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Firefox 4, A Huge Pile of Bugs
surveyork writes "Firefox 4.0 beta 9 (AKA 'a huge pile of awesome') was released on January 14, 2011. Firefox 4's release schedule includes a beta 10 and a release candidate before the final launch in late February. However, one wonders if this schedule won't slip again, since there are still more than 100 'hardblocker' bugs, more than 60 bugs affecting Panorama alone and 10 bugs affecting the just-introduced Tabs-on-Titlebar. Some long-standing bugs won't be fixed in time for Firefox 4 final either (example, example). Many startup bugs are currently pending, although Firefox 4 starts much faster than Firefox 3.6. As a side note, it's unlikely that Firefox 4 final will pass the Acid3 test, despite this being a very popular demand amongst Firefox enthusiasts. Perhaps we'll have to wait until Firefox 4.1 to have this 'huge pile of bugs' (mostly) fixed."
They used to ban Slashdot referrals because of the heavy traffic. Guess a Slashdoting ain't what it used to be.
I'd rather them wait to make 4.0 stable than release crap and hope to have it done by 4.1. I mean, c'mon, who do they think they are? KDE? But seriously, I was using the FF4 beta for a while and it was pretty slick, and faster than the last stable release. However, it had lots of issues, such as the flash plugin container freezing or crashing constantly. The new features in FF4 did warm me up to trying Chrome though, and I may have become converted despite being late to the party on that one.
I'm using the Second Beta release, and I've not noticed any problems with the browser, or email, or newsgroups, or composer. Opera 11 is also stable. May be time for a switch? (Just a thought.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What's important to browser developers is getting the upper hand in their constant pissing contest over Javascript execution speed. Nothing else matters. NOTHING.
...they took away even the *option* to have the status bar.
I guess in the true OSS way I'll have to fork the project and add my own. ;)
(yes yes, sarcasm. probably best to spell it out ahead of time, because what slashdot post isn't complete these days without a plethora of disclaimers and qualifiers)
The necessary qualifier to ensure my criticism of open source software doesn't earn me a minus 1: I like open source.
The necessary disclaimer that forking FF is silly: I am well aware that third party extensions for FF4 exist that add status bar function.
I love open source and firefox, I feel sad when I hear there are problems, but writing tight code is indeed challenging for anyone. The plugin compatibility in particular seem to present a challenge. Still using it and recommending it though. Chrome may be open source too, but big-corporation-sponsored open source frequently becomes something else later on in life. I think open source needs to start pushing a pledges model of funding, the totally-free or ad-sponsored models don't fit for all cases.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
When these values are sufficiently close, it's time to recognize that something is very deeply wrong with your code base. Or your programmers are monkeys, but the former case is most likely. Start over.
I've been using Chrome for the last two weeks and it's been great. Adblock Plus and Mouse Gestures were really the only two extensions I needed, and they're in there. Oh, and Firebug, but the built-in Inspector thing almost outdoes it. (Ctrl-Shift-I)
I don't like that they refuse to implement clickSelectsAll as an option for the address bar (instead relying on the user pressing Ctrl-L), but it's not enough to cause me to switch back.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I've been running FireFox 4 Beta for some time, however sadly it updated itself to the latest version yesterday and since then it's been virtually unusable.
Anything running Javascript or Flash produce either blank screens (sometimes just by scrolling the page) or even the window title bar flashes (which it is as I type this).
4.0b9 is definitely a regression - I want 4.0b8 back...
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
I wish that would have been left as an extension. Why couldn't it have been one? It's a power user feature, and now there are tons of bugs to fix because of it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
They used to ban Slashdot referrals because of the heavy traffic. Guess a Slashdoting ain't what it used to be.
That's insane, that too-much-popularity would become undesirable. We desperately need some different new kind of HTTP server that's decentralized, combined with P2P. Maybe IPV6 will allow adding a plugin serving from browser cache while you're on the site or something. I've looked for projects like these and found several, but none ever caught on.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
The biggest thing (other than UI) is Gecko vs Webkit. Pretty much all of the main functionality is duplicated across both - ad blocking, popup blocking, other extensions etc, but there tend to be a lot more FF plugins, so if you're very plugin-happy, you may be unhappy with Chrome. I'm using Chrome as my sandboxing browser (keeps Facebook isolated from everything else I browse on the web), and it's pretty good. I used to use FF 3.6 for that, but I'm giving Chrome a go.
The "killer feature" of Firefox, at least for me, is Live Bookmarks. I subscribe to nearly a hundred webcomics, and Live Bookmarks is my favorite way to read them. I've tried other systems, but they just don't feel right.
However, ever since Firefox 3.x, there's been a massive bug. Firefox will literally stop responding while it updates Live Bookmarks. Normally, if you have just a handful, it's barely noticeable. But when you have as many as I do, it means Firefox takes about 5 minutes to start up, about twice as long as it takes Windows. And that's just unacceptable.
Because of that, I switched to Chrome for daily browsing. I only boot Firefox up once a day, for my webcomics trawl. However, I'd actually prefer to use Firefox, just because the interface feels better to me.
It's not like this is an unknown bug - it's been reported dozens of times, on almost every platform. It just seems to be ignored. If that bug gets fixed in 4.0, I'll definitely be upgrading.
I really want to but i can't till they have an extension for form recovery.
it's under construction
The way Firefox is going, they might as well just ship wget with addon functionality and tell everyone to write their own extensions if they want "extra" features like a GUI or mouse support.
This type of thing is inevitable when you have a huge codebase, in any project. But starting over is a path to disaster - there might be 10,000 outstanding bugs in the current Firefox codebase, but there are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of fixed bugs in it too, and a restart tosses more good than bad.
Think of Netscape, they were the king of the browser market. They did a clean restart, and it took them so long to create anything useful that Netscape never recovered.
Firefox might need improvements to their development process, but they don't need to chuck all of their existing code and start over.
So, a beta version of a major new release has a lot of bugs? You don't say.
sic transit gloria mundi
There's no "duplicate tab" option or what?
Chrome is better in just about every way with the exception of extensions. There are basically two killer features that work better under Firefox than Chrome: script blocking (NoScript) and ad blocking (AdBlock Plus). There are ad blocking extensions for Chrome, but they don't work quite as well as AdBlock Plus does.
There is no real equivalent to NoScript for Chrome. There are a bunch of things that kinda provide script blocking functionality, but nothing that's anywhere near as good as NoScript.
Beyond that it's much faster and more memory efficient. It doesn't like being left open long periods of time, though. I can get away with leaving Firefox open for like a week or so, Chrome pretty much demands that you kill it and restart it every day. Not really a huge deal.
The only thing I really miss in Chrome is NoScript. The ad blocking is mostly good enough.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I'm using Chrome as my sandboxing browser (keeps Facebook isolated from everything else I browse on the web),
I use Chrome to post as Anonymous coward.
I haven't found ABP on chrome to be as good. I did switch to chrome for a while but have recently decided more privacy is good, so now I use FF with ABP, "Cookie Monster" and "Better Privacy"
It makes using the web a little more difficult at first (having to remember cookies when I actually want them) but after a few days of setup it's mostly the same, only without so many damned cookies. I also like to use ABP to block anything and everything from facebook.com and fbcdn unless I'm actually at facebook.com, so that they don't get to see absolutely everywhere I visit.
Generally, Beta is when a product is mostly feature complete, and bugs are being fixed prior to release. Now, if you accept this, then the Firefox 4 beta cycle has been more like a late Alpha release since new features were being added from beta version to beta version. From this, is it any wonder there are still bugs in beta 9? The speed improvements in beta 9 clearly are not the result of fixing bugs or removing test code, so I wouldn't be too worried about the bugs we are seeing right now.
Is this a new tradition? First KDE, now Firefox: release a "4.0" version that's intentionally not feature-complete and loaded with bugs so that the user community can start fixing it?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Firefox is slower (in my case it currently hangs for roughly a minute on start-up. Keep those windows open), has better extensions and the best memory management I've ever seen in a browser (used to be a pet peeve of mine, when they still sold memory leaks as features). Chrome has some great features if you connect to the cloud to socialize your AJAX relationships or something (e.g. you can treat browser pages like apps with start menu entries and stuff - although I always have to reload many manually after launch for it to work properly). It's fast and it will always be up-to-date. That's because Google puts its update service (pray to god that that's all it does) everywhere you can fit that stuff on Windows. There's the Autostart entry, the delayed start, the service, the IE plugin, the Firefox plugin, the Opera plugin and probably a few I missed. But don't be afraid that it's gonna spy on you. Many of the bleeding edge features (Google's new app-store) only work if you log-in with your Google account so they're gonna know every thing about you anyway.
That's what I mean with slightly creepy. Your neighbor might have never given you any reason to question his integrity but if he insists on going through your trash and wants to install a camera in your bathroom you're probably gonna be suspicious.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Firefox's library of well-functioning and stable extensions (and...cough...other extensions) is larger. If you need those plug-ins, it's a no-brainer. If you plan to use the browser "stock" it really comes down to personal preference on the interface and what happens to be more stable on your system. Firefox 3 has gotten rather slow and long in the tooth, so my personal browser preference (this week) runs something like Firefox 4 beta > Opera > Chrome > Safari > Firefox 3 > wget > Internet Explorer.
Firefox developers just don't care about SVG fonts because they think they are useless. And most people seem to agree with them.
The nice thing about Firefox is the ability to whitelist cookies and then have it clear anything not whitelisted on browser close. Chrome's cookie controls are still not even close to that and it's the one feature that keeps me off Chrome.
Biggest pro for Chrome: Chrome isn't in beta; FF4 is.
It'd be better to compare pros/cons for FF3.6.x to Chrome.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Not gonna lie, Slashdot. This is pretty much my favorite article headline I've read yet. Congratulation.
I find that to be disappointing and unexpected. Keep in mind that I do not know what it takes to create a browser or what is involved in passing the Acid3 test. I just know that Firefox has a strong and loyal user base who are not interested in using another browser. I am one of them.
Is SVG fonts the only thing that keeps FF4 at less-than 100%? If so, I am less concerned -- SVG fonts is a good idea, but I would be more interested in other things as I have not seen SVG fonts in use anywhere. (I know, it's a chicken or egg thing.) That said, I love SVG. It's an awesome technology. Not long ago, I was planning a project that will enable me to generate SVG output based on the contents of a database... in this case, a floor layout for my office and the location of all resources and people where output can be filtered or limited based on report criteria. (The project is on the back burner for now, but the fact that SVG is an XML document format makes generating this sort of output amazingly possible.)
The UI in Chrome was one of the first things I loved about it (and also Safari prior to finding Chrome).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Think of Netscape, they were the king of the browser market. They did a clean restart, and it took them so long to create anything useful that Netscape never recovered.
Well that and the fact that the version of Netscape that was out at the time they started that rewrite was buggy and crappy.
Tag it "FUD." I did. All it says is "Hey, this software has a lot of bugs in its beta. Does this mean the final release that has not been made yet is buggy?"
That's a Glenn Beck sort of question if I've ever heard one.
This very one is 12 years old (yes, you read right), it's huting HTML4 compliance (HTML5 is not a standard yet) and is also affecting all known opensource browsers.
Eyecandies first, stuff that matters maybe.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
and
The exploit potential for FF4 b9 is worrisome. It could set them back a year of 2 in bad publicity and market share gains. I submitted a bug 5 years ago and it still hasn't been seriously looked at. (it stops FF from starting up) Just endless (... has been assigned, or has been added reports.) I won't be touching it until 4.1.
Honestly while thus far the nightlies as a whole have been pleasant (aside from a few bugs), I would have to say panorama seems very useless at the moment.
IMO the good parts of the update: ...
1. faster (though for me it wasn't exactly slow before)
2. swapping open in new tab and open in new window in the context menu
3. better ui for remembering passwords, requesting things like location data, site identity,
4. better ui for tabs window and bookmarks window
The bad parts:
1. swapping open in new tab and open in new window in the context menu (until I got used to the change)
2. moving all the status stuff into the url bar (added back with status-4-evar; something that shouldn't be necessary; though perhaps I find the need for this due to to needing it as a developer)
3. The orange button (completely unnecessary as alt shows the menu)
4. panorama still has too many bugs for me to consider trusting it
5. strong dislike of the combined refresh/stop/go button in the url bar
6. after loading a page, the star doesn't appear for bookmarking until after I click in the url bar
I think they had no choice but to take away the status bar. After screwing around for something like NINE FREAKING YEARS they finally fixed the printing problem (some sites only print page 1 of N, etc.), so they needed some other handy way to make their users howl in rage.
Well played, Mozilla.
Let me fix that for you:
As a side note, it's unlikely that Firefox 4 final will pass the Acid3 test, despite this being a very popular demand amongst silly people who don't understand web development.
The Acid tests are demos, not unit tests of HTML compliance. I would rather see real progress in areas where FF is truly weak (like, say, the crappy SVG renderer) than worry about those last three pips on Acid3.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Chrome 9 is. Chrome 10 is alpha (ish (I guess)).
No, torn between the people that demand that all Firefox features be reduced to addons and the people who want everything in their browser, they gave in to the addon people and made it an addon if you need the old status bar back.
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me :) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation. They put an incredible focus on performance, and people ignore it. Firefox 4 doesn't just have a new, much faster Javascript engine - there's DOM performance improvements, the startup improvements mentioned in the summary, and the UI in general is much smoother and quicker. But it doesn't matter, because my $PET_PROBLEM_X exists. I don't understand why other browsers aren't held to the same standard. Chrome, for me, is missing tons of features and crashes all the time. It's still a decent browser, and I don't spend all day on Slashdot railing against it.
That said, there is a really annoying bug in Beta 9 - some of my tabs, after I close them, still exist in the ether somewhere and the Awesomebar wants to "switch to tab" when I go to that URL, and there's no tab to switch to, making me press alt+enter to open a new tab.
But I'm pretty confident that and the other major blockers will be fixed by the final release, whenever it comes out. Firefox 4 is still a major improvement over 3.6 even with those bugs, and despite my personal pet peeves like tabs-in-titlebar.
No they didn't. Read Where did my status bar go? How to customize Firefox 4s UI.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That said, there is a really annoying bug in Beta 9 - some of my tabs, after I close them, still exist in the ether somewhere and the Awesomebar wants to "switch to tab" when I go to that URL, and there's no tab to switch to, making me press alt+enter to open a new tab.
Check the new Panorama feature to see if it has eaten your tabs.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Actually, they've been in beta for so long that long-time supporters have already moved on to other browsers. Shit or get off the pot already!
"bugs" includes new features in this case; every single change to the code is a "bug" in Bugzilla.
So when your rate of incoming new bugs matches your fix rate that might just mean that people are asking for lots of shiny (css3 3d transforms? css3 flexbox? etc, etc).
I've always found that Chrome uses more memory than Firefox. The last I checked, it liked to swap memory out to disk, so RAM usage is low, but then when I click on a tab I haven't used for a while, I have to wait while the process is swapped back in to RAM. I haven't found that I need to restart Chrome on a regular basis though.
The main reasons I don't use Chrome are lack of Print Preview, and the fact that any file that opens in a helper application is permanently downloaded into my downloads folder. When they fix those problems, I'll give it another try.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Funny you should mention that. I've been spotted to let my Chrome running for several month in a row with no issue whatsoever. In fact, the only time I restart it is whenever I have to reboot or update it.
What goes berserk with your Chrome?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
You clearly have never worked on a large software product.
During development of a product, you will see new bug rates go much higher than fixed bug rates. This imbalance will continue until you stop adding new features and focus purely on stabilization and product delivery. Firefox 4.0 beta 9 is still landing features (some of which have been baking for a long time in separate branches) so their bug rates look pretty sane to me. All products ship with known bugs - you just try to trim the list down to things that users are highly unlikely to see.
For web browsers, crash bugs are the most dangerous. They may represent routes through the code where bad pointers are being consumed and these can potentially lead to remote exploits. All reproducible crash bugs should be fixed as soon as possible.
Having browsed through the outstanding bug list for Firefox 4.0 and looked at the planned schedule (late February release), it looks reasonable. If some of the new features lead to a burst of new defects, I suspect that date will move out or features will get blacklists (like the WebGL/ Hardware acceleration blacklists for Linux)
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Yeah I just noticed that ABP for Chrome can finally actually block resources instead of just hiding them so I may have to go back and try it out again.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
In the mean time, use Chrome...
I am well aware that third party extensions for FF4 exist that add status bar function.
I haven't used FF4 myself, but I would be surprised if you couldn't just enable the status bar in about:config, no extensions needed.
In my experience then, the performance enhancements just aren't being felt. In real world use, I can't say that Firefox or Safari is "faster" - they both perform adequately in terms of speed.
I'm not sitting at my desk thinking "I wish this browser would just be faster!" at this stage of the game - all the browsers I have tried have been pretty good in recent years. What does affect me are large swings in usability that make a browser annoying to use - like the removal of the status bar, or whatever bug has been added to Webkit that causes the hyper annoying "no paste" in some slashdot comment boxes on Safari.
Performance matters to an extent, but I think it's been turned into a "my browser is 30 ms faster!" pissing contest now that the "my browser scores higher on Acid!" stuff has died down a little.
I agree that they're (FF devs) stuck between the proverbial Dwane Johnson and a hard place; a big complaint was feature bloat, so they stripped features, but that argument falls down a little when something like Pandora is rolled in as a primary feature and something as simple and useful as the status bar is taken out. Not all people like Pandora, so they can disable it. Not all people *don't* like a status bar... but you have to go third party extension to get it back.
I wonder if the ultimate goal of the FF project should be a "roll your own" - a core, barebones browser that has a whole list of features available, and you just checkbox the ones you want at download (or install) time, or go for a few pre-defined profiles.
As you may notice, from your own link, you need a third party extension to bring the status bar back, as I mentioned in my post originally; necessary because YES they did take away the option to have the status bar.
Using third party extensions to put back functionality that you removed is the very definition of "took away the option". If the option still existed, as it does in FF 3.6, then this third party extension would not be necessary.
You can try and justify the decision with a handwavy "oh, you can get a plugin" but that really isn't the point.
No, it's definitely gone - there are a number of sites that address how to get it back, and all of them point to the "status 4 evar" plugin that restores the lost function. I'm sure if you could just switch it back on another way there would have been no need for the plugin, although I am willing to be corrected either way if that is the case.
They put an incredible focus on performance, and people ignore it.
I for one, am not in the "people ignoring" performance camp. The sluggishness from 3.x is a very large part of why I am now using Chrome & Opera, despite the much smaller selection of customization options compared to FF. I think at least some people do care a lot about performance.
Fear is the mind killer.
I have been on permanent Chrome boycott ever since I noticed that it totally hoses the URL association in Windows when you uninstall it. I don't know if this is a bug, or a "feature" to keep you on Chrome instead of IE, but I've seen several computers now where I've uninstalled Chrome and suddenly URL links in other applications simply result in an error, despite all my effort to repair/reconfigure IE and/or hack the registry to restore functionality. That, and it looks too post-modern for my tastes.
You clearly have never worked on a large software product. [...] Firefox 4.0 beta 9 is still landing features [...] the planned schedule (late February release) [...] looks reasonable
Apologies for the selective quoting. But it seems that the Mozilla team has never worked on a large software product either.
Landing features in Beta 9? Planning a release less than two months after feature freeze (assuming there is one)? Has Mozilla taken over the Google definition of beta? Should we wait for SP1 before upgrading to the new version?
The whole point of Firefox is that extensions allow you to customize Firefox the way you want. If Firefox puts in an new feature, users scream that it's becoming bloated. If Firefox removes a feature, users scream that they're removing even the option of having the feature. They can't win, can they? I suppose they could try to change nothing, and then of source users would scream that it isn't improving as other browser are. Huh.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
No they didn't.
Yes they did.
Having to install an extra extension doesn't count.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The story is a little bizarre for a front page /. post: Beta software has bugs? That's news? Though I have to say, I use Beta 8 right now and it certainly works well enough to be my main browser.
But why was this story posted? Because it's trendy to badmouth Firefox. Chrome is wired, Firefox is tired; I get it, though that's about as far as the discussion really goes. It's just fashion, which has nothing to do with reality. Firefox is a great, world-changing product. When did Slashdot become the place where people like to take down FOSS projects for fun?
If they are actively developing new features on the same branch as the beta they are insane and have no clue whatsoever about software engineering, project control and quality assurance.
I hope someone forks Firefox, removes a whole bunch of unnecessary features and fixes the few bugs that remain.
Do people not understand the meaning of beta? Mozilla are fixing around 10 bugs a day in trunk. If this was RC, there'd at least be half a point here. But this is retarded flamebait, you should all be ashamed of yourself. A few points: Application button versus alt+[letter]: I generally use my mouse more than shortcut keys. Chrome versus Firefox: I like things like feeds and history drop downs Target location in URL bar: Took a while to get used to but I like the change Status bar versus Addon bar: I like the ability to customise Chrome is a nice browser for some people and it's a good third alternative for me. But I don't feel it fits my needs. Everyone should make a choice based on their own preferences rather than attempting to validate their choices on a public forum like this to make up for their own shallow existences.
No idea, that's one of the reasons I switched back to FF chrome, it's either got a much more developed interface, or I didn't figure out how to do that stuff.
No, torn between the people that demand that all Firefox features be reduced to addons and the people who want everything in their browser, they gave in to the addon people and made it an addon if you need the old status bar back.
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do.
I think they could. I just want a little sanity in their choices of what's core browser functionality, versus what you need to install addons for.
Per-domain cookie control and per-domain script permissions are basic necessities on the web if you want to avoid malware and preserve your privacy--yet Firefox developers refuse to put the functionality in the browser. As a result, pretty much any real use of Firefox involves half a dozen add-ons, with consequent reduction in stability and performance.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Great points made in your post. And I always chuckle at all the complaining about a free piece of software that is so prolifically used. I mean, if this community spent less time complaining and more time contributing to the bug fixes, we'd be in a much different place, eh?
In the mean time, use IE9
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Panorama has never struck me as a critical feature of Firefox. It's a pretty way to arrange tabs into groups - I'm not quite sure what problem exactly it's trying to solve although I suppose you could craft a boss mode from it or something. If it's blocking the release I don't think much would be lost by disabling the shortcuts to the feature and pushing it out until 4.1. For starters it means 60 bugs are gone instantly for this release.
If I don't restart it, the tabs will start to sad-tab after a couple of days.
...Actually, wait. I do know what's wrong with the tabs: Flash. This only happens after viewing Flash content.
So, Flash is wrong what's wrong with my Chrome.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I'm not sitting at my desk thinking "I wish this browser would just be faster!" at this stage of the game - all the browsers I have tried have been pretty good in recent years. What does affect me are large swings in usability that make a browser annoying to use - like the removal of the status bar, or whatever bug has been added to Webkit that causes the hyper annoying "no paste" in some slashdot comment boxes on Safari.
At this stage, I'd say that predictability was far more important than pure benchmark speed. I'd much rather have a browser that always took 100ms to perform an action than one that took 50ms 99 times out of 100, and 5 seconds the other 1% of the time. Its the same overall speed to perform x-thousand iterations, but the first is highly usable and the second is a big pile of steaming .... bugs.
[T]hat argument falls down a little when something like Pandora is rolled in as a primary feature and something as simple and useful as the status bar is taken out
Truly said. Either they're building a kernel, or they're building a system. You can't do both successfully, especially if you're unwilling to admit it to yourself.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
In addition, my experience on Linux is that Firefox regularly hangs and chews CPU, or crashes outright. Chrome doesn't.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I hold all browsers to the same standard. And FF consumes more memory and is more generally sluggish than any of the rest of them. Including IE.
I am trolling
Chrome has per-domain cookie whitelisting. You can list the domains that are allowed to set cookies, and have it refuse all the others outright. Or you can have other domains able to set session cookies, which means they're cleared on close. So yeah, Chrome does that.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I wonder if the ultimate goal of the FF project should be a "roll your own" - a core, barebones browser that has a whole list of features available, and you just checkbox the ones you want at download (or install) time, or go for a few pre-defined profiles.
That would revitalize my love for the browser. All the bloat and features I could care less for would be a welcome loss. That's just bizarro thinking, it seems. I pine for a world where programs get leaner and more stable and HappyDays got canceled before the Fonz jumped the shark.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I seem to recall that Windows 98 had something on the order of 32,000 bugs a few months before release. Most were fixed, the release date slipped a little but not too much and it was finally released still with thousands of known bugs (and many more thousands of unknown ones no doubt). This did little to reduce its popularity.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Ok, so in the spirit of "removing bloat" Pandora is now a feature, but to balance it out, the status bar has to go!
There are some UI elements that genuinely work and are useful without being bloated or ineffective - the status bar was (is) one of them; somewhere to display the entire URL when you hover on a link and any other "status" items the browser shows you.
Your argument that the entire point is that it has extensions to get it the way you want would work if the thing was totally barebones and you had to add in everything you wanted - like Pandora, ad blocking, flash plugin etc, but that's just not the case. What you have now is a browser that has some default features that are more suited to plugins, and some plugins that really should be built in.
I don't surf the internet without NoScript, AdBlock and BetterPrivacy. As soon as Chrome gets their 100% working equivalents, I won't switch. It helps browsing speed, CPU usage, and security a lot. Other than that, my test runs with Chrome has been very impressive.
Can I light a sig ?
If only Mozilla dedicated to the GNU/Linux version a tenth of the effort it dedicates to the Windows version
Yes, how dare they spend MORE time on the version that the vast majority of their users use rather than for the OS with the minority of users. How illogical of them!
That's really unfortunate for the author of Download Statusbar, which I use religiously.
No, in Firefox you should not have to add everything you want. It should have enough features so that most users never need to download any extensions. I'm sure that someone can always argue that some features that are built-in should be optional, and that some features that are optional should be built-in. You can't please everyone. The bottom line is that if you want a status bar, you can get it. Quit whinging and nitpicking.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Firefox is one of the most important FOSS projects in the world, but there just aren't enough people working on it. (I'd love to help, but I'm a chip designer, so it's kinda out of my area.) For instance, there is a really long-standing bugs that affects Mac users, where Firefox prevents the machine from going to sleep if it's been idle. That on top of its general tendency to burn CPU cycles when completely idle (no animations or apps) makes Firefox a menace to notebook batteries. (Not as bad as Flash, but close.) Part of the problem is that there are basically no Mac developers working on Firefox. But this is an issue for other platforms as well. To most people, Firefox is more interesting to complain about than to work on.
You forget to mention that they were partially responsible for never recovering. Remember the Netscape 6 release? It was a buggy mess because it shipped a version of Mozilla that wasn't ready for release yet. That release did a lot of damage to the Netscape name.
There's your problem. No new features should be introduced this close to release. Traditionally, no new feature should be added to a beta, period! They're asking for it.
This is not news. This is making it sound like a Firefox 4 problem, but if you read any of the bugs they link to, some of them date back to the late 90's! They've been affecting you all of Mozilla's life, and nobody complained about them in Firefox 1.0 (although I'm sure I did about some of them in Netscape 6 :)).
R.Mo
That in terms of bugs things aren't as bad as it seems. That is an alarming amount of blocking issues, but I've worked on actual shipping products that were worse off a month before launch, and many of these launched products the patches were planned for the next 3-4 versions because there simply wasn't enough time to finish stuff. The only difference is most companies won't let you look at their bug db.
Things pan out when you have a really active testing team and engineering team triaging problems as efficiently as they can.
Seriously, Opera 11? I used to be an Opera fan, back in the day. But ever since I starting using Google Docs, I just can't use Opera. The killer bug was that Opera doesn't render Google Spreadsheets properly.
In the meantime, I'm still using Firefox (B9) and Chrome.
The ghost tab issue is a hard release blocker and actually seems to have been fixed recently. With any luck, you won't see that problem anymore in beta10.
Yes, I'm a fan of the status bar, and I already tried the addon mentioned elsewhere and it didn't work for me. (Not sure if it's clashing with a theme I installed.)
But where are all the netbook users screaming for their extra half inch of vertical space? That was why the status bar was taken out - someone saw all the wasted right hand space in the address bar and started wondering.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Nope, the whole point of FF is that it's a browser that does the same stuff as other browsers but better. I am sure the average Joe just runs it "straight out the box". In which case it is a missing feature.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
They already do - it's the whole addons land. You seem to be suggesting that instead of every addon being single, to have a couple of Mega-Addons. You have a "Stripped" release, then 50 options in your Mega Addon with a compact toggle interface.
Then we all add on Mega, and then toggle on and off if we want noscript or not, adblock or not, status bar or not, AwesomeBar or not, etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So, if I shouldn't have to download extensions, how do I turn on the status bar?
Assuming, that by your own admission, it "should have enough features that most users shouldn't need to". I am *far* from the only person who has expressed dismay at the removal of such a core function, so if the people who are ambivalent about the bar (ie, can just disable if if they don't want it if it was included) is more than 50% of the total users, compared to the ones that want it to stay then it's ok because "most" don't care for it (and can easily disable it).
As it is, they took out one of the most useful ways to check URLs at a glance, and instead added a big feature that has introduced a load of showstopper bugs for their release candidate. How strange. Looking at the FF4 beta made me trade it out for Chrome as my secondary browser to see how that goes for a while.
Perhaps this is why Chrome has gained so much marketshare over its relatively short life (obviously in small part due to being promoted by Google on the main page on on youtube) - FF is doing strange things like taking out highly useful core function that *a lot* of people requested be put back (but have been told "no, go away") and instead have tried to put in flashy stuff like Pandora that's buggy as hell, adds to the bloat and is now included whether you want it or not - seemingly the ideal thing that should be an addon.
I'm sure the code for the status bar is practically behemoth in comparison! An unwieldy monster that was dragging FF performance to its knees!
It used to be great, now it's running horribly slow on every computer I have it installed on, windows and linux. Chrome is starting to look pretty good.
I just checked with both the latest stable and the latest beta and it is nothing like how you say it is.
I see "Allow local data to be set"
or "Block sites from setting data"
I can set individual sites to "session only" but I can't set "session only" as a default and whitelisting a site does not keep it safe from the clear data on exit option like it does in Firefox.
Chrome's cookie control still needs a lot of work.
The way people bitch about "bloat," that'd probably a smart thing to do.
I've reported dozens of Firefox bugs over the years. Although I'm primarily a chip designer, I have studied usability (HCI, etc.), and I have a background in testing as well. I know about making intuitive systems, and I've been trained to be more objective about it, rather than just complaining about what I don't like. When I report Firefox bugs, they may get ignored because they're understaffed, but I've never had one tell me flat out that I was wrong. I HAVE had Chrome devs just tell me I'm wrong. Does working for Google automatically make you arrogant?
They manage to be decent programmers and finish OpenGL on Linux without blaming the drivers, when obviously Intel, AMD and Nvidia drivers are clearly up to it.
What does affect me are large swings in usability that make a browser annoying to use - like the removal of the status bar, or whatever bug has been added to Webkit that causes the hyper annoying "no paste" in some slashdot comment boxes on Safari.
Glad to see I'm not the only one. I have that "no paste" problem in Chrome too. Hate it.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I just made my download folder /tmp. Problem solved... :)
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
They actually sorta have a project for that: https://mozillalabs.com/chromeless/
Did you enable the add-on toolbar? That might be necessary for the add-on. IIRC it's disabled by default. I had to enable it so I could drag my location bar down there.
View->Toolbars->Add-on Bar
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
The Status-4-Evar addon doesn't give you the same look and feel of the FF3 status bar, and the addon bar has a frigging close button on it. I don't want my status bar to have a close button.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Because passing a hokey test written by a Google employee is certainly the most important thing for Firefox 4.
Really? Really?
Get Google Chrome. I get tired of dealing with browsers that require downloading new iterations every time the wave of bugs from the old iteration are fixed, only to realise the new version has more bugs than ever before.
flash plugin container freezing or crashing constantly.
Doesn't surprise me. There's a reason for isolating the thing in it's own little box.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
With all this talk about bloat vs features I keep wondering:
How can the status bar be considered bloat? It is such an extremely basic and simple feature. Removing it certainly won't gain FF any speed whatsoever, but it's a huge useability degradation.
And then there's the thing that the new title bar doesn't show the title anymore, just because Windows explorer is dumb enough to do that, too.
Actually I had gotten that far, but oddly, it doesn't show the links from the add-on manager screen.
But thanks for enticing me to look at it once more.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"...they took away even the *option* to have the status bar."
I think what the poster meant is that it could previously be optionally turned on or off. Most standard Windows/Mac applications going back who knows how far have had the option to turn the status bar on or off somewhere in the standard "View" menu. (But Mozilla wants to get rid of that too!) Some apps simply ship with their status bar turned off by default. Mozilla could have chosen to do this, and would have kept many more users happy. But instead they removed it completely, and now to get this basic piece of functionality users have to install an additional piece of software, which doesn't even work like the original.
I do use it, there are some corner cases where it fails to block ads that AdBlock Plus on Firefox does, mostly involving video sites.
For most browsing though, it works well enough. And it does (attempt) to prevent the ad from being downloaded.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Depends on your point of view. Given that Firefox is free and that the previous version works perfectly well and that even the latest beta works well, I'm not sure that it's really that big of a deal.
Now, if it were a commercial product or the previous stable release were seriously broken then that would be a problem. As it is, I'm not sure that it's that big of a deal beyond breaking the typical definition of beta.
Find me ONE post in the whole intarwebs that says the status bar made the code "bloated".
"They can't win, can they?"
In the scenarios you so conveniently pull out of your ass they can not, no... in the real world however, they could just produce efficient code with good set of default features AND the ability to extend that via plugins.
People complain about FF bloat because it used to eat resources like candy for no good reason. 4 seems to be much better in that regard, but not even 0.0000001% of the performance improvements came from removing the status bar, I bet ya.
As for "screen estate bloat", make it toggleable, done.
The point is your argument sucked. That one above, is better, but not convincing. A status bar makes more sense in a web browser than pandora. Just like raisins belong in cereal more than dried scorpion bits. You can have a browser with out a status bar. You can have a cereal without raisins.
Plus, man. too much of a good thing can obviously be a bad thing. Ever try reversing the ratio of raisins to bran? Not very good at all.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't think so. It's well known that introducing features involves a high risk of introducing more bugs. Doing that close to release is a bad thing, as one wants to fix bugs before release.
Firefox is also a big, complex project, and this is a major release, so it doesn't matter that the previous releases were good.
This is a bad software release management, period.
I guess you don't visit Slashdot on a netbook then. I'm getting pretty tired of Firefox locking up completely for half a minute every time I open a story.
Of course, that isn't entirely the browser's fault.
There's your problem. No new features should be introduced this close to release. Traditionally, no new feature should be added to a beta, period! They're asking for it.
I agree, up to a point. It used to be (when I was young and we had to walk uphill to and from school) that alphas were previews of some new features and betas were feature complete but still buggy.
These days, the beta label is more like an alpha and the term "release candidate" means feature complete. It should also be noted that Firefox landing features is quite different from developing new features in the trunk. These features are only enabled now because they have gone through an extensive bug squashing procedure on their development branch.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
The anti-Firefox FUD is probably caused by rampant Google/Chrome fanboyism/shilling/astroturfing.
But sadly I may soon have to jump in. I mean, faster javascript and plugins in separate process are nice, but, did they had to rip off of every chrome --sorry I meant-- Chrome UI detail they could?
It makes Firefox an nonstandard application in every OS and just reeks of plagiarism. And do you know why they removed the status bar? Because Asa hates it.
No it's not because they were pressured to make it an extension. No, making it an extension will not work. Now that the status bar is an extension, status bar related extensions have no standard base where to adhere essentially making sure extension developers move their UI options on top by default. It's all about *nudging* the developer base to where you want it to go.
Similar to how the volume applet was mysteriously vanished from Gnome Panel and integrated in the "indicator Applet" a.k.a. exactly where it doesn't belong, but Mark wants to drop the Notification Area a.k.a. system tray in favor of his Indicator Applet, but I digress.
The point is that Linus was right, this removing of features IS A DAMN FUCKING DISEASE! I don't like this breed of cooler than thou developers who fancy themselves you saviors from the evils of choice.
But... the future refused to change.
I know what you mean -- these are critically important issues. How could anyone be expected to use a browser with a close button on its status bar?! I'd switch to Chrome like a shot, but its icon is the wrong color.
That's definitely a fatal error with Windows and not Chrome. If you uninstall Chrome it offers to reassociate URL settings to your other browser. Windows XP has bugs with associations where this could happen.
With all the firefox bashing going on in the comments, I'd like to just chime in with a little positive feedback.
I just installed Firefox Beta 9 on my desktop (after running betas on my laptop for a few months) and it is sweet! It's stable, attractive (well, not so much in XP, but I picked up a skin), and fast. Impressive polish for a Beta release!
I have run Chrome and Opera, but I always come back to Firefox. I've stated my personal preference on a web forum! Woopdeedoo!
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
You seem to be suggesting that instead of every addon being single, to have a couple of Mega-Addons.
No sir, I was talking about when the Awful Bar had to be turned off but never was really 'off'(3.0?/3.5?), the slightly less-annoying unsorted bookmarks feature, the private browser mode that doesn't work and whatever else that may come next. I want something slightly more functional than Lynx that can handle java & flash when I choose to use them. I don't mind adding plugs, will add NS, AB+ and whatever else I want myself. The only reason I haven't opted for SeaMonkey or Opera is b/c the ease of the AB+/NS plugs plus feeds in Firefox don't require a new window and I can put 40+/- in a folder on my Fav's bar and peruse titles without opening more windows.
Easy feeds handling suggestions in other browsers(sans Chrome) are welcome.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
I'm not sure if it's just me or not but I can not cut/copy & paste with Firefox. I'm not sure how that went unnoticed but it's a pain in the ass so I'm back off it at work until it's fixed or I decide to roll back to the latest stable release.
Can anyone give a quick explanation of the relative pros/cons of Firefox4 vs. Chrome?
Although I find Chrome's interface a little uncomfortable (as a long-time Firefox user), I don't really know if there's a big reason to prefer one over the other. So a big delay of FF4 seems kind of irrelevant to me: I'd just use FF3 or Chrome.
Let's have a real one:
Chrome uses one process per tab - it uses a lot of memory
Firefox uses one process per plug, the rest is threaded - it uses way less memory (by a large difference if you start opening tabs)
Chrome starts very quickly
Firefox starts slower
Chrome updates silently in the background, its rather bad if you like to be in control of your PC (if Google decides evil or someone hack their update service, you get your trojan served silently)
Firefox downloads in the background but prompt for update - it's less convenient
Firefox allows you to store all your settings (bookmarks, history, tabs open, passwords, etc) strongly encrypted on mozilla's servers, or on your own personal server. You can even retrieve them from Firefox for Android and other platforms
Chrome, not
Chrome extensions do not require a browser restart and are instantly useable
Firefox extensions require restart
Chrome calls home in various ways, sending statistics to Google
Firefox does not
Firefox & Chrome rendering speed including javascript are feeling equivalent
Chrome is updated far more often, with small updates
Firefox has large updates, but more rarely
I don't really think the rest matters. I use Firefox because they stick to their ideals, it's fast enough and it's promising. I don't care about having "the newest thing around" (which is the only real reason people use Chrome and despise Firefox. It always happen that way)
Fact is, both are good browsers. Even IE9 and Opera are. And that's all thanks to Mozilla for pushing for standards and sticking to ideals.
everywhere or just slashdot? copy/paste don't work here in safari or chrome, so maybe they're just trying to keep feature parity.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Having about 30 Google or ex-Google employees in my friends or friends of friends circle and having talked with probably 40 or more at various parties and other events over the years I can say that it's about a 75-85% arrogance rate. Some worse than others. I believe the culture helps promote it. Generally the ones who aren't raging assholes are the ones who arrived there after spending some time in other parts of the industry or advanced academia (PhD work or professorial). The kids who went there right out of undergrad are the worst since Google does a great job of sheltering them from the real world. At this point if I meet anyone who's under 27 or so and has worked at Google for a while I assume any conversation will be unproductive unless I agree 100% with what they're saying. I'll be pleasantly surprised if this isn't the case.
On the plus side, the people I know who've escaped the clutches of Google often display a very serious drop in arrogance levels within a year or so.
Hmm, weird, I could have sworn it was there. I take the "block by default" approach anyway, so it doesn't matter to me, but you might want to report the missing option to the Chromium dev team.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
To get the same functionality as is built in to Chrome I had to run with NoScript, CookieSafe, Xmarks, Web Developer and FireBug. That's five. Add in AdBlock and that's half a dozen, versus just AdBlock in Chrome.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm pretty sure the whole "tabs in the titlebar" thing was NOT an Opera innovation.
I can't imagine why they would want to remove the status bar, as it's a tremendously useful feature. Presumably they'll allow you to turn it back on via about:config? If not, I won't be upgrading.
Does studying usability automatically make you right?
desktop linux usage is around 1%. If that. Windows is 90%. 30% of 90% is a lot more than 100% of 1%.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
For me, this is all valuable functionality, some of which is used tens of times daily.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Nope, Firefox 4 C&P is broke for everything. But yeah I've noticed Slashdot was nice enough to break C&P in Chrome. That annoys the heck out of me because I typically would paste a lot at Slashdot. i'm not switching from Chrome for C&P on slashdot.
I typically use Firefox at work because it's better for web development and yes I should be using a beta for that but I have older versions on my VMs so I'm ok with attempting to have the latest as my main browser. That was until this C&P bug.
The way Firefox is going, they might as well just ship wget with addon functionality and tell everyone to write their own extensions if they want "extra" features like a GUI or mouse support.
I bet if they did, they'd still force the user to use "Awesomebar" unless they installed an addon. I propose they rename their browser Awesomefox - that will make up for any shortcomings in usability and stability.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me :) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation.
NONSENSE. They could stop forcing changes on the user - like that pile of junk "Awesomebar" - and at least retain the option (without having to install additional software!!!) to have old functionality like the old address bar and the status bar. No one is forcing them to remove features. People would complain a lot less if the developers weren't so arrogant and left the options in the user's hands. They could choose whatever default behaviour they wanted, and time would tell if the choice was right based on what percentage of users changed the defaults.
Sure, some people will always complain no matter what you decide, but that's nothing new and it's not unique to Firefox. Giving up and saying you can't win is just a pathetic excuse not to put in the effort of trying to do well.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So much bitching going on when people can very easily add a status bar. If you'd like, i can pre-package FF with a status bar and serve it up on an advert covered page? Or you can take one minute and add it in along with all your normal plugins (noscript, betterprivacy, tineye, blah blah)
The option of adding a status bar is... an option. I doubt it will be missed that much and more browsers will head the same direction. Sorry to sound combative but this whole thread is so silly.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Ok, so in the spirit of "removing bloat" Pandora is now a feature, but to balance it out, the status bar has to go!
Ridiculous! The status bar is not and never was bloat. It's basic functionality. What are you going to get rid of next? Keyboard input?
I can't believe the lengths some people will go to justify awful decisions. The bottom line is this: If you continue to force changes on people that they don't want, they'll either revert to an older version temporarily and go to another piece of software, or they'll just bite the bullet and go for that bit of software. I install Firefox because until recently (Awfulbar!!!) the browser was very sensible and the extensions gave me extra functionality. My only reason for bothering anymore (over IE, since I'm a windows user) is the extensions. Every new version breaks them and leaves behind another set of useful extensions (certainly many good extensions I use don't work with 4 beta 9) so pretty soon it looks like I'll have no reason to use Firefox.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It doesn't always work - I have already read reports by some people who have said it just plain doesn't work, or clashes with other extensions (and hey, we have to keep using extensions right, since that's how you add functionality).
It's not bitching to complain that an extremely useful and basic feature is taken out of a piece of software you use all the time, only to be told "lulz, you can put it back with a third party status bar called 'status 4 evar'".
How very.... professional looking. This is a piece of software (firefox) that is meant to be taken seriously?
Sure, you have flashy tab grouping and window razzmatazz, and it's as buggy as a reptile house in breeding season, but the status bar is gone!
I don't use that many plugins. In fact, my 3.6 install of FF has only one plugin that I added myself: AdBlock. So, I'd have to increase the number of plugins I use by 100% in order to restore function that was working just fine in FF 3.6.
Thanks but no thanks.
You are certainly right that if they remove a feature from the vanilla browser to be replaced by an extension.. the extension should atleast function.
However i can't accept that the status bar is "extremely useful". So many people just click links without seeing where they actually go. Throw in some URL shortners and the statusbar has become almost useless.
I like the status bar and will be re-adding it. I like to see where a link will be taking me before clicking it. But it is frustrating with url shortners and redirects. I run FF in sandboxie with noscript and other do-dads.. a somewhat paranoid setup. I love websites that function with javascript disabled.. so i hope you can understand how much i do like the status bar functionality. However it truely is not an important part of FF.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
That was my point - it was sarcasm. The status bar was never bloat, hence my amusing comparison to "balancing out" the bloat by removing it to make room for Pandora.
(I also agree with you about Pandora - that appears to be a business decision, not based on what users actually want)
Chrome uses one process per tab - it uses a lot of memory
To be fair, much of the memory is shared by each process. Using top or the Windows Task Manager will give you an inaccurate memory size, since this shared memory will be included for each process. A better way is to use the built in process viewer (forget what it's called right now) to look at memory usage.
Also, Chrome is much better at reclaiming memory after a while. When a tab closes, all of its memory is freed except for some global caching. The global cache does periodically free up memory that hasn't been used in a while, but I'm not very happy about how it does it (my memory usage keeps climbing and then suddenly frees about 1G all at once).
Firefox allows you to store all your settings (bookmarks, history, tabs open, passwords, etc) strongly encrypted on mozilla's servers, or on your own personal server. You can even retrieve them from Firefox for Android and other platforms
Chrome, not
Chrome bookmarks can be stored in your iGoogle account and used across browser instances. It performs well and changes seems to instantly show up in other browser instances, which is cool. I don't know how the bookmarks are encrypted, but I suspect this is something that Firefox does a lot better.
who said it was? but "paste & go" was, for example. now they all have it. not to mention, uhhh, tabbed browsing :P
it's configurable. right click on the UI, select customize appearance, and off you go. about the name... well, that's just you, and no big loss for anyone really.
time wholesome and [tuxedo.org], thing for the and easy - only their 4and...she and reports and centralized models Like I should be
Ah, I see you ported Dissociated Press from Emacs to Firefox!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"Release crap. Often"
I just read today they're also removing the Profile Manager from Firefox 4.0. You will need a third party tool to manage your profiles now.
Programmers have become hair dressers who only know how to REMOVE things like hair and features rather than STYLE them. Every new piece of software is now gutted of features rather than improved.
I upgraded my openSUSE 11.0 to 11.3, switching from KDE 3.5 to 4.4 in the process. End result: Gwenview, my preferred image viewer, no longer shows the image sizes in the thumbnails. KRename, my preferred file renamer, no longer allows inserting number increments greater than 2 digits. I had to switch to Picasa and Metamorphose2 to recover this functionality. (And don't get me started on the weird Picasa user interface.)
I tried using Dolphin, the new file manager. Next to useless. I switched back to Konqueror, discovered moving files between the two pane view was absurdly slow Then I discovered if I just used straight cut and paste into the folder the speed came back. Obviously it spends more time trying to figure out how to update the display than it does moving the files. Worse, it DOESN'T update the display. The Kongueror in KDE 3.5 had no problem updating the display when files were added or renamed (most of the time anyway.) The current KDE is so bloated it can't keep up.
It no longer matters - commercial or open source - it's all utter crap now. Untested, insecure, unreliable, buggy, poor user interfaces, useless error messages.
The software industry produces total shit.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Firefox is the lazy and slow loser next door that's nevertheless lovable. Chrome is rich, refined and snappy but slightly creepy. It doesn't make you wanna leave it alone with your kids.
Cute. So what's IE? I'm guessing it's the old aunt who's come to visit, wearing clothes much too young for her, too much make-up, too much jewelery and using buzz terms that sound out of place from someone on that generation.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
That's what I mean with slightly creepy. Your neighbor might have never given you any reason to question his integrity but if he insists on going through your trash and wants to install a camera in your bathroom you're probably gonna be suspicious.
This is what seriously pissing me off with Firefox of late - like many people here I imagine, I am someone who is regularly asked by friends/family/colleagues for advice about things like which web browser to use. I typically push Firefox for the usual reasons of stability, security, open-sourced-ness, not being Microsoft or Google - but if they're taking away features (status bar, traditional URL bar, etc etc) and it's becoming unstable it gets harder and harder to convince people not to try Chrome. Once they do, they're unlikely to come back to FF, despite the obvious and serious privacy concerns.
Firefox used to be a relatively lightweight, super-functional browser that shat all over IE and was free as its main selling points. That is now what Chrome is becoming, while FF kills itself with stupid design decisions and death-by-committee "features" being added.
In summary: stop adding useless crap! Give us back browser features that people have been using for 20 years! Wake up to the fact that being "free" and not being IE isn't going to be enough any more!
Read Pynchon.
Not specifically, and I may be hanging up on the status bar, but its removal (and the inclusion of Pandora) are sending the wrong message to me personally about how they're "making Firefox better!". In my experience, that is not the case, so I'll go somewhere else until it is actually better.
I really can't see anything wrong with FF 3.6 as it is right now. If they want to roll all those speed enhancements (which I;m not really seeing in real world use compared to 3.6) into FF, then why mess with the UI. It smacks of trying to fix something that isn't broken.
They're not the only ones - the new icons in the sidebar of iTunes 10 are also a step backwards - identical to the old ones, just all monochrome, so it's more difficult to navigate at a glance.
The same was true for the change to Mail in 10.5 (I believe) when the mailbox list that used to be a drawer (OS X UI element) that could be on either the left or right of the main window was changed to a fixed element that could *only* be in the left. As someone who kept the drawer on the right, I was annoyed.
That was my point - it was sarcasm. The status bar was never bloat, hence my amusing comparison to "balancing out" the bloat by removing it to make room for Pandora.
Sorry for missing the sarcasm. Dangers of posting too early in the morning.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Are you afraid that Mozilla developers will release a bad product and open source community and others wont like it?! Do you have any other suggestions ?:) IE9, Safari?! What has happened to Slashdoters: now Firefox is pile of bug! Supporting WebM is an Evil decision from Google!
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
A large part of the purpose of a Firefox beta is to gather feedback on new features. If new features can't be gradually rolled out in betas, then when can they be?
*RC*s should be stable, with no new features. "Beta" just means "it's still being worked on, but you can out this fairly stable version".
I'm remiss to discover that no open source browser can be compiled for windows without Visual Studio. Most of them can't be compiled with the current version of Visual Studio. If I want to make updates and try them out, I have to go through the trouble of setting up a virtual environment specifically geared towards browser development. I'm pretty disappointed all around. It's no wonder that so many bugs remain unaddressed for so long.
I've found Minefield (kudos to whoever came up with the name) and Fennec (Maemo beta) to be remarkably stable and bug free. The only real showstoppers most users are going to encounter are related to add-on support. As someone who's suffered working with Beta software that crashed regularly, randomly and failed to have an upgrade path to the Alpha, let alone the released product (you know who you are, Lotus) it's sad to hear all the pathetic whining on here.
The way Firefox is going, they might as well just ship wget with addon functionality
Addon functionality is already provided by vanilla wget - it reads from stdin and logs to stdout.
Hey, it's the Unix way! ~
As far as I know Chrome does not encrypt the bookmarks at all. It's also only the bookmarks afaik that are saved
As for the memory, several tests have been made with what seemed to be accurate measurements, although it's not been made vs FF4 I expect results to be similar at least. Eg http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory
What I'd personally like to see is essentially meta addons. A way of adding a list of addons when you reinstall. I think people who want everything wouldn't be quite as annoyed if it wasn't so time consuming to go looking for all the addons necessary to replace their previous functionality. Or the addons they had before they reinstalled.
No, torn between the people that demand that all Firefox features be reduced to addons and the people who want everything in their browser, they gave in to the addon people and made it an addon if you need the old status bar back.
At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me :) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation
A statusbar isn't a friggin option. It has been a standard UI element for as long as there haven been GUIs (hell it even existed in text-based pseudo GUIs.)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Side point - I think it's Panorama, not Pandora. I was getting nervous that they would be so tightly integrated with a third-party music service, but Panorama is their own thing. Doesn't negate your point, but people reading this might get confused :-)
Bah, you're totally right. My brain got Pandora from somewhere - probably looking at the windows as boxes in the screenshots of it or something like that.
Minefield has been usable for months and the penalty of whatever is still wrong with it is considerably less for me that the penalty of dealing with what's wrong in 3.6 so I naturally use it all the time.
Actually I have Chrome too and nowadays I find that it works less well than Minefield does, marginally, on the sites I need to access.
So top whining and get used to software *never* being perfect and the honesty of open source where the bugzilla (invented for Mozilla) is there for everyone to see.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Maybe not automatically right, but it does make him more likely to be right about the subject he studied.
Then again, the whole concept of "right" is often subjective, so he may very well automatically be right, while simultaneously being quite wrong. This is a relatively common state in usability design, I believe.
There's an option with the add-on to remove that close button. Its been awhile since I've really used Fx 3.x but I'm sure you can get it pretty close, if not entire, back to the old look by playing around with the options for it.
P.S. You can sometimes have made other settings that prevent Status4Evar working. I had to go into View - Toolbars - Customize- Restore Default Set to get it all working again.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm still wishing browsers would be faster, and the difference between them is quite striking at times. It's not that noticeable when you're just browsing the web. But as a developer trying to make something interesting, the performance of browsers can limit your options. End users don't perceive much of a difference because the people who made the websites were forced to cater to the lowest common denominator. I run into this constantly. Sometimes it's the case that the code is poor and with optimizations, it becomes usable in all browsers. Other times it's just, "OK, we simply can't do this." It's really disappointing when that happens, even if the end users never hear about it.
Actually the memory usage for Chrome is much better. Especially because when you close a tab, it cleans up the memory. FF4 still doesn't that and I have again 1GB of memory used by it and I have no idea why ...
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
you dont even need a third party app in beta 9 buddy....if u customize the add on bar then you'll see that the progress meter is ALREADY there in the available options....(Yes...its there by default)
Its SUPPOSED to be "Protean". So, dont scoff. [if u didnt get what that was about then this wasnt meant for you]
I don't want a progress meter "buddy", I want a status bar.
Sure, progress can be displayed on it, but so can other things like URLs when links are hovered. At least, they used to be able to, before they broke it for no good reason. (yes, rah rah, netbook users wanted more vertical space but they could get that in FF 3.6 by disabling the bar).
I'm not sitting at my desk thinking "I wish this browser would just be faster!"
I do when it takes Internet Explorer several seconds to open a blank page. Fortunately other browsers are a lot faster at starting up and creating new tabs.
For there to be a 2.0, there must be a 1.0. For 1.0 to exist, there must be a definition.
Web 1.x is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (ECMAScript + HTML DOM), as specified in ECMA-262 and several W3C recommendations. I define Web 2.0 to have begun once XMLHttpRequest was added to most major browsers.
This bug affects /story/, not /comments.pl, and it happens only when the textarea is not empty to start with. It's been brought up so often lately that I feel like describing a workaround in 120 characters so that it can fit in my Slashdot signature.
To fix pasting into comments in Chrome: Open a comment in a new tab before replying, or compose in a text editor first.
But since WOFF fonts seem to be superior to SVG fonts
Say I have a collection of SVG fonts. Can you recommend a tool to convert them to WOFF fonts?
SVG fonts are an outdated standard and the focus is on its successor, Web Open Font Format (WOFF).
I could make SVG fonts in a text editor if I wanted. What Free tool do you recommend for editing WOFF fonts?
When a tab closes [in Chrome], all of its memory is freed
Then how fast do the back button and Recently Closed Tabs (Ctrl+Shift+T) work on Chrome?
yeah, what the fuck is the use of directwrite if they don't use cleartype?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I've been running the latest FF4 beta for a couple months (b8 at the time, now b9), and I haven't had any issues with copy-pasting. I've had *other* issues (most notably, one where occasionally, all my open windows permanently stopped drawing their contents, and I had to close them and reopen them all), but not that one.
Excuses. If the browser doesn't crash, you don't need that feature.
Note that I don't normally use Opera, but it certainly hasn't crashed the times I did use it.
I am not devoid of humor.
At least it'd initially be lightweight if they did that.
I am not devoid of humor.
I don't think firefox has crashed on me in 3 years.. I use lazarus every single day.
it's under construction
yeah...well u have to take the help of those dreaded *third party extensions* then
Its SUPPOSED to be "Protean". So, dont scoff. [if u didnt get what that was about then this wasnt meant for you]
Every new version I find forums people screaming about the lack of this exact feature so I'm pretty sure they know.
Wait, what? You mean the one that is a more inconvenient version of the aeons old unix method of middle clicking in the browser window to open the url primary cutbuffer? The one that has been in Mozilla browsers as Middlemouse.contentLoadURL setting for at least five years, but probably forever. That one?
Opera innovation. Uhhuh.
And tabbed browsing, sorry, but no dice. Read the wikipedia article on tabs for example.
How could I possibly mean the one 5 people on this planet including you are using? No, I mean the context menu. Usually it just had "paste", then Opera added "paste & go", then Chrome had it, and now Firefox has it, too. Apparently they forgot about "Middlemouse.contentLoadURL"?
Sure, calling it an "innovation" is a bit rich. However, Opera had it first: An entry in the context menu labeled "paste and go". The others followed suit.
:P
Middlemouse.contentLoadURL. Uhhuh.... well not even the FF devs agree with you, or they wouldn't have put it in the context menu
Same thing again... you're technically correct, sure, however not when it comes to anything that matters:
"Four years later, in 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in its InternetWorks browser. That same year, a text editor called UltraEdit also appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite[7]), Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.3 (now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface."
Now, you may not rememeber how Firefox was hailed as bringing tabbed browsing to the masses, but I do. Yet when it comes to usable browser, Opera was the first that made it viable, all the obscure stuff that came before it nonwithstanding:
InternetWorks
NetCaptor
IBrowse
Opera
MultiViews/MultiZilla
Mozilla Firefox
Konqueror
Safari
Internet Explorer 7
(Chrome)
Notice how there is no browser on that list still in use today that comes before Opera.
The point is that a status-bar is the UI standard of several GUIs (I'm on Windows so that's my reference point, but there are others). Most, if not all, applications use a status-bar on the bottom to display various indicators and other status-related data. The editors that I use, the IDE, the office suite, the graphical apps, the remote terminal apps, the email app (also by Mozilla, BTW)... Hell, almost every application that I use has a status bar. It's a bloody standard way of displaying (you guessed it) status!
And yes, most apps allow you to hide the status bar if you don't want (or need) it.
Except one application whose developers decided to be different for the sake of being different.
Remember the outcry when Microsoft replaced toolbars and menus with the ribbon?