even slow it down by watching lots of youtube videos.
Mozilla's "Beta" is different from Minefield. Minefield is the nightlies where they test new things and is meant for the benefit of developers and masochists: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield/
Betas might have bugs, but they're meant to mostly work. Minefield might work, but it's meant to mostly have bugs.
If it’s that much of an issue, just adblock the canvas tag with ##canvas. Plus you can do it on a site-by-site basis if you like.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Currently there are 17 bugs open. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=blocking2.0%3Abeta7 The good thing: 6 hours ago there were 18 bugs ;-)
The 14 bugs are blockers for a beta, not a final release. And yes, they're showstoppers for the beta, at least in part because there are supposed to be no API changes between beta and final.
Looking at the bugs, 7 are crashes that happen far too often, 1 a security bug, 1 a serious rendering regression that makes form controls disappear altogether in some cases, 2 are interface changes that are needed for Firebug to work with Firefox 4 (and have to happen before beta; see above), 1 a problem with rendering Google maps, 1 a regression that breaks execution of scripts inserted via XSLT, but requires nontrivial changes to the script-execution-ordering code to fix. One is an API change needed to make Jetpack actually work; again needs to happen for beta.