Firefox 5 Details: Sharing, Home Tab, PDF Viewer

An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 4 may be still new, but Firefox 5 is already being prepared by Mozilla. At least the UI features have been laid out by the Mozilla team — there are nine new features in total. There are some features that are replicating Chrome functionality (tab multi-select or an integrated PDF viewer that will also extend to other file formats), but there are completely new features such as tab web apps, an identity manager a home tab that replaces the home button as well as a social sharing feature that is integrated in the URL bar and enables users to post directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages."

Comments

pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough I always have to yank out PDF-in-browser add-ins and settings, now I'll have to do it even more with Firefox having a built in viewer. Why does anyone want an in-browser PDF viewer?

Re:pdf

[snl2587]

I want an in-browser PDF viewer, because to me PDFs I find online are just an alternative to an HTML page with the same information. That's not what PDFs are supposed to be for, but many web developers use them as such.

A built-in viewer would likely load much faster than an external plugin, too. So why does anyone not want an in-browser PDF viewer?

Re:pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to a small light fast secure browser? Everyone seems to think the browser needs to replace all desktop applications.

Hope this impresses the investors but I will be shopping elsewhere if they keep this up.

Re:pdf

[ThatsMyNick]

Whats wrong with an in-build PDF Viewer? Would you rather prefer opening your PDF using an external app? Or are you one of those that never open PDFs, in which case this would not affect you at all?

Re:pdf

[The MAZZTer]

Because then users don't feel the need to install Adobe Reader when all they want to do is view PDFs in the browser.

Re:pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

A built-in PDF viewer does not make a browser any slower. If you aren't viewing a PDF, then the browser will not be using that piece of code.

As for security, well, in fact, that is the entire reason Google (and, presumably, Mozilla) is putting a PDF viewer within their browser. They can use techniques like sandboxing and gain better control over what the viewer can and cannot do. When you use Adobe's external plug-in, both you, as the user, and the browser developers are at the mercy of another company.

You are correct about the size - it will make the browser (on disk) slightly larger. But, I don't see what that is a problem.

Re:pdf

[cicho]

I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well. Add to the mix all the potential security issues with active content in PDF documents. I disable all of it in Adobe Reader, now I'll have to disable it in Firefox as well.

PDFs should be treated like executables or archive files - saved to disk.

Other than that, I really don't understand why Firefox has to be aping Chrome instead of going its own way. What's wrong with the top-level menu that it had to be replaced with a single, hierarchical menu that's always harder to navigate? What was wrong with the well-established, intuitive tabbed interface metaphor, which Chrome managed to break so badly by disconnecting the tabs from their content?

And really, websites will be putting items on the tab context menus? Advertisers are already salivating. Good luck finding the "Close tab" command among fifty links to commercials.

Re:pdf

[Americium]

I know people that have switched from chrome to FF just because the chrome pdf viewer was too annoying. Although I have to give some props to Google, their builtin PDF viewer is the first one I've seen that actually renders PDFs at the same quality as Adobe.

Re:pdf

[Mashiki]

Yes. I'd rather have an external app. Mostly because adobe seems to think that 'active' elements inside pdf's are a brilliant plan. This just makes malware injections that much easier.

Re:pdf

[leamanc]

For me, yes, I would rather have an external app. Specifically, I want PDFs to download and NOT open automatically. I want them to go to my downloads folder and I will open them at my own discretion. If I want to open it instantly after downloading, I can use the browser's download manager to open it with an extra click.

Why, you ask? Because I am one of those who still feels that PDFs are not fit for human consumption. Outside of pre-press and raster image printing work, PDF is a terrible file format. In their lust to own as much of the computing market as possible, Adobe has pushed PDF well beyond its original, intended use and into areas that are better served by plain text, RTF or HTML pages. Hell, I loathe the Word .doc format, but I find it preferable to PDF.

The link above gives more reasons for why I don't want to deal with PDFs unless I have to. And that article is eight years old; things have only gotten worse since. I sure don't want them loading automatically in my browser.

Re:pdf

[MBCook]

PDFs honestly aren't that bad, and for some things (longer documents, like papers) they are quite good. The problem is Adobe. It's slow, bloated, insecure, a resource hog, and crashy.

Preview on OS X is fantastic. When I had a Windows computer at work I used Foxit. I've never had a problem with either one not being able to open something. On Linux, whatever the default installed on my computer is (some KDE application, I think) works fine.

My guess is that most people hate PDFs because they are associated with Adobe Reader. That's not necessary. There is a world where PDFs aren't bad.

Re:pdf

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not that Adobe doesn't have enough on its shame-plate at the moment; but the fact that browser makers are rolling their own PDF viewers(or, at very least, putting adobe provided ones on a much shorter leash than generic plugins are given, as with Chrome's integration of Flash, also an Adobe product) really should give their software engineering guys pause. As should the fact that "(pdf warning)" is considered a standard element of internet politeness when linking to things...

FFS, Postscript was designed back when the raster image processor had to live in firmware and run on a 12MHz m68k. PDF (c. 1993) was supposed to be the lessons-learned variant of postscript (1984) with a bit less of the turing-completeness and better suitability as a static document format.

On modern hardware, PDFs should fucking fly. And, in renderers not produced by Adobe, they often render about as quickly as web pages do(particularly if said web pages are gimped by excessive javascript or slow adservers...) Acrobat, though, just keeps on sucking, even as Adobe continues to add random security-flawed features that make it harder to rely on 3rd party alternatives to render the stuff that Adobe authoring tools put out...

Re:pdf

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As much as I loath Adobe's ghastly "features" on top of the (comparatively) functional PDF core, it seems only fair to point out that web browsers spend their operational lives loading and interpreting a mixture of page-description markup language and 'active' elements that do all sorts of things. This is why they are such a security headache; but the market for browsers that don't do javascript is pretty tiny.

Arguably, having somebody who (A) Isn't Adobe. and (B) Spends all their time developing a rendering engine for a combination markup language/scripting environment/embedding system, handle support for a second very common one seems fairly reasonable.

Obviously, any browser maker who doesn't provide a configuration interface to enable/disable various renderers, if desired by advanced users, deserves to spend eternity with Bonzibuddy in the 8 cold hells; but the notion of browsers rendering PDFs in addition to HTML/JS/CSS seems reasonably logical, on the whole.

Re:pdf

[93 Escort Wagon]

Other than that, I really don't understand why Firefox has to be aping Chrome instead of going its own way.

I don't understand why Chrome seems to be the darling child that gets credit even for things it didn't come up with. Chrome first tried to drive all PDF viewing through Google Apps, which is a colossally poor way to do it since it failed utterly whenever a person tried to view a PDF over HTTPS. And given that PDFs are much more common in business settings than the web in general, accessing them over HTTPS is a rather common occurrence.

To the best of my knowledge, the first browser that provided inline PDF viewing without having to add a plugin - was Safari. It was doing that long before Chrome, anyway.

I'm still waiting for the day when someone writes "Firefox's tabs, an idea Mozilla borrowed from Chrome...". The three Opera users in the world will come down on that guy like a ton of bricks!

Re:pdf

[SeaFox]

I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well. Add to the mix all the potential security issues with active content in PDF documents. I disable all of it in Adobe Reader, now I'll have to disable it in Firefox as well.

PDFs should be treated like executables or archive files - saved to disk.

Sounds like all your experience with PDF viewing is based on using Adobe's Reader. Third-party readers like Fox-It are much faster to load and not memory hogs like Adobe's reader. Plus not being "fully compatible" is what makes them more secure. By supporting only the more basic core functions of PDFs, not the active content ones, they are not susceptible to the same types of attacks. 90% of the PDFs you get are just formatted pages of text and graphics with hyperlinks in them, so they don't even use the functions that aren't supported by the alternative readers, which is why so many people can switch off Adobe's reader completely to a lighter weight one with no impact on their usage of PDFs, lots of that potentially dangerous stuff in Adobe Reader is simply unneeded in today's world. It's only there because Adobe wanted to branch out from document transporting and make PDF into some alternative cross-platform programming setup to rival a webpage.

Re:pdf

[Cyberax]

Oh, they've fixed the bit with Turing completeness - by adding JavaScript support to PDF.

Re:pdf

[SimonTheSoundMan]

You should try Safari. Renders PDFs in better quality than Adobe Reader, quick too.

Re:pdf

[Gaygirlie]

Yes. I'd rather have an external app.

You ain't the only one there. I personally much prefer using an external application to handle PDF files, mostly because browser-built-in PDF viewers are simply not as good: either they lack features, they're not as fast as external viewers, they're crashy, or if they happen to sport all the same features as an external viewer then it's a helluva mess with all the browser toolbars and buttons in addition to all the PDF controls. Ugh.

Re:pdf

[maxume]

The sandboxing in Adobe Reader 10 actually made it more secure than Fox-It. I am under the impression that Fox-It was going to add sandboxing, but I haven't paid attention.

Re:pdf

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Among other abominations. I'm pretty sure that the latest versions, as defined by Adobe authoring tools, have nearly arbitrary embedding support, for such wacky fun as Flash(and, of course references to external URLs are supported, for PDFs that won't work without an internet connection...)

It's too bad, really. They've taken what was an at least adequate page description language and(through some combination of a desire to keep its status as an open standard as dead a letter as possible, and some Quixotic quest to defeat HTML at its own game) turned it into a horrible monster. Standardized subsets, like PDF/A, are safe enough; but "PDF" defined as "whatever Acrobat N spits out" basically has all the worst attributes of HTML from the bad old days(monstrously limited, many sites supported only by a single vender's renderer, security is fucked); but without basic features like text reflow that actually works, or decent style/content separation.

We can only wait in breathless horror for them to add an x86->actionscript bytecode recompiler and a network TUN device to the Acrobat Reader install, to support delivering entire virtual machines, with full network access, embedded in PDFs...

Re:pdf

[chichilalescu]

I have a small content about PDFs. Note that I also think PDFs shouldn't be opened by the browser.
You do however state that PDFs are only useful for pre-press and printing. I am a physicist and I can tell you that LaTeX does wonders for my productivity. And PDFs are smaller than PostScript files. Usually, if I need to interact with someone, we send each other the LaTeX files, or LaTeX files and the corresponding PDF files. We read PDF, and we write LaTeX.

Note that I wouldn't recommend writing or reading a programming language manual in PDF form.

Re:pdf

[mario_grgic]

If Chrome is any indication, PDF plugin will work much much slower than external application when it comes to actual rendering task.

Re:pdf

[johnsnails]

"The only reason..." Wow strong language, considering most people wouldn't understand what 'sandboxed' means. Although i agree its a great reason!

Re:pdf

[IICV]

I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well.

Umm, this is Firefox we're talking about. You know, open source software? There is a third option, which boils down to "incorporate another open-source PDF framework", and those are generally faster than the Adobe plugin and reasonably compatible.

Re:pdf

[Malc]

Agreed. This is why I didn't switch to Chrome: I couldn't figure out how to get it to cleanly pass PDFs off to the standalone Adobe Reader (it seemed I'd end up with a browser tab that wouldn't redraw itself until the Adobe Reader process terminated). Adobe's browser plugin just isn't as nice to use. Let me keep using the external app and I'll be happy.

Oh, the reason I tried to switch to Chrome in the first place? Separate processes per tab. Come on Mozilla, step in to the 21st century! There's a reason why all of your serious competition has done this. Go on: throw off this ancient and bad Netscape habit of trying to build monolithic processes.

Re:pdf

[Malc]

Most of the PDFs I use are specs, some of them thousands of pages long, and accessed via a Sharepoint server. Don't make it hard for me by automatically having the browser handle them thanks.

Re:pdf

[definate]

Ever used Chrome? It's PDF reader is fucking fast, more secure, and a good alternative to loading Adobe. Also, you can right click and save as if you want to load it in something else (Adboe/FoxIt/etc).

Re:pdf

[marcello_dl]

konqueror on kde4 has inline pdf, through okular.

This could become an usability fail.

A pdf is not html, displaying the pdf inline will confuse the user which begins to see different options and view popping up and different behavior print options and so on.
Different kind of document, different window.

In general, firefox should mantain its course. Do you need a chrome copycat? When you copy chrome and IE they will change UI again. It's them who need to build an unique experience for the user who become accustomed to do it the IE or Chrome way. Mozilla can instead focus on usability and use familiarity as one of the factors to consider. The good old menu bar worked fine since the xerox days, for example.
Why the new version number? You're not gonna get to version 11 before chrome and ie are at 15 anyway. Do people shun the linux kernel just because it's years at major version 2?

Re:pdf

[Culture20]

You can even put videos or code into them which will be executed

Only in viewers that support them (Adobe reader). Seriously, FF could reuse a ton of evince code and be close to done very quickly.

Re:pdf

[alex67500]

Man! I haven't heard as much Adobe-directed hatred since Steve Jobs' keynote where Flash was blamed for all the miseries of the world! (and that was the first and only time of my life I agreed with him =)

Maybe you're going a bit far about this though. A PDF doesn't grab half your computer's ressources when you open it... Sure, it's yet another file format, but at least it looks just about the same on most architectures and versions of readers/editors. Can't say as much about .doc, or even HTML for that matter.

Re:pdf

[Mashiki]

The difference between browsers and pdf's is, pretty clear and cut right now. Most browsers that handle external scripting is run inside it's own container. Or some type of sandbox. This eliminates some risk, not all but some. Adobe's handler engine will run everything it can outside of a protected environment if it can get away with it.

Re:pdf

[Culture20]

konqueror on kde4 has inline pdf, through okular. This could become an usability fail. A pdf is not html, displaying the pdf inline will confuse the user

Mosaic had inline JPEG and TIFF support. A JPEG is not HTML. Displaying the JPEG inline will confuse the user. I new a graphic artist in 1995 who made a webpage be just one giant imagemap of an interlaced GIF (using a black&white preview image to speed load times) because HTML couldn't let him design a page exactly the way he wanted. PDF inline would have been a godsend for him back then.

Re:pdf

[zdepthcharge]

Because PDF's were designed to be PRINT files. They are NOT screen friendly at all. Unless you're screen is a printer. If you really want to read PDF's on your screen, then good for you, but PDF's are not web friendly. PDF's are also not small screen friendly (i.e. - portable devices) unless the PDF is specifically formatted for the specific screen you're viewing it on. I can understand why Mozilla wants to add a PDF viewer, but I do not agree with them doing it. Quite frankly, a plug-in that loads an external viewer is fine (I use Foxit and have yet to have ANY problems with it). The reason I would prefer Mozilla to not do this is that it isn't needed and as such, takes away time resources from more important improvements to Firefox.

Re:pdf

[Ghostworks]

There are almost always 3 camps: those that want a lean, mean browser, and those that want a fuller-than-full-featured browser, and the rest (in the majority) who just want a browser that works without a lot of configuration.

Integrated PDF support doesn't please the first camp, but will probably please the latter two. I usually harp about features added by Mozilla that I feel should really be official extensions -- things like Google-supported anti-phishing, the Flock-inspired "star" bookmark system, and this new paper-airplane social sharing system. But at the same time, a LOT of the internet is now PDF, and supporting it with the browser natively would make everything a lot more simple.

Re:pdf

[TangoMargarine]

To be fair, it is my experience that Firefox does that for other things too, say, loading J Random Slashdot Article for instance :-)

Re:pdf

[jadrian]

To the best of my knowledge, the first browser that provided inline PDF viewing without having to add a plugin - was Safari. It was doing that long before Chrome, anyway.

Konqueror did it before Safari.

Re:pdf

[leamanc]

You are right. I will concede one more decent use of PDF, and that is as a LaTeX output format.

But then again, that might be because that is in line with one of the original purposes of the format--a compact, streamlined and consistent way to view PostScript output (a better encapsulated PostScript format than EPS itself).

Re:pdf

[jonwil]

If an in-browser PDF reader was written such that:
1.It was more lightweight than Acrobat
2.It didn't use ANY Acrobat code or binaries
and 3.It had clear options to 100% disable all the extra crap (forms, JavaScript, embedded flash, embedded media etc etc) that cause all the problems with PDF
then it would be a good thing IMO.

Re:pdf

[wshs]

A PDF looks the same in IE, Chrome, Firefox, Seamonkey, Safari, Opera, etc. HTML does not.

Re:pdf

[hairyfeet]

Because it is MUCH better for security to not have everyone and their dog running the same PDF viewer? I use the Foxit PDF viewer for Firefox, Which is a small self contained executable, load fast, easy to update. You might use Sumatra, or Adobe, or one of a dozen other viewers which means it is harder to infect everyone with a single PDF whereas this will give them a single target, because if it works on one FF it'll work on all.

But frankly I'd say the FF team lost their way when Chrome came out anyway. Since Chrome they've been ripping more and more of the look, without ripping the functionality like low rights mode.

So I'd say FF 4 will probably be the last one me and my customers mess with. I've been trying Comodo Dragon (based on Chromium without the phone home of Chrome and with some nice security features) and as soon as I get the hang of it I'll be switching my customers over. FF 3.5.x was nice but since 3.6.x I've been seeing memory jump and frankly it just doesn't handle as nice as the Chromium browsers.

Why the FF team thinks aping Chrome will gain them fans I don't know, because if they are just gonna rip off Chrome, why not just use Chrome or Chromium? It isn't like they cost money or something.

Re:pdf

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...actually Foxit had something similar to sandboxing a good 6 months BEFORE Adobe, they just don't call it sandboxing, they call it "safe reading mode" where they strip out any and all executable code so you just get text and pics, which is 90% of what people use PDFs for. For links you simply copy/paste instead of direct click. This is even safer than a sandbox since there isn't any executable code to worry about possibly jumping the box.

Re:pdf

[LordLimecat]

I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well.

....Or, like with Chrome, it will use the Foxit SDK and rely on them for PDF; or, it will use libpdf (or whatever evince uses)....

So no, not really. You clearly havent used Chrome's PDF viewer; its phenomenal-- fast, compatible, and does exactly what needs to be done, with built in and not-obnoxious autoupdate.

Re:pdf

[williamfrench4]

Note that I wouldn't recommend writing or reading a programming language manual in PDF form.

What format do you prefer? I mostly see them in either PDF or CHM; and of the two, I much prefer PDF.

Re:pdf

[maxwell demon]

But when Firefox gets its own PDF rendering, it will definitively not be Adobe's.
Indeed, I would consider it a security boon if add-ons like NoScript could also control JavaScript and other active content inside PDFs.

Re:pdf

[Lennie]

I think their are 2 reason why browser builders ware adding PDF-readers to the browser:

1. process seperation (the add-on can crash the browser)
2. security, Acrobat Reader has far, far to many features which makes it insecure

Re:pdf

[chichilalescu]

html.
the point is that in codes you might have long lines, and in PDF files you have restrictions with the actual sizes of pages. also, you don't usually need a lot of weird characters, you don't need antialiased fonts, but you do need a lot of links.
I routinely use the online documentation for Python and C++ (cppreference.com for instance), and it's fast and simple. To be honest, I've never written a programming language manual, and I know next to nothing about html, but I suppose that if I write code that is commented according to some "standard", some tools are available for turning those comments into a manual for my code (html or pdf).
Or maybe I'm confusing manuals and indexes, I'm not sure...

Re:pdf

[williamfrench4]

html.

Oh. You were talking about language manuals, but I was thinking about technical ebooks. My bad. Of course I use the online docs, and I wouldn't want to have to consult a pdf every time I want to look up a library function. HTML would probably be better for the ebooks as well, provided they were written that way originally and not converted automatically from something else.

Re:pdf

[tyrione]

OS X did it before all of them because the entire Windowing Environment is Display PDF. Adding Previewer Service within Safari was just borrowing some of the Display PDF that is the entire Drawing System.

Re:pdf

[dave420]

Chrome's built-in PDF viewer is excellent. It's not from Adobe, and is quick and has yet to break rendering any PDF I've come across. I think Chrome's doing a great job giving people a really easy-to-use browser that is secure, blazingly fast, and extensible. Taking up UI space for menu options people rarely use (when compared to actually using the browser) seems a bad idea, which is why I'm glad Chrome did it. I don't want to dedicate a bunch of my screen real estate to features I seldom use - that makes no sense to me at all.

Re:pdf

[dave420]

You seem to think the only way of viewing PDFs in the browser is via a non-sandboxed Adobe plugin. That can't be right. Just look at Chrome's built-in PDF viewer. It's not from Adobe, is really quick, and fully sandboxed. It's genius.

Re:pdf

[dave420]

Chrome now has a built-in PDF viewer, that doesn't hang anything, and is sandboxed. It's great. Much faster than Adobe's crap.

Re:pdf

[David Gerard]

It'll almost certainly be a GhostScript derivative, not something by Adobe. Open source, remember?

Re:pdf

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Or they could just use the library which actually does the heavy lifting in evince (and Okular and nearly all the other pdf viewers for linux out there)Poppler.

I'm sure that this is exactly what they intend to do.

Re:pdf

[walshy007]

While there are similarities in what aqua uses for it's display in regards to pdf, what mac os draws to the screen is in fact, not pdf at all.

Great it uses vectors and other such things, and comes with a nice conversion utility so screen caps go to pdf nicely, but it does not itself display in pdf.

Re:pdf

[KnownIssues]

That is pretty ironic that you want it to be an external app, while the article you refer to gives 4 out of its 7 examples of usability issues that are because PDF is an external app. Having PDF be a native browser format could fix over half the stated usability issues ("Jarring user experience", "Breaks flow", "Orphaned location") and nearly half the examples of user complaints ("It's a pain that I have to download each PDF", "They [PDF files] don't behave like Web pages").

Re:pdf

[samjam]

I remember one like that.

I was advising a graphic designer for the launch of a website, telling him what was and wasn't possible.

I then saw him, at the grand launch, unveil an impossible website.

My jaw dropped for about 2 seconds and then I thought:it's a big gif - and it was.

It didn't last, of course! That's what happens (happened) when photo-shop users design web-sites in a hurry.

And which of these can't be extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps PDF viewer and home tab? The others sure seem like extension functionality. I don't use Facebook or Twitter, so why do I need them crapping up my browsing experience?

Re:And which of these can't be extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand why they can't just create themed "add-on packs" or even pre-instlaled add-ons that can be removed by the informed end user.

Re:And which of these can't be extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

'dumb phones', Mr. not-so-smart guy.

At least the iPhone still lets you stick 'apps' on there. Plenty of phones out there that won't let you customize squat - from the operator logo always being on-screen whether you like it or not to the clock display always being in 12 hour format even if you'd like to have 24 hour format.

The only reason the iPhone is the 'penultimate example' is because people are reasonably aware of its existence. I'm sure there's an actual penultimate in terms of a natural progression from dumb phone to smart phone; perhaps the dumb phones that let you install Java applets. But they're rarely heralded as examples.

Re:And which of these can't be extensions?

[devincook]

Yeah... they're really giving us fewer and fewer reasons not to just go ahead and jump ship to Chrome.

Re:And which of these can't be extensions?

[grubwort]

OK, if "there's an actual penultimate in terms of a natural progression from dumb phone to smart phone" out there, that means there's an actual ultimate one out there, too. Which one would that be?

Mozilla is selling out

[elucido]

Facebook? Twitter? Since when did Mozilla integrate commercial websites into their browser? Since integrating the Google search engine? Since AOL? This is why Netscape and Mozilla were originally kept separate. To keep the commercial bloat in the Netscape browser and allow the community to use Mozilla.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Anonymous Coward]

They integrated Google at first, but then they integrated the other engines as well. Facebook, twitter and others are just icebreakers, more will follow.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Haedrian]

Well its something people use. I'm pretty sure adding new sites will be as simple as adding search engines to the bar.

The amount of people who use those services is large enough that this integration will be seen as a good thing by many, and if you're not interested - turn it off.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[cgenman]

What? Netscape and Mozilla were originally kept separate because Netscape was dying and wanted free development but didn't want to relinquish the valuable "Netscape" name. Mozilla and Netscape were almost identical except for the branding. Mozilla was also huge and massively bloated. This bloat was the reason why a splinter offshoot, Firefox, was created. Firefox became so popular that it overtook the Mozilla suite. And, of course, Netscape just died.

So while sveltness is a wonderful goal, we are talking about a foundation named after a 50 story radioactive japanese mega-monster.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[ceoyoyo]

They have to do something. Almost all the features in the last few versions have just been bloat. Ditto here. Except for in-browser PDF viewing, which Safari has had forever, it's just more feature creep.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[lennier]

if you're not interested - turn it off.

Let's all hope that turning it off is even an option.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[BenoitRen]

Mozilla and Netscape were almost identical except for the branding.

Netscape had a couple more features, like an integrated AIM client, among others.

Mozilla was also huge and massively bloated. This bloat was the reason why a splinter offshoot, Firefox, was created.

This is wrong, and a good example of revisioning. Mozilla never was bloated. What happened is that a team of Mozilla developers wanted to concentrate on making an IE-killer. They started the Phoenix project with the goal of making the best Windows browser with the "right set of features" (it never was about minimalism, unlike what you often hear).

The popularity that Phoenix, later Firebird, and finally Firefox, enjoyed, was thanks to marketing that the Mozilla suite never got. Firefox was portrayed as new and cool, while the Mozilla suite was this testing bed they were using that looked like the old Netscape browser.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[mrmeval]

It has less and sucks more. The fanbois will love the sucking! It's following the trend of removing useful features and installing social masturbation facilitation. The giants of GuhNome and KDEjaculate have shown the way to the neo-luddite FUTURE.

I tried Firefox 4 and it's defeatured pablum for the massholes, it seems this will continue with 5. I wonder if the damn thing will even allow you to close it?

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[mgiuca]

I had the same reaction to the Facebook / Twitter thing, but perhaps (judging by screenshots) they are making a more general infrastructure, a bit like Android has.

If (and this is just speculation) you can (using XML or something) register a website with a certain set of features, and it's customizable, that would be good. For example, there could be a "share photo" service, and you can use XML to register a number of websites as offering that service. So I could register, Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic, etc. And then when I drag a photo onto the paper plane icon, it says "share via ..." and I can choose any of those sites. In addition, I could use XML to add a site-specific menu (such as the Facebook menu pictured), with a "mail" item that shows how many unread mails I have. This could work for Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.

If they build a general service-oriented framework, and not just "Facebook and Twitter integration", then it could be a useful feature.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[dryeo]

And yet they managed top make it slower then Mozilla or at least by the time I tried it, when still Phoenix it already felt slower and was almost as big as a download. Now the suite, which lives on as SeaMonkey, still feels faster and in the past I've bench marked it loading Slashdot and Firefox would spike the CPU for close to twice as long. Now neither one seems to spike the CPU.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[AmiMoJo]

They should make it a plug-in you can easily uninstall. Have it installed by default if you must.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Mythrix]

If the Facebook/Twitter integration is only a shortcut for sharing content, wouldn't it be just a slightly different bookmark? I doubt that would bring much more bloat than the bookmark feature? As for the Taskbar web app/Site specific browser thing, that seems to be a HTML-based feature rather than adding website specific code in the browser...

Though I'm using Chrome instead of Firefox because Firefox used to feel pretty slow, so I can't say I completely disagree with the possibility of Firefox being bloated. Does version 4 feel any lighter?

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[gl4ss]

it's just the UI guys dreams that are put to the so called "plan" at this point. minor, minor ui tweaks. the truth of the matter is that there's no good ideas about what should be improved or added or changed to different - so code cleanup, optimising, trying out alternative approaches.. all that should be done, but it's not something you could then slab the version number 5 on. remember this: the fucks in the what is essentially _marketing_ department side of things already announced when the next versions will come. maybe they were drawing their first roadmap ever or something, or they'd just have shut up.

a good question now though.. how many of these features are already available as add-ons?

where's firefox the phoenix edition?

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Ash-Fox]

Reading this story in Chrome. Chrome is so much better. Google developers must know how to use malloc and free.

Reading this article in Firefox, it doesn't look like Chrome is conservative at all with how much memory it takes.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Jarik_Tentsu]

How about since 99% of the people out there regularly use Twitter and Facebook in their regular daily activities?

Netscape threw commercial shit no one cared about in your face, Firefox is obviously trying to cater for 99% of their customers giving them the features they all want. Well, all except for the Slashdot crowd.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[JCholewa]

That's what Opera's for. There's a reason why it has an internal "/." shortcut for the url bar.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[BenoitRen]

Bullshit.

Mozilla was bloated and slow.

You do realise that you cited the Firefox side, right? They're biased. It's just their opinion that the suite didn't have the "right set of features".

The suite was plenty fast on an old computer.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[Elbereth]

You claimed that Phoenix was about killing IE, while the actual people who started the project stated they did because Mozilla was bloated and slow.

You simply can't admit that your statement was false, which is understandable -- I frequently refuse to admit when I'm wrong, too. However, that doesn't mean that I'm going to let you off the hook when you have a misconception about the past and the reasons why people did things they did. You can't just rewrite history in your mind, because it's inconvenient to your worldview ("mozilla was fast! it was awesome! everyone loved it!").

I thought Mozilla was bloated and slow, and I was happy to see that other people agreed with me. That's why I started using Phoenix, and why the project was begun. It wasn't to challenge IE. It was done to slim down the browser.

Re:Mozilla is selling out

[BenoitRen]

You claimed that Phoenix was about killing IE, while the actual people who started the project stated they did because Mozilla was bloated and slow.

The charter they published said otherwise. Some quotes:

Mozilla Firebird grew out of the desire to make the best browser for Microsoft Windows.

The goal was, and is not to have more or less features than any other client (Mozilla included) but to have the right set of features to let people get their jobs done.

The target market for Mozilla Firebird includes all users who are sufficiently sophisticated in computer skill as to be able to download and install their own browser. This includes a large number of intermediate-to-advanced folk who are currently using Internet Explorer.

For the record, I long believed the same thing as you.

You can't just rewrite history in your mind, because it's inconvenient to your worldview ("mozilla was fast! it was awesome! everyone loved it!").

I'm not the one rewriting history here. I never said everyone loved Mozilla either.

I've used Mozilla since 1.2 on an old Pentium II 233 Mhz. It was fast, and got even faster.

Phoenix in the beginning was very fast because it barely had any UI. But once they started to add things, it only got slower.

Adobe probably wants it

[elucido]

Honestly it makes no sense to integrate PDF. It makes far more sense to integrate IRC, AOM/IM, or something like this but honestly, this is just commercial bloat. What we really want is just a browser that wont crash, that wont open our computer up to hackers, that that will load tube sites and have the latest scripting and html features.

Re:Adobe probably wants it

[larry bagina]

Mozilla (not firefox) included an IRC client. One of the reasons for firefox was to eliminate excessive shit like that.

stupid

[ludomancer]

They think this versioning method is a good thing? I read the headline and only thought "5, already? omfg, I'm done with this stupid browser".

I know that's probably biased, and knee-jerky, subjective and immature, but that doesn't change that it's probably a lot of peoples thoughts on the matter.

It's stupid how a number can make you or break your opinion of a product, and even stupider that their change had the opposite affect on me (negative impression, etc)

Re:stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

"5, already? omfg, I'm done with this stupid browser".

As opposed to Chrome 11? Opera 11? IE 9?

Re:stupid

[FooBarWidget]

So what are you going to do, switch to Chrome 10?

Re:stupid

[BenoitRen]

Their versioning has always been arbitrary.

After Firefox 1.0, they originally went with 1.1. But because they felt the next version was a major leap, but not that major, they went for 1.5. Then they thought to go with 1.6, but it was major once more, so they went with 2.0.

The next version was going to be so awesome, they immediately decided to make it 3.0.

I don't know what they were thinking after that, as I stopped paying attention to silly developer politics, but I've seen that they didn't stop being arbitrary with the numbers. 3.5, then 3.6, finally 4.0? WTF?

Re:stupid

[kangsterizer]

so yeah if every other browser use this version naming scheme and period , "lets ditch firefox! releases not often enough!"
if firefox uses the same version naming scheme and periods "lets ditch firefox! releases too often!"

Seriously.

Re:stupid

[LordLimecat]

Thats not why theyre doing it. Theyre trying to release faster, so that new features come out quicker. And before you complain "but that means stuff wont be tested well"....its what Chrome is doing, and it is a remarkably stable browser right now. There are many ways to mitigate creeping bugs from "release often", like having several running releases at once (again, like Chrome).

Re:stupid

[Bacon Bits]

5 isn't so bad. Mozilla is planning to release both 6 and 7 this year, too!

Re:stupid

[mgiuca]

Well there are other alternatives. Like Internet Explorer 9 or Opera 11.

Re:stupid

[maxwell demon]

What? So slow? I expect them to release a major version every week! ;-)

Re:stupid

[Mythrix]

Or maybe Opera 11? Internet Explorer 9? Hmm, Safari is actually only... oh wait, Safari is also on version 5 already, never mind.

Re:stupid

[Tuan121]

Yes, because Chrome doesn't do a big media campaign from going to 8, to 9, to 10 etc. It just updates itself frequently and you have some new features every so often, without the big hoopla of OMG version 4 is coming out!!! we have 1 biiilllion downloads for it!!!

Meh ...

[lennier1]

I hope someone will be annoyed enough to start a fork which removes this gimmicky crap but keeps the security fixes.

Re:Meh ...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I hope someone will be annoyed enough to start a fork which removes this gimmicky crap but keeps the security fixes.

You don't see no-more-reliance-on-the-Adobe-PDFViewer as a security fix?

Re:Meh ...

[Richard_at_work]

So, basically do to Firefox what Firefox (as Phoenix) did to Mozilla? Fork to go back to basics?

Re:Meh ...

[elucido]

So, basically do to Firefox what Firefox (as Phoenix) did to Mozilla? Fork to go back to basics?

Exactly. Even if it takes a while to go back to the basics, it has to be done.

Re:Meh ...

[lennier1]

Hell, if they want to cram more and more non-core crap into the browser why not do something similar to Eclipse, where you download either the basic version or purpose-based packages which already include the necessary plugins/items? After all, the add-on system exists for a reason.

Re:Meh ...

[lennier1]

There are already plenty of other document readers out there. Why reinvent the wheel if they can just endorse an alternate reader and team up with those developers?
The different available plugins for Flash, Java and so on aren't that different if you think about it.

Re:Meh ...

[maxume]

They never said back to basics with the Phoenix project, they said user oriented browser (Rather than the developer festival kitchen sink that was the suite). Dumping xpfe for what became the xul toolkit meant that the first versions were also pretty basic.

Re:Meh ...

[icebraining]

There are already plenty of other document readers out there. Why reinvent the wheel if they can just endorse an alternate reader and team up with those developers?

One that works on Windows, Linux and MacOSX like Firefox?

Re:Meh ...

[VortexCortex]

I just wished that the Firefox devs would just leave the Flock features concerning social network integration out of the FF Mainline -- If we want FF + Social, Flock exists already... Where will be my FF minus the pointless social tools? (And what about identi.ca?)

It's sort of like if Linux decided to incorporate a web browser into the kernel -- Bad Idea, Leave that to specialized projects / add-ons / apps, not everyone needs a browser on their Linux (not everyone needs social network integration in their Firefox).

Re:Meh ...

[FrootLoops]

not everyone needs a browser on their Linux (not everyone needs social network integration in their Firefox).

Not everyone needs browser tabs--like my parents, who to my knowledge don't know how to visit multiple sites simultaneously. When a large enough fraction of users benefit from a feature more than the feature hurts other users, it should probably be included. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but my point is inclusion of features is complex, and your rather heavy handed example glosses over that complexity.

I'm curious (enough to read a summary of the process, but not enough to find out myself) how these features were chosen. Perhaps they even did some user studies suggesting the majority of their users would like these features. Of course, /. will have a significant "anti bloat" bias. I know I get frustrated at software taking a few seconds to load while most "regular" users don't seem to notice.

Re:Meh ...

[mario_grgic]

I don't use Adobe Acrobat even when I'm on Windows let alone on Mac OS X or Linux, so no.

Re:Meh ...

[BenoitRen]

What I see is an increased attack surface for exploits.

Re:Meh ...

[Ltap]

There are several that do; Evince, for instance.

Re:Meh ...

[Mashiki]

Already done, it's called palemoon.

Re:Meh ...

[TangoMargarine]

My thoughts exactly. There haven't been any features that I've really needed since tab save on exit and the Awesomebar (okay, I don't technically need that but I've come to like it (set to just display bookmarks)) in 3.0.

Re:Meh ...

[Saint Stephen]

Isn't that what FireFox is supposed to be? The lightweight fork of Mozilla minus all the built-in crap, which can be added via plugins? Since when did Firefox start embedding so many features?

Re:Meh ...

[LordLimecat]

If they stuck to that mentality with a vengeance, we wouldnt have any of the following:

• New tab button
• Tab tearing / reorganization
• Session restore
• Pinned tabs
• Undo Close tab

And more.

Perhaps you dont remember the days when firefox really did gobble ram down, because TabMixPlus was an utter pig, or when the 20+ addins you needed to get to today's level of functionality were unstable, leaky, and a PITA to update.

Somehow folks dont complain about all the functionality in Opera; but then I suppose the grass is always greener.

Re:Meh ...

[Spad]

It's called Seamonkey

Re:Meh ...

[VortexCortex]

not everyone needs a browser on their Linux (not everyone needs social network integration in their Firefox).

Not everyone needs browser tabs--like my parents, who to my knowledge don't know how to visit multiple sites simultaneously. When a large enough fraction of users benefit from a feature more than the feature hurts other users, it should probably be included.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons why Firefox is so great is that it has addons / plugins. It can be a lean download, and extended till your heart's content after the fact... There's no good reason to include a damn social network plugin by default, IMHO.

They don't include DownThemAll (download accelerator) by default, even though anyone who downloads files would benefit from that plugin's features -- Who doesn't want faster downloads?! Bandwidth is hardly an argument against acceleration -- you'll end up getting the same number of bits either way, and DTA has rate / connection limiting, so congestion isn't an issue.

The point is that given the amazing plugin support in FF, there's no real usability reason to include ANY social plugins by default.

I can see adding Tabbed browsing, or vertical tabs plugin, or multi-touch gestures, or some other core functionality features -- Like the identity management, But comparing social apps to tabs is ridiculous. If you want to argue for "social" integration, Why isn't an IRC / Instant messaging client built in? Guess--- Right, Because There's a plugin, no reason to add it by default, even though Chat is a core Internet feature, like e-mail -- Which they also don't include in Firefox... Mozilla took out the e-mail suite a long time ago to make FF snappier. How many people on the web DON'T use email?

Come on, use your brain. Of all the things to include they picked Facebook and Twitter... now, why do you suppose that is?

I am certain that the deciding factor was ad revenue partnerships, not better user interface or core feature integration. You can argue otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less obvious.

Re:Meh ...

[VortexCortex]

If they stuck to that mentality with a vengeance, we wouldnt have any of the following:

• New tab button
• Tab tearing / reorganization
• Session restore
• Pinned tabs
• Undo Close tab

And more.

Perhaps you dont remember the days when firefox really did gobble ram down, because TabMixPlus was an utter pig, or when the 20+ addins you needed to get to today's level of functionality were unstable, leaky, and a PITA to update.

Somehow folks dont complain about all the functionality in Opera; but then I suppose the grass is always greener.

Oh, I remember... Do I ever. I make plugins & web apps. Broken standards, ridiculously inefficient web-enabled languages and poor rendering support, falling back to tables of images -- Jumping through all sorts of hoops just to get things to look decent and actually run without chugging along at a snail's pace... Sadly we just had to use whatever crap language (javascript) because that's what's available, not because we wanted to, or because it was any good.

Hey, wait, that's right now.

A fundamentalist, I am not. I'm not saying to never add new features, but Facebook & Twitter? Seriously? Yeah, that's something that I really need in A Web Browser. Hint: FACEBOOK.COM & TWITTER.COM -- already exist!
To be fair: browsers are a SHITTY application platform. No. I develop web "apps". You can't tell me otherwise, I've got the battle scars to prove it. I have to deal with the shittyness constantly. There's no user session state -- Oh, right, cookies -- limited & hacked in / build your own. Windowing API, build your own. Cross platform? Yep, you'll be downgrading some neat features to hit that average browser feature support mark. Persistent connections, nope, we can do polling or long lived requests (AJAX / COMET) but that's a hack & taxes the servers -- we're promised connections in websockets, which we can use someday, I hope. Still looks bleak on the Video standardization front.

No matter how hard we try, unless the website / web app uses canvas exclusively it won't look the same on every browser / OS. HTML5 is over 8 years late IMHO -- yes 8, yeah, YEARS! 8 months is huge in tech terms. In the interim we've been making due slapping things together with duct-tape & crappy scripting languages. Oh, faster script performance? Why not compile JS to machine code and run it?! (Yeah, that's one reason why browsers are insecure -- we'll run just about any DATA as CODE). Basically EVERYTHING you do on an interactive website is by way of a myriad of flaky hacked together kludges, and we all just have to deal with it -- and by it I mean the shittyness.

Take a document rendering engine, add a macro language (JavaScript) to automate / animate a few things -- There, now hack together applications. For your next project: Here's a weed-eater a bicycle, and some polystyrene -- Go build me a taxi cab. Either will be inefficient, slow, unwieldy, and flaky as all get-out. You're complaining about flaky plugins!? Ha! THOSE are STABLE by our web standards...

I can see why Facebook or Twitter would rather have a full-on plugin... Hey, guess what else plugins can do? They can see every flippin' website you visit. Sure, the users could just install the plugins themselves Hmm, but If it's an external plugin, Mozilla doesn't get the revenue...

Ah, now ad revenue -- THAT will get a feature integration right in...(google search: included by default, not much else is) --- until --- Hey, guess what? Facebook and Twitter are coming pre-installed into Firefox! I wonder why? Oh, usability, right -- You just keep telling yourself that.

Re:Meh ...

[LordLimecat]

First off, if youre blaming HTML5 and JS on Firefox, then youve utterly lost me. You might as well blame AMD for OpenGLs failings.

Second, theyre not talking about making a facebook or twitter plugin. Reread things.

Re:Meh ...

[FrootLoops]

The point is that given the amazing plugin support in FF, there's no real usability reason to include ANY social plugins by default.

For some features, like mouse gestures, I agree with this line of reasoning. Almost everyone who uses mouse gestures will be quite comfortable finding and installing addons. To extend the example of my parents, if they used Twitter, they'd have a hard time knowing addons exist or finding ones that they might find useful. If enough users like them would benefit from having a Twitter-interfacing feature, I'd say the rest of us (me included; I dislike Twitter) should just have to suck up the extra bloat.

It's important to note TFA is very vague on what social network integration will actually be offered. The relevant text:

there will be a new paper plane logo in the URL bar that provides access to your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter and we assume other services such as Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon as well.

It might just be an area for specialized addons, where you enter the site you have an account at, it downloads and installs the relevant specialized addon, and things go from there. The article is unclear on whether or not, say, Facebook will have browser integration by default through this panel. The screenshot doesn't show a Twitter icon, either--it just has the facebook logo and a plus sign.

I am certain that the deciding factor was ad revenue partnerships, not better user interface or core feature integration.

I don't follow--where are the ads and how do they generate extra money for social networking sites? The screenshot doesn't include any ads. Not having to go to the site's page actually bypasses an opportunity to display ads if the browser interface doesn't include them. If I were to guess why social network integration was being offered, I'd say it's because of this statistic (lifted from Wikipedia) and those like it: "According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account." If your users use something you think you can help them use, you'll probably add features to support them. I don't see anything necessarily nefarious in that.

Really?

[genrader]

I just upgraded from 3.6 to Firefox 4. I cannot stand it. The UI is very counter-intuitive and I find that it takes longer to access things with the elimination of the File/EditView etc toolbar. I'm about to have to find another browser.

Re:Really?

[WaroDaBeast]

With just two clicks on the navigation bar, you can re-enable the "File/Edit" etc toolbar and place tabs under the navigation bar.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try clicking the Firefox button you find so annoying, move over to options, then check "Menu Bar." Voila, your File/Edit/View etc toolbar. Choice is great, isn't it?

Re:Really?

[IB4Student]

you'll find the same issues with Chrome :P
It's really easy to get the 3.6 UI back, though: http://gamefaqspc.wikispaces.com/Firefox+Addons#Firefox%20Addons-Make%20Firefox%204%20have%20the%203.6%20User%20Interface

Re:Really?

[radish]

I just pressed Alt. Guess what happened? Oh yes - I got a keyboard accessible menu bar. But don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Identity management

[Zoxed]

> Identity management: ... keep you signed in to websites via an integrated identity manager and even support multiple sign-ons at the same time.

IIRC this feature was requested by someone in the US Army ?

Re:Identity management

[TheLink]

You mean it wasn't requested by by XSS hackers and phishers? :)

A security and functionality oriented fork

[elucido]

We need a security and functionality oriented fork ASAP. Performance matters also.

Nobody asked for changes to the interface. The interface to Firefox was never broken and nobody complained about it.

Nobody asked for the "awesome bar" or whatever the hell that is. If it improves productivity then fine, tabs make sense, but the majority of this shit is just gimmicks. Integrating the cloud makes sense but not when it's specifically "facebook" and "twitter", but to allow anyone to select anything and make it completely transparent and open. They are going commercial in a really bad sell out kind of way, and you can tell the developers I said it.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to agree or disagree with either of you, but how does one quantify or prove a LACK of complaints? It's demanding one to cough up evidence that nothing was said.

Regardless, I'll agree with him. I had no complaints about firefox's interface. I hate facebook and have no love for twitter. I would not want those fucking things integrated into my browser by default.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[BenoitRen]

You could use SeaMonkey. Same core, different and more sane interface implementation.

Or at least it used to be. The head developer has been forcing his redesigns of some windows when it was never necessary. However, it's still much better than Firefox, and will likely remain as such, if only because it doesn't hide nearly as many preferences in about:config.

There's also K-Meleon that you could try, but that's Windows-only.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[macshit]

Nobody asked for the "awesome bar" or whatever the hell that is. If it improves productivity then fine, tabs make sense, but the majority of this shit is just gimmicks

The "awesome bar" has a stupid name, but I've found it to actually be a huge productivity improvement for me. It basically replaces bookmarks in everyday usage, and is far faster and more easier to use than they are. I'll note that while chrome kinda tried to copy the AB, the chrome version is considerably less nice.

FF4 in general seems a pretty good release -- it's faster and less resource hungry than its predecessor, and has some nice features (e.g. the option of removing the menubar, which was always an annoying waste of space) -- and I'd say that the Moz devs are doing a pretty good job. There's a lot of competition among browsers at the moment, and while FF isn't the best in every way, it's quite competitive (better in some ways, worse in others) with other modern browsers like chrome, IE9, and safari. I frequently switch back and forth between FF and chrome depending on the circumstance (per-tab processes are great, especially for resource-constrained machines), but in the end FF still basically holds the lead; props to chrome, though, for many good ideas and keeping the competition hot.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[paulkoan]

Nobody asked for the "awesome bar" or whatever the hell that is. If it improves productivity then fine

The address bar does auto complete from a number of sources such as history and bookmarks with a fall through to search if it isn't found. So yes they called it "awesome" making a gross error of naming judgement, but of course it improves productivity over the alternative of having four different searches.

We /did/ ask for this feature - at least implicitly - we just didn't need the dumbass name.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[the_one(2)]

I complained. Every bit of vertical resoulution is needed for useful things. Not for menues that you seldom use.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[maxwell demon]

I use the menus frequently. Indeed, I'd say a better way to save space would be to replace the tab bar with yet another menu which allows you to switch tabs from the menu bar. Since menus are vertical, it also could easily handle lots of tabs without scrolling.

Also I hope that home tab can be disabled. I've just put my start page into the bookmarks and disabled the home button. I don't need to replace the space waste of a home button with an even larger space waste of a home tab.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[the_one(2)]

What do you use the menus for? Favorites?

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[Gri3v3r]

Posting from Seamonkey. It intergrates Thunderbird and Chatzilla (IRC). Everytime I open my browser it checks for mails and RSS feed updates (you can adjust it not to, if you want). I like also its Cookie Manager and Password Manager. It supports NoScript add-on. It does not look bloated although it has so many (useful) features. I am mostly satisfied. If it was as fast as Chrome then it would have been the perfect browser for me.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[Lord Lode]

I've been using SeaMonkey forever, until a few months ago when I was tired of it randomly crashing with an error about something like "'RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'". That happened at least a few times daily, you're busy browsing and stuff, and at the most random moment, suddenly the SeaMonkey window is just gone because it crashed this way. Especially annoying when it happened during typing text or watching something. SeaMonkey owned, but this was a stopper for me. Neither SeaMonkey nor ArchLinux provided any help that fixed the problem, there's nothing I could do.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[Raenex]

They are going commercial in a really bad sell out kind of way, and you can tell the developers I said it.

Wow, impressive words. I'm sure they'll give a shit that "elucido" on Slashdot said that.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[maxwell demon]

Actually, I've moved the bookmarks menu into the bookmarks toolbar with some FF extension (it's the only toolbar apart from the standard one with the address line I didn't remove). I'm using the menu for the history/recently closed tabs, for the site navigation (yes, that fundamental functionality which is even part of the HTML standard has to be added to FF with an extension!), for the web developer toolbar (I've eliminated the actual toolbar because the menu entries are sufficient) and for the print preview.

Yes, most of those things would be accessible through toolbars, but then, several toolbars use more space than one menu bar. And there's the history window, but if the old stuff is still in the menu, it's much easier to go there.

Actually there are things I miss in the main menu. Mainly tab related entries (especially those which make sense when only one tab is open; I don't show the tab bar in that case, so accessing its context menu is not possible).

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[theCoder]

If you're concerned about vertical space, then you should install Tree Style Tab. Tabs on the side is incredibly useful, especially on widescreen monitors.

For some reason, that extension is in some sort of extension backwater -- it can only be installed by going to the addons site and scrolling way down to the bottom. It cannot be installed through FF's addons dialog/page.

If you still want more vertical space, move the bookmark bar to be to the left of the menu bar. You can do that just by customizing the toolbars in FF.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[the_one(2)]

Hehe:) I'm already using tree style tabs! It's the single most essential extension for me. I've also basically stopped using bookmarks. Either I just leave a tab open or I use the awesomebar. I also use the compact menu 2 extension to save a bit more pixels.

Re:A security and functionality oriented fork

[BenoitRen]

I looked into it, and it looks like it's partly fixed for Gecko 1.9.1 (which SeaMonkey 2.0 uses), and the real fix has been applied to Gecko 1.9.2. So we'll have to wait for SeaMonkey 2.1 or 3.0 (no idea what they're planning) before we can get an official release with the real fix.

Looks like OpenSUSE fixed it by making SeaMonkey use its internal Cairo library in the meantime.

Google and others are set out to destroy Firefox

[elucido]

Most of the programmers working on the project are from companies like Google who don't know what they are doing.

It was one thing when AOL worked on it, but the quality of the development has gone down. We need an open source browser on the market.

I admit, I'm using Chrome right now because Chrome is better, and I'm not upgrading to Firefox4 because 3.6 is better. They should have kept the option to use the 3.6 interface or just extended it, than go completely alien.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[snl2587]

Ok, seriously: why do so many people harp on the "awesomebar"? I'm beginning to think it's just a strawman for some strange repulsion to Firefox, brought on by something else entirely.

OK folks, time to jump ship

[asvravi]

Going down the drain despite everyone's best efforts and intentions. Except for identity management and PDF viewing (why should webpages be limited to HTML??), nothing else makes an ounce of sense in a supposedly light weight browser. Here is hoping Chromium or Chrome catch up on the extensions and sync scene soon.

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[burni2]

Well Google has Chrome and ChromeOS, Mozilla has FirefoxOS with Version 5, Browser and Operating System All-in-One

Think of Just a Browser as your interface to your computer ..

http://foxos.desktop.resolutionres_id/"1080p"&output=DisplayPort&action=change
http://foxos.filesystem.recycleactionrestorefile/"reallydirty_porn_I_tried_to_hide_from_my_girlfriend.jpg"

http-get blah security .. who cares Mozilla of course not.

The "Sharing, Home Tab, PDF Viewer " sounds to me like a feature list of some Linux Distros

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[IB4Student]

If you want a lightweight browser, Chromium is an even worse choice. Get something like Konquerer. Way lighter, and they are implementing a few (necessary) addons like userscripting.

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[ThunderBird89]

Google Chrome already syncs to your Google profile, and has done so for quite some time before FF4 came out with the sync option. I don't know that much about the add-ons/extensions, I don't use many on either platform, and those that I do are usually supplied by the parent company (eg. Google Mail-Calendar-Reader Checker extensions).

If only Google gave me more choice in customizing the UI (such as returning the http:/// prefix into the address bar, that really pissed me off), it would be the perfect browser for me.

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[asvravi]

The very point of extension is to keep the browser light weight. And I did say "supposedly light weight". Pardon me, but do try and read English.

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[asvravi]

Used Chrome but did not notice the Google profile sync - that holds promise for a better future in my browser world! I can live without the smaller customizations.

Re:OK folks, time to jump ship

[ThunderBird89]

Set it in Options -> Personal Stuff. If I remember my brief stint with FF4 correctly, the Chrome sync is more capable, synchronizing everything from history through favorites to passwords (only if you select them, though, so no breach of security unless you want it).

No, by Google's Ninja's

[elucido]

Google's Ninja's have infiltrated Firefox and are ruining it. Sabotage style.

Re:No, by Google's Ninja's

[kangsterizer]

I actually like that feature. With today's technologies, keeping anonymity means multiple accounts. One for "work", one for "friends", one for "sex friends", or whatever you like.
I think many are using Chrome+FF (+IE?) just because it ensures your identities are separated. So this feature actually makes some sense.

It also allow testing stuff quick & easy, for example being logged as admin AND user on your website.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[elucido]

Ok, seriously: why do so many people harp on the "awesomebar"? I'm beginning to think it's just a strawman for some strange repulsion to Firefox, brought on by something else entirely.

The God button would be cooler right?

Chrome Lite with leaks

[slyborg]

Why not just take the Chromium tree and figure out how to run Firefox extensions on there and just call that Firefox? Would save time and have much better memory use and performance. Firefox is basically converging on a Chrome clone with slightly worse performance and some dumb UI hacks that will end up largely unused/abandoned (like Panorama).

Isn't all this what the extension ecosystem is for? Why would a team that already is overwhelmed by the task of testing its product incorporate MORE features to test? My main issue with Firefox right now is not a lack of Facebook integration (-_-) but the obvious memory leakage in the released FF 4 with AdBlock/NoScript, which was present through the entire last half of the beta cycle.

Mozilla has really wandered off the reservation here. I want a solid, fast browser that supports the great extensions that Mozilla didn't write, and continues to support developments in the core web standards space. If I want Chrome or Flock, I'll just download those, seriously.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[BZ]

> and figure out how to run Firefox extensions on there

How much work do you estimate this to be, exactly? Chances are, your estimate is low.

> have much better memory use and performance.

Firefox has better performance and memory use than Chrome in many cases. It's worse in others. Both browsers are improving.

How would having only one implementation be better for consumers than two competing ones?

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[kripkenstein]

My main issue with Firefox right now is not a lack of Facebook integration (-_-) but the obvious memory leakage in the released FF 4 with AdBlock/NoScript, which was present through the entire last half of the beta cycle.

Hi, I'm a Firefox dev. We are constantly working hard on memory issues, you can follow this meta-bug for example, to see how progress is going.

The fact is though, that the people that work on frontend stuff like app tabs and so forth, are different from the people that work on more hardcore things like memory usage. It isn't as if we can say, everyone should work on memory usage now. So we will always have a lot of work going on on both frontend and platform stuff - but, by the nature of things, the press and blogs will report on frontend stuff. So you might get the idea that Firefox devs are all working on things like app tabs and panorama - but that is very untrue! It's just that platform improvements under the hood are, well, under the hood ;)

Btw, a long-term solution for all these memory issues will likely be when we switch to one process per tab. Then we'll have something similar to what Chrome has - higher baseline memory usage (overhead of processes and duplication, etc.), but more predictable memory freeing when tabs are closed and a very easy way to see which tabs are responsible for which memory. We are already working very hard on this, and a version of it shipped with Firefox Mobile just now, actually (separate processes for the UI and for web content) - so while it's not done yet, it's making very good progress. A release of desktop Firefox late this year should add the same functionality.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[Dremth]

Firefox has better memory usage than Chrome? Yes, to an extent.
Firefox has better performance than Chrome? No, absolutely not.

Fact is, memory is cheap these days. I'd be willing to sacrifice an extra 500MB~1GB of memory to have a fast, smooth browsing experience. Chrome gives me that and with out memory leaks. I can keep an extension loaded Chrome open for about a week until I start noticing that it's leaking memory. I can't keep a clean install of Firefox open for more than a day without a memory leak.
Face it people. Firefox is like your grandmother's basement and Chrome is like a beach-side mansion.
Firefox might take up a smaller space, but it's dank and pipes are leaking everywhere.
Chrome is a bit more taxing, but your overall experience is going to be better.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[BenoitRen]

I want a solid, fast browser that supports the great extensions that Mozilla didn't write, and continues to support developments in the core web standards space.

That sounds like SeaMonkey.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[BZ]

> Firefox has better performance than Chrome? No,
> absolutely not.

Really? Firefox 4 is faster than Chrome 10 on various JavaScript tests, on various DOM tests, on a number of layout performance tests. For example, see http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20047314-12.html where Firefox comes out ahead on everything except the V8 JS test.

There are other tests it's slower on, of course (V8 JS included).

And as I said both are changing rapidly; the situation looks different if you compare Chrome 11 betas to Firefox 4, and will look different yet again when you compare Firefox 5 or Firefox 6 to the contemporaneous Chrome 14 or so.

> Fact is, memory is cheap these days.

Except on mobile devices, of course. And for 32-bit processes, which can't make use of more RAM even if they wanted to.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[Dremth]

Ok, I see those numbers. I can comprehend them. I understand that Firefox may be technically "faster," but at what cost? I'd like to see a benchmark that measures UI responsiveness. Because, I don't know about you, but I'm OK with sacrificing a few milliseconds of rendering speeds if it means that I get a faster, responsive UI.
As a test, I ran the Kraken javascript benchmark on Chrome 12.0.712.0 with extensions and about 10 tabs open and a clean install of Firefox 4.0 with a single tab open. I was still able to load new tabs and browse to other sites smoothly on Chrome, whereas Firefox began behaving extremely sluggishly. Because of this, Chrome felt like it was going faster even when Firefox completed the benchmark about 100ms faster. Isn't that all that really matters? If I feel like my browser is going faster than another, then I don't care that it's actually going slower, and I doubt that most other users would care either.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[tokul]

Would save time and have much better memory use and performance

Try compiling Chromium with debug enabled (default) on machine with 2 GB of memory.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[BZ]

UI responsiveness is important too, yes. I agree that Chrome is currently better there, especially in the situation you tested (one tab attempting to hog all of the CPU).

The performance differences in rendering speed we're talking about can easily be seconds to tens of seconds, not milliseconds. At that point it becomes quite noticeable.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is though, that the people that work on frontend stuff like app tabs and so forth, are different from the people that work on more hardcore things like memory usage. It isn't as if we can say, everyone should work on memory usage now.

You need to fire the people who are working on the front-end. The UI changes are garbage, not only did they screw up a whole lot of plugins and other apps, but they were largely unnecessary and there's no easy way to restore the original functionality.

Someone got a wild hair up their ass and said "You know, despite being like this for the better part of a decade, I'm going to switch the context menu for new tab/new window, just to fuck with people." Then another guy was like "Hey, yeah that's a great idea. I'm going to jack around with the tabs so the + for a new tab is huge, ungly, and intrusive like IE's are!" Then the third dude thought for a minute and said "Well, I can't stand being one-upped. So what I'm going to do, is get rid of the status bar and replace it with an irritating pop-over "window" which has absolutely NO user control. And when I'm done, I'm going to dick around with the password manager so it constantly pops OVER the browser view. That outta really piss people off."

Btw, a long-term solution for all these memory issues will likely be when we switch to one process per tab.

Right, that's what we've heard. And when I saw FF release another major version number I thought "Gee, this must be the major core overhaul". Nope, it was a UI change that was so obviously annoying that a major version number change was needed. How long has FF been around, and we're just now starting major version 4? And now 5 is suddenly announced? What is this, a page out of the Microsoft ME/Vista failed version playbook?

How about this: Take version 4, and burn it. Revert to version three, and fix the minor issues in that version. Then you can release not version 4, but a new version entirely. Call it "FireFox Social" or something. That way all the mewling masses can have their glitzy IE/Chrome wannabe browser, and the rest of us can continue using it as it was originally meant to be- a back-to-basics browser.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks for the enlightening post. Could you also shed some light on how interface changing decisions are made? That seems to be where the most contention is. People get upset when their workflow is broken.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[cyclocommuter]

I have been a loyal Firefox user from the very beginning but I agree with the OP... version 4 leaks much more than 3.xx. I do use FF4 in conjunction with Adblock, NoScript, FlashBlock (these addons are the reason I still stick to FF), TabMixPlus, and a few others. After a few hours of browsing, closing and opening a total of 60 to 70 tabs (this is why I use TabMixPlus), FF4 RAM usage would be in the 600-700k range sometimes even more. The funny thing is even if I close all tabs FF will not give up RAM. You have to close then re-open it. Reminds me of Windows 3.xx where you need to close the GUI to free up system resources.

I also agree with many of the posters here. Please make the new features available as add-ons. Make the core browser lean and mean again.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[kripkenstein]

I do platform stuff myself, so I am not really involved in frontend changes and decisions (mainly since I am not that interested in it), so I can't properly answer that, sorry.

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[badkarmadayaccount]

How are tweaks going for the garbage collector? Have you considered converting it to a regional garbage collector - that ought to bring the same improvements, if not more, as compared to process per tab- which I think is a tad inefficient - are there any reasonable methods to get rid of duplication - some memory mapping tricks? What is your actual GC tech at this time? Do you plan on making it swap-aware? Do you think that any hot-shot optimizations are possible - say, a optional driver to improve memory management (for windows - linus would anal rape you probably, otherwise - though the MRI project is heading the same way, IIRC. It was set up by Azul Systems).

Re:Chrome Lite with leaks

[kripkenstein]

I am not on the JS team myself, so I am not up to date on everything they are doing. But I have heard they are currently considering generational GC, after recently adding compartments. See this tracking bug and the links in it, for example.

Don't care

[Hell0W0rld]

As long as Seamonkey is there I'm fine.

A fast, customizable browser with a nice UI.

People always bitched about Seamonkey being a bloated FF with bad Add-on-support. Now it feels like that the Seamonkey is the browser the FF should be.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[subreality]

I think it's because of the hubris of calling it "awesome". Some people were bound to not like it, but being told it's awesome when you don't like it makes them feel like it's being forced on them by completely out of touch developers.

guaranteed to be uninstalled by corps

[Anonymous Coward]

You can forget Firefox in a corporate enviroment if it contains facebook and other US websites

the thing cant even integrate into a GPO, go open gpedit.msc and see the hundreds of customisation options for MSIE but there are none for Firefox

so yeah keep adding the fluff and whatever flavour of the month billion dollar US corps websites and see that uninstall button get used more
i dont wont to go back to MSIE but it seems Mozilla are giving us no choice.

How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

Are they trying to drive me to Chrome? I don't want any of that crap.

They need to fix the massive memory leaks. I don't need any features. Spending a year making it more robust.

Right now with 4 simple tabs open(Win7-64), FF4 is consuming 650 MBs. I have to restart it every hour or two as it just keeps growing and growing.

It is my favorite browser for features, but the memory leaks are ridiculous (note the Windows build seems to leak more than Linux/Mac builds from what I read).

If FF5 adds a bunch of lame features and doesn't fix the fundamentals, I am gone.

PS: From the time I typed 650MB above till I previewed and ready to submit, FF4 memory usage as increased to 725 MB...

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always with the leak-accusations. I've had FF4 open all day on the same OS-version and it's consuming ~180MB acc. to Task Manager. Isn't it more likely that you're having a problem with some sort of plugin?

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[supersloshy]

What Add-ons and plugins are you using?

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Anonymous Coward]

PS: From the time I typed 650MB above till I previewed and ready to submit, FF4 memory usage as increased to 725 MB...

Do you type slow or does FF use memory fast?

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[DogDude]

It's because of exactly what you're describing combined with a broken file association system (long after I removed FoxIt PDF reader because it wasn't working, Firefox was, inexplicably, still trying to launch it), that I moved all of my business and personal machines to Chrome last week. Adblock for Chrome works better, everything renders faster and better, and we've had no crashes or memory leaks. Bye bye, Firefox, hello, Chrome!

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Haedrian]

I don't really have any leaks to be honest.

What I found however is that since I've been using firefox for years now, the plugins which are from the time when every site needed a video plugin, are still there. Go to about:addons, find the plugins tab and rip out anything which you don't need. Do the same for the addons. When you've removed the junk, then see if the leak is still there.

I leave FF on constantly, and I hibernate my computer, such that in certain times it'd have been running for more than 50 hours - no leaks either.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[diegocg]

I have been reading about firefox leaks for years, yet I have never seen them. I have always thought it must be a problem with some configurations, or a myth/antifirefox propaganda.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Rich0]

The whole reason I switched to chrome was that it fixes many of these fundamental flaws. It is a lot more like what Firefox used to be - lean and efficient. Granted, they're adding on the features as well, but at least tabs are self-contained and it doesn't suck down RAM by the hundreds of MB.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

So did I, until I got Firefox4. I am considering rolling back to FF3.6 or switching to chrome.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[misexistentialist]

During normal browsing I get up to 1GB, and with more intensive browsing I hit 2GB when it becomes useless (this is an application--I have 8GB RAM). 3.6 would get unusable at 1GB, but it handled 25% more tabs with that memory than 4.0 can. Deep disappointment fills my soul. (And before anyone tells me to disable addons: with no extensions I would use another browser, since even IE can be faster than FF)

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Reality Master 101]

I gave up on Firefox and the memory leaks a year ago. Have never looked back. Chrome is SO much faster. Things pop instantaneously. I don't have to restart my browser constantly because of the out-of-control memory. Do it and be happy with browsing again. Firefox sucks, and you don't realize how much it sucks until you start using a browser designed for speed.

And to those who claim "Firefox works for them," I say congratulations. I don't know why your Firefox doesn't suck, but it sucked on every computer I've run it on. It probably has something to do with the sites I visit that you don't.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[tayhimself]

Haven't had any bad leaks, but it seems a lot more jittery on Windows 7 than 3.6. It is slightly better on OSX than 3.6. Driving me nuts tbh.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[basotl]

I'm not experiencing leaks like that either. I would check what cruft you may have in your installation and how much caching you have it set to do.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Compuser]

Seconded. On my machine FF4 leaks badly. Granted, my tab usage oscillates between 30 and 60 tabs but after about a day the usage goes beyond 1.2 Gb and then I have to force restart FF4. It was a bit better with FF3 (went to 150 tabs for as long as a day). The most disturbing thing is that usage grow without me doing much to the browser, even leaving it overnight to just sit there seems to up usage by hundreds of megs.
My extensions:
Adblock plus
All-in-One sidebar
back/forward dropmaker
Beef TACO
BetterPrivacy
ChromEdit Plus
Download helper
Duplicate this tab
FireFTP
Flashblock
Ghostery
IE View
Image Zoom
Long URL please
Memory Fox
New Tab Homepage
Nuke Anything Enhanced
oldbar
print
ReadItLater
Reload Tab on Double-click
Remove New Tab Button
Session Manager
Tab History Menu
Transliterator
Tree Style Tab
URL Tooltip
User Agent Switcher
Webmail notifier

I am still waiting for a few extensions from FF3 to be updated so this list is about to expand.
And before anyone tells me to pare down the list, consider that these UI customization are
what keeps me with Firefox. It took me years to optimize the look and feel because I have very
strong preferences.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Anonymous Coward]

My problem is that after FF4 has been runnning for a bit, it constantly is "pausing" or seizing up for a half second to two seconds at a time. Perhaps once every thirty seconds or so it will happen. Just happened twice as I was typing this message.

If I shut down FF4 entirely and restart it, it will be fine for a few minutes, then it will start to happen again.

Just happened a third time there. This is on my Macbook 13", but it also happens on my work desktop where I'm running FF4.

My home desktop is still on FF3.6.x and no issues like this ever. Just happened a fourth time. Okay, I'm done typing, gotta go restart FF4 for the third time today.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Fnkmaster]

I have always agreed with you. Until now. FF3.6 really didn't have any issues. In fact, the whole FF3 series was great, and so was the 2 series. FF4 in the betas was very rough around the edges, and the big problem is the intermittent seizing-up or pausing (for perhaps half a second at a time). It happens every 30 seconds or so after FF4 has been running for a few hours on my Macbook. Same issue on my lightweight Windows desktop at work.

If I restart Firefox, it's fine at first. This only starts happening after it's been running for 20-30 minutes, depending on how heavily I'm using it. I believe it's swapping-related because it allocates too much memory. At least that's what I'm assuming.

My Windows box at home runs FF3.6 still and I have zero issues with it. I also never had this issue on my Macbook or my work desktop before I installed the FF4 betas. The FF4 final release, which I expected to resolve this issue, did not seem to.

I really hope they figure out why this happens. I know I'm not the only person experiencing it, since I've heard others report similar problems.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Fnkmaster]

Oh, and I'm only using Flashblock, Adblock Plus, and NoScript extensions on my Macbook. So I'm not one of these people with 20 installed extensions, and I think the 3 extensions I use are practically required to safely and comfortably browse the web and are among the most used extensions out there.

I think the issue is that my Macbook only has 2 gigs of RAM. Which is ridiculous. I see people in this thread saying they have 8 gigs of RAM and have trouble with Firefox 4 eating too much memory. This is absurd - you shouldn't need an 8 gig monster machine to browse the web.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[hedwards]

Back during the 2.x era there was a substantial memory leak which caused serious trouble under normal circumstances. But that has long since been fixed, anybody saying that at this point is probably either a troll or blaming it on an extension with a memory leak.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[maxume]

Try vacuuming your history database and turning off the malicious site detectors (they download a bunch of crap into databases).

I like how ridiculous that sounds.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

This troll is going to get +5 every single time there's a post on Firefox..
Firefox has actually a pretty low memory footprint.
Firefox caches a lot, as long as it can, but you don't see that in Windows Task manager. You can see it in Linux/Mac OSX ...

If you _really_ want to find a memory leak, open firefox, do your stuff, open the task manager, leave it open, stop browing and wait. You'll see memory go slowly down.
This is the garbage collector clearing out the cache. If it goes up by itself more than a few megs (it can always go up due to background tasks such as fetching RSS etc, but not by much), then its a leak. In that case I'd recommend checking your add-ons. But most likely, you have actually no leak.

One difference with FF4 vs FF3 is that the cache is per tab instead of being for the whole browser, so FF4 uses slightly more memory (still way less than Chrome which has a process per tab). This is also more secure as one page (tab) cannot easily access the memory of another page (tab).

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

actually, they do, Chrome is the browser using the most memory of them all. It doesnt mean it has leaks. Just uses more memory. Mostly due to heavily sandboxing and per process model.
http://www.dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory (yes, its a bit over a year old, but still)

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[TangoMargarine]

I've actually had the opposite experience; it seems to me they used to be worse when I started using Firefox (~2.0.0.4 I think) and they aren't as bad as they used to be. I used to have to restart it every few hours but haven't had that problem since maybe 3.5.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[vlueboy]

From the time I typed 650MB above till I previewed and ready to submit, FF4 memory usage as increased to 725 MB...

Researchers have determined this is due to a slashdot 3.0 feature codenamed "bloaty-fonts:"
Because 1 MB for each word of your comment "outta be enough for everybody."
*ducks*

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Waccoon]

This reminds me of my Mac days. Got a problem? Blame a plugin. It's can't possibly be the app's fault.

Sorry, but I've done all kinds of experiments, including wiping out all plugins and extensions, and I still have major memory leak problems. Typically, after 10 minutes of browsing, my browser idles around 350MB of memory usage, which is when all the freezing problems (presumably garbage collection) begin to rear their ugly head. If I look at "about:blank", memory usage usually goes down to a mere 250MB. I have no doubt that the type of web sites people visit might be triggering the leaks, so individual results may vary.

Incidentally, does Firefox use a multitasking garbage collector? Regular freezes every 10 seconds drive me nuts, and those issues would likely go away if the memory manager was improved. The regular freezing is my biggest problem with Firefox, and has been bugging me for over 3 years. This problem has never improved one bit since I started having the issue in a late release of FF2.

It's not like this is exclusively a Firefox problem, too. There's a Javascript-heavy web site I've visited that makes Chrome suck up 600+MB of memory before the browser crashes. No other browser I've tested, including Firefox, has a problem with that site.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Waccoon]

Does nothing, and I've tried everything possible to fix this issue.

I believe it's related to the garbage collector, because the length of the freezes appears to be proportional to the amount of memory being used, but the time between freezes is consistent (about 10 seconds). I first noticed the freezes in a late release of FF2.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Ash-Fox]

I don't have these problems at all. I've easily had hundreds of tabs open in several windows for a week and Firefox was only using around 500MiB of RAM.

My extensions:

British English Dictionary
Flashblock
HTTPS-Everywhere
IE Tab Plus

(Might be useful knowledge? I tried to use Adblock plus a while back, but that extension would slow loading of pages down considerably on my not so modern computer.)

I use 'Avast Internet Security' too.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Ash-Fox]

I have been reading about firefox leaks for years, yet I have never seen them.

I've really only ever had issues with Firefox when using adblock plus or skype toolbar. Beyond that, not a single issue that I can ever recall, which is quite impressive for any software product honestly.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

If you _really_ want to find a memory leak, open firefox, do your stuff, open the task manager, leave it open, stop browing and wait. You'll see memory go slowly down.

I am interested in getting to the bottom of this, so I tried your suggestion.

I closed all tabs except just one on this thread and went away for over an hour, with no activity and just one tab open.

On the upside memory usage did not increase.

But unfortunately it did not decrease either, so this appears to be a leak.

Here is what it looked like after an hour idle with ONLY ONE tab open.

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/1238/ff14.png

Others are reporting the same thing with just (what I consider) the essentials of Addblock, noscript. Also if it is an extension, all the caching makes it very hard to tell which one[s].

If the cache is per/tab Firefox needs to flush it shortly after it is closed, if the leak is in extensions, Firefox needs more sandboxing and cleanup, IDentification etc.

Fixing this needs a much higher priority than fluff.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[cats-paw]

flash has ALWAYS caused me problems, including seg-faults.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Soukosa]

Others are reporting the same thing with just (what I consider) the essentials of Addblock, noscript.

There was a bug report from about a month or so ago where ABP and No Script running together caused a memory leak. No idea if that's been resolved yet (since I don't use No Script currently) but that might be what a lot of people are experiencing.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[onefriedrice]

Isn't it more likely that you're having a problem with some sort of plugin?

A plugin that is allowed to leak memory is still a Firefox problem.

I use Chrome on machines that have plenty of memory. Chrome simply uses more memory. I can't run it on my old Thinkpad with 512MB RAM because it'll start thrashing with two tabs. So, I've been happy enough running Firefox on that machine. Memory usage does creep up, but it's not an issue because I power off the laptop regularly enough. I was hoping Firefox 4 would be slimmer and less leaky, but so far this hasn't been the case. Chrome may use more memory, but at least it doesn't leak it and it uses what it takes to make browsing fast.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Bacon Bits]

The cause of the majority of leak problems seem to originate from the extensions engine. People with more extensions or more complex extensions will see their memory usage increase faster, and memory usage will typically never decline. Many people blame extensions coders for poor coding, but, honestly, if you're going to have a system which allows end-users with little to no development experience or resources to generate executable code in the browser you should have a pretty robust engine for it with some decent garbage collectors. It would be ridiculous if JavaScript-heavy sites caused this kind of memory-leak-like symptoms, or if certain HTML codes permanently consumed memory like extensions seem to. People would harshly and openly mock IE if it had this problem.

You should be able to duplicate the problem by installing Firefox, installing 5-6 popular extensions, and then browsing for about a day without ever closing the browser. If you maintain more than 10 tabs open at the same time, more's the better. It's much better since 3.0 days, which I believe had more severe problems, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were still problems today.

Overall the real problem with Firefox is that Mozilla has no idea what stage of development Firefox is in. They have too many devs working on new hotness features and not enough on old and busted maintenance.

It's not a new or unique problem. Talk to a .NET developer about System.IO. The .NET Framework 4 was released a year ago, and the damn system still can't handle paths deeper than 260 characters. You can't even use the Unicode handlers like \\?\ because those functions don't have a .NET provider. It's a system-wide problem in Windows, actually, but the fact that the original "backward compatibility" argument they used 10 years ago is the same one they're using now -- and still not providing a widely supported alternative -- is ridiculous and appalling.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[williamfrench4]

That is my normal pattern of use. Or rather, it would be if the memory leaks and freezes didn't prevent it!

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Tim C]

Well for me, lately Firefox has been getting better, but in the past I've seen it using well over a gig of RAM. Perhaps it is some combination of my extensions and plugins, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[OverlordQ]

I have been reading about firefox leaks for years, yet I have never seen them. I have always thought it must be a problem with some configurations, or a myth/antifirefox propaganda

Ok, how about this one.

Firefox eats your memory in safe mode by doing absolutely nothing but opening it.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[Rich0]

Hmm, I run linux so I don't use the installer all that much (just on windows installs).

However, it does duplicate half the so's on the system, which obviously can't help its memory use.

For whatever reason it feels like it isn't using a ton of RAM. Perhaps firefox is just that bad on my install. The biggest pain I've had with firefox is that for whatever reason a delay in loading one tab can cause all the other tabs not to load anything either.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

The garbage collection which frees up memory does not free up the cache, so memory decrease slightly when you close tabs etc, but not drastically, if there is memory available. What's important is that it doesn't go up on it's own - that would be a real leak for sure.

The other way around, which is, memory not really being free'ed up cannot be seen through the task manager, so there might or might not be issues. That said, due to the architecture of firefox and the garbage collection the leaks are not very likely, or not likely to be big.

Now then again 1.3G seems way too much, but I see you have more than adblock and noscript installed. Maybe you could disable everything but that and enable one by one. To see which extension would be going wrong (as it's the most likely case)

I'll be the first to admit that it would be nice if the extension system could allow managing the extensions more closely on that regard - but it would probably restrict their flexibility.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

So it now seem to have unbounded memory cache use that it never frees.

Doesn't that seem like a problem to you?

Whatever the cause, this should be priority #1.

I say this not because I am trolling but because Firefox is my favorite browser and every day on forums I go to people are ditching it because memory use is climbing over 1GB and staying there with just a single tab open. When I actually paid attention, I discovered they were right and it was happening to me as well, so there was nothing I could say about it.

They don't care where the blame lies. Whether it is just perception, or extension leaks doesn't matter, Mozilla has to do something to keep that number in check or they will bleed users.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

Well have you tested those other extensions? I would disable everything but adblock & noscript (in fact, you might want to disable noscript too - yes its useful, but the code isn't exactly nice). I run FF4 on various platforms and for many customers, and have no such memory issue.

Mozilla is actually working on educating the coders of the most used extensions. One big "issue" is that if you want a 100% customizable browser, then extensions should be able to do anything.
If you want extensions to be "safe" then they're restricted a lot.

Mozilla made JetPack for this, restartless, "safer" extensions, which are like the ones in Chrome I believe, not that flexible but you can still do a lot. And keeps the "complete extensions" which can really change Firefox in any way they like - extremely flexible.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

I actually did do a test with all extensions disabled. I mass opened and closed about 30 tabs. Then let it sit. It was at 380MB after closing tabs. I went to bed, in the morning it was at 400MB...

How do tell what is cache and what is leak. Again what is the point of never releasing cache...

If cache is per/tab now, why doesn't it time out and release after the tab is closed?

I am sticking with FF because I don't run for more than a couple of hours at a time, and I some of the extensions I have become hooked on. Like speed dial that lets you zoom,crop to make mini readable web pages. I love that...

But it does look like FF is bleeding heavy user that see the memory usage as problematic.

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

the cache is force released when there is memory pressure aka when you're running out of ram for other things. For 20megs, its hard to say, but that's far from 1.3GB
So it sounds like it might be an extension. I'm not intimate with FF's exact cache management but "per tab" is a quick approximation, in reality most likely keep cache per page (except there's only one page per tab so its a bit like "per tab")

I've seen they started to to be more careful about extensions and list the "bad extensions" for startup time, i guess they will analyse for memory as well.
Many of the most used extensions are actually in that list ;-)

Personally the main reason I use firefox, beside that it works fine for me is that: http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto of course if it was worse than the rest by a fair margin i wouldn't use it - but - for most things it's actually still better than the rest imo, including memory actually (despite the fact that it wont release memory without pressure or if there's a leak. in chrome you can't see it since by closing the tab the process is killed. It will end up like that in FF too anyhow, while it uses more memory, it just makes things more simple)

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[guidryp]

Ok, thanks for your insight into memory issues. It looks like some mix of cache holding and extension leaks that I don't care to troubleshoot anymore.

  As I said, I am addicted to a number of my extensions which have no equivalent in other browsers. For windows I think, as a stopgap, Mozilla should have a force cache "clear now" button like they do for disk, that might save some grief they are getting. Or even an upper limit on memory used.

Geez, I just noticed I can't click your "manifesto" or other links people have embedded. Must be another extension interaction. :)

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[kangsterizer]

Well.. yes it must be lol. I can click it just fine ;-)
also this might interest you:
about:memory

Re:How about fixing memory leaks first?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Funny. I'm using FF4 on a 512MB machine, with 50 add-ons, and a few tabs. Not as snappy as I would like, but tollerable.

Firefox: bazaar turned to cathedral

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the slim, extensible browser? Good god. The whole point of Firefox is that it was supposed to be a slim browser that additional features could be added through extensions. Just add another interface to add features that you like but are not supported due to some shortcoming in that system. All of this is more and more features and UI changes that not everyone wants added into the browser. Add a new theme that does tabs on top, while keeping the old one for people who do not. Add a default extension to do social networking in the awesome bar. As I said in the subject: this bazaar is now a cathedral. Maybe most people like cathedrals because they are simpler for them, but do not be one while claiming that you are a bazaar.

Re:Firefox: bazaar turned to cathedral

[kangsterizer]

I sure would like that they revise the extension system to be lean and clean,a nd they could add each feature they like as an extension.
It could be bundled and on by default, if they wish, but we could disable the feature that way by disabling the extension. Clean and completely disabled ftw.

Firefox was nice while it lasted...

[Ron Bennett]

I'm sticking with Firefox 3.6x for as long as possible - it's very stable and runs well.

Firefox is making many of same mistakes Netscape did by trying to be everything to everyone.

On a related topic, the strong push to integrate social networking and apps into upcoming versions of the browser makes me wonder if Facebook is heavily influencing the development of Firefox these days.

Ron

Re:Firefox was nice while it lasted...

[mixmasta]

FF4 runs so much better than 3.6 I wouldn't recommend this. Some of the UI changes are problematic but thankfully most of them can be reversed. The only one that bugs me is the removal of the status bar, but I believe there is an extension to alleviate it. One of these days I'll investigate it.

Re:5 Already? Set your feet back on earth please..

[IB4Student]

I've been using 4 for over 6 months :-/ Firefox 5 is going to be out in a few months. And some of these features will be implemented in the nightlies soon.

How are they going to ship w/non-Free codecs?

[Qubit]

6. In-browser preview: Firefox will also get an integrated PDF viewer (like Chrome) and will extend this capability to more popular file formats, including MP3.

The PDF file format (or at least a certain subset of PDF functionality -- everyone seems to forget about that) is available for use under what I believe are royalty-free terms.

One of the biggest reasons why Mozilla was gunning for Theora (and now WebM's VP8) to be the defacto HTML5 video codec was that those codecs are believed to be distributable under FOSS licenses, without paying any royalties.

I'm sure that there are lawyers who remember the exact patents and dates better than I, but I'm pretty sure that there are patents that read on the mp3 file format that won't expire for several years. How is Mozilla going to ship with support for mp3 files without putting themselves and their users at risk of patent litigation? And if they do ship with mp3 support, does this mean that Mozilla has given up the fight for advocating for only Free/Open codecs, and is now willing to include H.264 support in Firefox and other pieces of Mozilla software?

Re:How are they going to ship w/non-Free codecs?

[basotl]

I'm having difficulty finding a Mozilla source stating they will have future mp3 support. This is still unverified in my eyes due to some of the arguments you brought up.

Re:How are they going to ship w/non-Free codecs?

[theweatherelectric]

I'm sure that there are lawyers who remember the exact patents and dates better than I, but I'm pretty sure that there are patents that read on the mp3 file format that won't expire for several years. How is Mozilla going to ship with support for mp3 files without putting themselves and their users at risk of patent litigation?

I think the answer is that they're not going to ship MP3 support. I don't see anything about MP3 support on the proposed features page for Firefox 5, 6, and 7:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features

MP3 support would only come to Firefox if the MP3 licence holders decide to licence MP3 under open, royalty-free terms. I also don't see anything on the features page about built in PDF support. It would be better if ConceivablyTech cited their sources.

Re:How are they going to ship w/non-Free codecs?

[aztracker1]

The fraunhoffer (sp) patents are royalty free for players... it's the encoders that they charge...

Re:How are they going to ship w/non-Free codecs?

[Qubit]

The fraunhoffer (sp) patents are royalty free for players... it's the encoders that they charge...

To quote the same Wikipedia article I've been referencing all along:

Additionally, patent holders declined to enforce license fees on free and open source decoders, which allows many free MP3 decoders to develop.[citation needed] Thus, while patent fees have been an issue for companies that attempt to use MP3, they have not meaningfully impacted personal use.

Note that the sentence there is one of only 3 with a Citation Needed mark (there are 66 other references on the page), so while I'm happy to hear that a wikipedia editor believes or wants to believe that to be true, I think it's wise to be cautious on this point.

The article continues...

In September 2006, German officials seized MP3 players from SanDisk's booth at the IFA show in Berlin after an Italian patents firm won an injunction on behalf of Sisvel against SanDisk in a dispute over licensing rights. The injunction was later reversed by a Berlin judge,[60] but that reversal was in turn blocked the same day by another judge from the same court, "bringing the Patent Wild West to Germany" in the words of one commentator.[61]

Unless you think the mp3 player is encoding to mp3, that looks like getting sued for selling an unlicensed player/decoder.

In February 2007, Texas MP3 Technologies sued Apple, Samsung Electronics and Sandisk in eastern Texas federal court, claiming infringement of a portable MP3 player patent that Texas MP3 said it had been assigned. Apple and Sandisk both settled the claims against them in January 2009.[62] Samsung settled as well.[63]

Same thing again -- looks like patent-holders going after mp3 players/decoders.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[basotl]

I dunno... I like the awesomebar.

As Extensions!

[phantomcircuit]

All new features in firefox should be implemented as extensions. That is all.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[gilesjuk]

It does seem like time for a Firefox lean and mean version. They've been bloating up Firefox for some time now and at times it shows.

Did We forget out history?

[xiando]

Once upon a time there was a browser named Mozilla, also known as Mozilla Application Suite, which grew and grew. It became a huge pile of bloat. A few developers refused the bloat started an experimental branch at Mozilla which eventually evolved into Firefox. Their goal was to create a mean lean browser without the bloat. This path was good. The new "let's throw in as much bloat as possible" path is a total scandal. I really hope some clever people take firefox 3.6.x and use that as a basis for development of their own without-the-bloat branch. I've used the Firefox browser since it was named Phoenix, and I do think it's gone downwards since a while ago. evince or okular or whatever read PDF files just fine. Having a PDF reader and a pile of dunkey dung built into my browser is not required or desired.

Re:Did We forget out history?

[ceoyoyo]

No, once upon a time there was a web with little beyond basic HTML, images and a downloadable file or two. And it should have stayed that way. All this web app stuff should have been done with proper apps using protocols other than HTTP. Any decent programmer who's had the misfortune to do any dynamic HTML work knows just what a horrible cludge the whole thing is.

Re:Did We forget out history?

[aztracker1]

My problem with integrated viewers, is it makes it a pain to just get a save-as dialog... At least half of the time I get a PDF, I want to save it for later..

Time for a reboot?

[Millennium]

When Mozilla 5's codebase got too unwieldy, they rebooted it for what we now call SeaMonkey. When what would later be called SeaMonkey's codebase got too unwieldy, they rebooted it for what we now call Firefox. Is it perhaps time for another reboot?

The backend work done for FF4 is good and much appreciated, but the it sounds like the team is resting on its laurels again: it thinks the work on the basics is done. Standards support is still not where it needs to be, yet they're working on fluff like site-specific browsers. It sounds like it's time for someone to go back to the basics again: just a browser in the core, with a good extension model for people to hack all these things into for people who actually want them.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[tepples]

Standards support is still not where it needs to be

Do you mean the missing points on Acid3 due to security issues with SVG fonts, or do you mean some other sort of standards support?

Re:Time for a reboot?

[kripkenstein]

The backend work done for FF4 is good and much appreciated, but the it sounds like the team is resting on its laurels again: it thinks the work on the basics is done. Standards support is still not where it needs to be, yet they're working on fluff like site-specific browsers. It sounds like it's time for someone to go back to the basics again: just a browser in the core, with a good extension model for people to hack all these things into for people who actually want them.

Hi there, I'm a Firefox dev. I'd like to point out that we are not resting on anything ;) There are people working on frontend stuff like this article reported on, and there are people (like me) who work on platform/backend stuff. These are different people, so if some people are working on app tabs etc., that doesn't mean that they are working on that instead of platform stuff. Both stuff is being worked on, but for some reason frontend gets more press ;)

Just a few examples of things we are working on in the platform: A Type Inference engine for JavaScript to make it even faster; a new graphics library; a split-process model (this already shipped in mobile Firefox, should ship in desktop late this year), support for lots of new HTML5 features (on both desktop and mobile), improvements to JavaScript garbage collection, and of course lots of other improvements big and small.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[kangsterizer]

What would be really neat, even if I bet its not high priority, is revamping the extension system (even more than with jetpack).
Musts would be:

- no-restart-required for any extension (ala jetpack)
- some way of monitoring the extensions (what they can do? bad stuff? How much memory do they take?) I know this one is prolly borderline impossible with XUL as it is, but hey
- function-as-extension. Why isnt mozilla using it's own extension system? We could disable what we don't like, like, for example, I really couldn't care less for the awesome bar and tab magic thing (I even forgot the name). There's prolly another 5 or 6 big features i'd just turn off. Don't be like Chrome.
- more focus on the extensions: they shouldnt be for power users, but for everyone. the website should be simple and accessible - not encourage people to install 50-100 extensions that will degrade their experience of firefox. For example there could be official addons and user supported add ons in separate categories.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people in charge of what features are cut need to be smacked and pointed at the idiots thinking up most of the features in TFA.
Firefox is becoming increasingly bloated with useless features that are better handled in plugins. Facebook integration? Please. In-browser format support for non-web-related formats? Please.
Firefox 4's UI redesign was enough of an irritation already. Most people happen to despise the tabs-on-top design, and where the hell did the status bar go?
So many awful decisions are coming out of Firefox as of late.
As someone said in a thread above, Mozilla spawned Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox because Mozilla was bloated with useless crap. Firefox is sure looking to blaze a trail in Mozilla's path and get forked or abandoned as a result.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[198348726583297634]

Hiya. Since there's a lot of hate in the comments here, let me just say:

Thank you for Firefox 4. It's faster and even less crashy than before. You guys did a great job. A whole lot of us really love the work you've done, including the UI tweaks.

Cheers,
An FF4 fan.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[Shin-LaC]

Hi there, I'm a Mac user. I won't care about anything you do in Firefox until you give me Keychain integration. Keychain support is what made Chrome a viable alternative to Safari, and in fact I mainly use Chrome at the moment. But without all my passwords, the barrier to seriously trying out Firefox as my main browser is just too high.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[Damnshock]

... a split-process model (this already shipped in mobile Firefox, should ship in desktop late this year)...

*THIS* is something I would really like to see in Firefox.

Keep up the good work :)

Regards

Re:Time for a reboot?

[gl4ss]

the problem is that a mature project interests immature users who think they're developers if they make ui suggestions and put them in a nice .doc. and good manners prevent people from telling them to fuck off, so the only solution is to branch your own(to get rid of the fuckwits so that hands in development aren't tied) and then the cycle goes again in 10 years.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[Count Fenring]

My question would be "Why is this specific frontend stuff being done?"

Integrating closely with external websites is stupid; yes, twitter and facebook have large user bases and aren't going away, but they're not guaranteed functionality; and if you're trying to take something as basic as the "Home" button off the taskbar, why add something complex AND not universally used to it?

Flock has an abysmal share of the browser market. This is because it's a stupid idea - browser chrome makes, by and large, a worse interface to social media than the browser PANE.

I'd really like to know where these ideas come from, and what the vetting/decision process is.

Note - this is coming from someone who is relatively happy with firefox 4, modulo the status-bar UI decisions. Great job speeding it up.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[mixmasta]

Nice to hear. Of course the first thing y'all should work on is a way to deallocate memory when tabs and windows are closed. I'm tired of having to restart the browser every other day (for the last 10 years) because it doesn't happen.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[firewrought]

I'm a Firefox dev. I'd like to point out that we are not resting on anything.

For what it's worth, I just want to say "thanks" to you and the rest of the Firefox team for building the browser that provides my primary interface to the internet all day long. Glad to hear about the split-process model... can't wait to try it out! :-)

Re:Time for a reboot?

[kripkenstein]

I'd really like to know where these ideas come from, and what the vetting/decision process is.

Well, first of all, these are just ideas someone had - the article isn't reporting on concrete plans for anything. It is very possible these features will not be decided upon, and something else will be.

Second, I do platform stuff and not frontend, but basically discussions are done in IRC, and in publicly open meetings (like this), where anyone can dial in and listen or interact. Eventually decisions are made, however like many open source projects, often code decides in the end (if no one writes code for a feature, it dies, and vice versa).

Re:Time for a reboot?

[Count Fenring]

Fair enough; I should have done further diligence in looking for public records ;-)

Is there any more feature-oriented way of looking at these? I'd like to see the arguments for dropping the status bar content, for example.

Re:Time for a reboot?

[kripkenstein]

I suspect the best way to find that out is to search for a blogpost about it, I remember there being one. Best I can find now is this, which is related.

Might be even faster to ask on mozilla's IRC (probably #developers or #planning) for directions to that information. Sorry I don't know more.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[ThunderBird89]

There's a lot to be said for using the privacy mode...

Re:Google and others are set out to destroy Firefo

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have kept the option to use the 3.6 interface or just extended it, than go completely alien.

They have. Right-click toolbar, uncheck "tabs on top" and check "menu bar". Done.

Re:Google and others are set out to destroy Firefo

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the programmers working on the project are from companies like Google who don't know what they are doing.

[...]

I admit, I'm using Chrome right now because Chrome is better

What? Just.... what? Do you even read what you write?

To all the people who aren't intentionally tolling

[nzac]

Did you say the same things about Firefox 4 (and possibly some of you 3)
Why are you still all here is Firefox 4 was so bad? Is it possible it ended up not so bad.

I would think when Mozilla say they are going add these features this is list of things they would like the browser to be able to do not the new emphasis of the browser. They may back down and leave some of the status bar at the bottom (making it better for my 600 vertical pixels) is the idea does not really work.

And if Firefox is having memory leaks is probably your fault go though and remove all your weird extensions and check to see if you have any plug-ins you don’t need (about:plugins) a lot of you sound like you might have installed the h264 plugin from Microsoft because you just want it to play there are numerous reports that it has memory leaks.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[93 Escort Wagon]

They're worried that someone looking over their shoulder as they navigate will see their porn.

There's a lot to be said for using the privacy mode...

How does privacy mode help when someone is looking over your shoulder? Does it surround you with curtains?

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[ThunderBird89]

Possible, if it's your own privacy mode.

But I think what he meant was that after surfing for porn in normal mode, Firefox stores the history, and as he begins typing something else, the porn sites pop up as possible matches, for anyone looking over his shoulder to see. If he surfed for porn in privacy mode (and unobserved), FF would not store them in history, so he wouldn't have to worry about them popping up when trying to show someone else something.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[countertrolling]

Firefox used to be the lean and mean version of Seamonkey.. Now it's just as fat with none of the functionality. So now we need a lean and mean version of the 'lean and mean' version..

Yes, I use many extensions(18), but...

[guidryp]

Many have questioned my extension usage.

I use many, 18 to be exact. But it is the extensions that make Firefox great. If I have to stop using extensions, then I would definitely give up on Firefox.

Trying to diagnose which ones are causing issues is also problematic as Firefox still seemed to grow memory for quite a while when I disabled all of them. It fluctuates even when it is sitting idle.

In use Extensions:
Adblock +
BBcodeExtra
BetterPrivacy
Download Statusbar
Download Helper
FireGesturs
FlagFox
Flashblock
FxIF
Lazarurs: Form Recovery
Leechblock
Newsfox
NoScript
SearchPreview
Simple Timer + clocks
Speed Dial
Status-4-Evar
Text2Link

Any of these known to cause leaks?

Re:Yes, I use many extensions(18), but...

[Ash-Fox]

I've had performance issues with Adblock Plus, so I stopped using it a while back.

Chrome's PDF-Viewer sucks

[Phaeilo]

The title says it. Adobe's plugin can display slideshows the way they are supposed to work, by instantly displaying the next page when hitting down. Chrome's viewer just acts like a word processor sliding the pages up slowly, which sucks for reading some slides online.

FF5

[greatgreygreengreasy]

Has anyone else noticed that the abbreviation FF5 looks an awful lot like FFS?

Re:To all the people who aren't intentionally toll

[radish]

I think FF4 is great, I've been using it all through the betas. There's a couple of UI things I think need a little polish but compared to 3.6 it's night & day. Faster too.

Bulkin' it up

[Chewbacon]

Why not leave social features to extension developers? When I find something I want to share I usually do it via my rss reader on my iPhone or copy and paste in firefox. This will just slow down firefox and add weight to it. Boo bloatware!

And so it begins...

[mario_grgic]

Firefox is opening itself for a storm of security issues with a PDF viewer. Virtually anyone that has attempted to make a PDF viewer has opened themselves up for security issues with the implementation. Honestly, this is a horrible direction to take. Every platform in existence (including most mobile OSes) have PDF viewer built in, so why not use it. Have the user download the document and view it.

Re:And so it begins...

[Ash-Fox]

Virtually anyone that has attempted to make a PDF viewer has opened themselves up for security issues with the implementation.

Same can be said for almost any other format. Even Joint Photographic Experts Group decoders aren't free from this.

Every platform in existence (including most mobile OSes) have PDF viewer built in, so why not use it.

I didn't get a Portable Document Format viewer built into Windows XP, Windows Vista or even Windows Seven and those happen to be dominant desktop operating systems out there.

Re:And so it begins...

[mario_grgic]

Windows XP is completely irrelevant. It's a 10 year old OS that has reached its end of life. Windows in general (despite not being the most popular OS if you include mobile OSes), is also quite irrelevant, since people that use it use (usually equally ancient version of) Internet Explorer, either due to ignorance or due to corporate policy. People who consider alternatives and settle for Windows on the other hand are not the kind of people whose software tastes should dictate the feature set of open source browser catering to multitude of platforms and users who know better.

Re:And so it begins...

[Ash-Fox]

Windows in general (despite not being the most popular OS if you include mobile OSes), is also quite irrelevant

Cool story, bro.

Linux + {DF

[ElusiveJoe]

PDF viewers on Linux suck, too. It amazes me, how evince starts redrawing the document for a few seconds when I zoom in / zoom out. C'mon, it's not 1982, how could this be so bad?

Re:Linux + {DF

[moonbender]

Just tried it on an evince I had already open: for the most part, the zoomed in content is displayed instantly, with an enhancement step finishing within a split second. Only at high zoom (200% and up, rarely useful), there starts to be delay of up to a second. I assume YMMV depending on your system and the document itself.

Re:Linux + {DF

[Risen888]

That's Evince, not "PDF viewers on Linux." Okular certainly doesn't do that. Y'know, for all the crap I hear about how slow and bloated KDE is, in my experience the application suite completely outperforms Gnome.

Re:Linux + {DF

[Lennie]

Because the format sucks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XYqsf4JEY

The format is ambiguous.

Web site integration

[ElusiveJoe]

I don't like it. Get this Facebook/Bing/Yahoo/Flickr/Google/Ubuntu marketing crap out of my browser! I don't care who pays you and what for.

If That's All

[hduff]

I'll just wait until FF6.

I swear, it's like the evil marketing people have hijacked FF development. Lot's of sizzle, but no real substance.

memes

[Anonymous Coward]

are for retards

Re:memes

[Maritz]

The idea of something being something, and the idea of retards, are memes. ;) Not 'internet memes' though I accept...

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[PieSquared]

The only thing I can think of is that they haven't used it much. I mean, if all you want to type is URL's it will add a few keystrokes until it 'learns' the ones you frequently use, I guess. But if you ever can't remember exactly the name of a website it's a good way to search only your browser history rather then everything on the internet. It's honestly one of the few things I actually miss going from firefox to chrome.

Re:Oh well..

[Lawrence_Bird]

Dont know why the AC was modded down as what they say is true. Firepig has turned into just that - bloat and gimmicks. It is slow and still has memory issues (far more than the other browsers). While only an every now and then user of Opera, it does seem more responsive and innovative though I'm kind of set in my way interface wise and extension wise which makes moving a last resort. That though is coming closer.

Why, for once, can't the developers put on a feature freeze and tackle head on performace (speed, memory usuage) issues? Does anyone even try to track how many of these "must have" new features people actually end up using? Firefox should focus on the basics and do them the best before going forward with anything new.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The bloat is irritating to those of us who first switched to Firefox for a lean, fast browser.

What has irritated me more recently though is all the half-baked functionality and poor quality control. Right now, using Firefox 4 on my development PC, I have everything from obvious keming errors in the typography engine that make some words literally illegible up to intermittently and unpredictably completely breaking Java applets, via a really irritating UI for add-ons and extensions that has more basic usability problems than I care to list in a short post here and performance that is now pathetically slow compared to every other browser I use (and for the record, that is with just a handful of extensions installed, all of them mainstream and with positive reputations).

If they insist on releasing much more rapidly -- and as a web developer, I'll just note here that I no longer make any contractual guarantees at all about compatibility of my products with Chrome precisely because of their rapid release and push development process -- then it would be nice if they at least didn't break what used to be working while they're playing with the new toys.

Current usage 1.4 GBs...

[guidryp]

Back during the 2.x era there was a substantial memory leak which caused serious trouble under normal circumstances. But that has long since been fixed, anybody saying that at this point is probably either a troll or blaming it on an extension with a memory leak.

I am not trolling. I love Firefox. It is by far my preferred browser.

If I have to ditch my Extensions, then Firefox wouldn't be my preferred any more. Extensions make the browser IMO.

I kept Firefox open since my first post. It is now consuming a whopping 1.4 GB with three tabs open...

If it is extensions, Firefox has to sandbox, isolate, control them.

That should be a much higher priority than adding a bunch of useless fluff.

Re:Current usage 1.4 GBs...

[AmiMoJo]

You should try creating a new profile. 1.4GB is ridiculous, I run Win7 x64 and even with 7-8 tabs the memory usage is 200Mb. I have 15 extensions and a few plug-ins installed too.

Profile issues are the number one cause of this sort of thing, followed by plug-in problems.

Re:and not origianlly

[lennier]

Originally, all there was was Netscape Corp.

And originally originally, there was NCSA Mosaic, from which "Mozilla" derived the "Mo" part.

Re:Oh well..

[Elbereth]

Good luck with that... it seems as though the old-school Mozilla fans have sneakily come back to power, and they're dragging Firefox down the same ill-fated path that it was going when everyone jumped ship to Firefox. Ironically, it seems as though we need a new spinoff in order to get back to basics, stop people from bloating the main program with useless features, and get rid of the corporate assholes.

I'd jump ship to Opera or Chrome, but neither really appeals all that much to me. I want a browser with a fucking status bar, and none of the current generation seem to offer this simple feature.

God dammit

[Zorque]

What happened to all the buttons in those shots?

You know: back, forward, stop, refresh, etc. If I have to click twice to use those you're only making it harder for me, and for what? To save 10 or so vertical pixels? I'm already pissed that you idiots removed functionality from the status bar without any good reason. Quit making your browser useless in an effort to save screen space, when resolution sizes are only going up.

Re:God dammit

[kangsterizer]

the status bar is actually there - like chrome - and its fine that way imo.
if you want the loading progress, it was never accurate and cannot be accurate, so that one was useless.

Re:God dammit

[morgaen]

You ever try mouse gestures? It's a hell of a lot more efficient (for me anyway) than clicking buttons.

More important than the listed features

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Mozilla Foundation really wants to promote the idea of apps in the browser (and I think they do because they are increasingly blurring the line between apps and tabs), they must introduce proper sandboxing to Firefox. Otherwise, Firefox will be insecure by design, and no extension will help to fix this gaping flaw.

Time to start looking for a replacement, I guess.

[Seumas]

Chrome doesn't do it for me. I really like Panorama for my tabs and it doesn't have anything like it. It still seems to have a dirth of good extensions and I don't care for the "app store". I just don't see it as an alternative. The only thing I use it for is playing Netflix in a window while I do real work in Firefox.

Also, I don't want a "home" button or a "home" app. Who the fuck uses a home page, anyway? Doesn't everyone have their browser set to load the last session they had when they closed the browser? So instead of giving me a useless button, I get to also have a useless tab taking up horizontal space, too. Wonderful.

Losing me at the "social sharing feature", too. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, or any of those other pieces of crap. I want a browser for browsing. I'm not a highschool kid. I don't need every aspect of my life to feed into self promotion and self indulgence and attention whoring and everyone I know will get along just fine without me forwarding some stupid link or throwing out an inane comment (at least I keep that narrowed to the Slashdot world!).

It sounds, to me, like they're trying too hard to be that Flock fork that was around some time ago. Of course, socializing the browser isn't the worst thing they could do. The worst thing they could do was already done awhile, ago. . . . with those fucking inane "browser profiles" that let little girls decorate their browser in a pink-heart background with ponies.

Wikipedia says 2012 - 2017

[Qubit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

The various MP3-related patents expire on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S. The initial near-complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1, 2 and 3) was publicly available on December 6, 1991 as ISO CD 11172. In the United States, patents cannot claim inventions that were already publicly disclosed more than a year prior to the filing date, but for patents filed prior to June 8, 1995, submarine patents made it possible to extend the effective lifetime of a patent through application extensions. Patents filed for anything disclosed in ISO CD 11172 a year or more after its publication are questionable; if only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered, then MP3 decoding may be patent free in the US by December 2012.

So yes, it's possible that the patents will expire in 2012, but it might actually take 5 more years.

With that kind of ambiguity, I can understand someone bringing the idea up in a meeting of long-term goals, but I definitely wouldn't pencil anything in on a roadmap, unless it was scheduled for after 2017.

In any case, why does the browser need to play mp3s? Baking-in a PDF reader that undoubtedly won't handle all of the quirky, latest-Adobe-version PDF add-ons is already a sketchy affair, so why put support for another format in the core? I supported Mozilla and the rest for pushing WebM, but that's because there's a known need for video/audio in the browser, and they got about *half the known software/hardware universe* to sign up for the darn thing (even Adobe + Flash signed up!).

Re:Wikipedia says 2012 - 2017

[ChrisMounce]

If you're just implementing a MP3 decoder (which is all Firefox would need to do to play MP3 files) then you might not have patent issues even today: http://lwn.net/Articles/166346/

It's a shame the Slashdot article didn't link to any sources.

But we don't want documents in PDF!

[Qubit]

There are a whole hell of a lot of advantages of working with documents in text formats like plaintext and HTML.

If Firefox bakes-in a PDF reader by default, then the increasing number of people who send EVERYTHING in PDF format (it's basically become the new interchange format instead of Word or Excel documents) will transmit even MORE stuff as a PDF, now that they know that I have a PDF reader right in my@#$%$% browser. This would be fine if PDF were a lightweight, simple format that guaranteed me access to the actual text of documents, and that interacted with all of the rest of the elements on a webpage in a nice fashion. But it's not.

Putting data into PDFs on the web is like making little data silos. Is it better than receiving documents in Word or Excel format? Yes, sometimes, especially when the content is just going mono-directionally, but for any documents that I want to copy data from, PDFs can present problems.

More content in PDFs just makes me feel like it's Flash-in-a-webpage or Quicktime-in-a-webpage all over again.

Keep the web clean and elegant. Please!

Re:But we don't want documents in PDF!

[Targon]

The problem with Word and Excel formats is that the results you get will often change from computer to computer, or version to version. There are places where MS Word 2010 will render documents slightly differently than Word 2007, or 2003. There are clearly times when all you care about is editing and content, but when you want to push out something that SHOULD be presented the EXACT same way, no matter what the platform is, the Microsoft formats do not do the job.

Tax forms, or the official document manuals(that are no longer printed and included with almost all products) should always be presented to users the way they are intended to be, and that is where PDF comes in. I do feel that most people do NOT need the new features in the latest PDF formats, so a locked down "minimal" PDF just for documentation, without all this active content stuff could be built in and could be VERY fast if done correctly.

Re:But we don't want documents in PDF!

[Qubit]

Tax forms, or the official document manuals(that are no longer printed and included with almost all products) should always be presented to users the way they are intended to be, and that is where PDF comes in.

Funny that you'd mention tax forms.

For the last couple of years my bank has tried to give me some mutant PDF fill-in-form along with data that the FOSS tools can't handle very well (I finally figure out a hack to get them to actually generate the document). Why they can't just nicely give me an HTML or plain vanilla PDF page I can't understand.

If PDF were a simple format controlled by a reasonable overlord that didn't try to bolt everything and the kitchen sink onto it, that would be fine. Or if banks and other organizations just used a small subset of PDF such that pretty much every PDF viewer out there could handle their documents, that would be acceptable as well.

The problem is that people just see "PDF" and don't see the complicated understory. Can we just have PDF_Tiny or something, and tell people to use that format instead?

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[Risen888]

Now that I've installed oldbar I really like the new location bar functionality (although calling it the "Awesomebar" is still dumb). It keeps all the functionality, but displays results in a much more condensed, FF2 like fashion (hence the name), which is a lot nicer to work with when going through long lists of entries.

Not a browser for nerds any longer

[walllaby]

What might be getting conveniently overlooked in these comments is the shifting audience spectrum that the Mozilla team is aiming for. They already had the nerd evangelists, that's done now. Tech circles have been suggesting Firefox over Internet Explorer for so long that now the less tech-oriented people repeat the same mantra by rote (even if they're not technically inclined enough to know there are better options). These aren't your programmers and developers, these are your tech support agents and Geek Squad employees. They have the keys to the public at large, and they still think Firefox is the bee's knees.

With a larger market share comes a shift in your audience's perspective, simply because you are pulling from a larger pool. The average netizen almost certainly uses Facebook and YouTube, might have a Twitter account, and at least knows what a blog is. Tech evangelists can only convert so many, so the Mozilla team needs more reasons to sway those who buy laptops at CostCo to download Firefox after launching the built-in IE browser. Social media is not going anywhere anytime soon, so integration is a likely step forward.

Your average person does not want to have to work to get his or her web content. Adobe FlashPlayer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, these are things that people encounter on a constant basis on the web. The more work Mozilla does behind the scenes, the more seamless an experience the user enjoys. I've encountered people who simply stopped using Firefox (after having it suggested to them) because their videos wouldn't play, and they didn't know any better about the installation of FlashPlayer; it was simply easier to switch back to the familiar IE.

With a growing market share, this sort of thing was inevitable. Nerds who crave a lightweight, extensible browser will latch on to another product... or we'll all just start using Opera. Actually, I'd like to see what comes of Chromium development. There have already been a couple browsers based on Chromium crop up (one in fact has the major selling point of being a "social media browser"), I'd love to see one based on staying lightweight and furthering extensibility.

Re:and not origianlly

[wshs]

Mozilla. Mosaic Killer. Learned that from a bloomburg channel show about mozilla.

please listen to the community!

[plastick]

Version 3.6 takes 176 meg

Version 4.0 took 360+ megs.

I'm back on 3.6.

I don't want those interface "features"! I want the memory issues fixed. Stop trying to copy Chrome.

I have Adobe AcrobatX. I don't need another "PDF Viewer" taking up even more ram!

Not another browser-based PDF viewer

[Bacon Bits]

I absolutely love Chrome, but the one feature I can't stand is the integrated PDF viewer. Why? You can't save the document to disk from the viewer, and you can't print the document from the viewer. Just what I want in a viewer: the lack of features which even a basic text document has. [Actually, I just checked Chrome 11 beta, and you can print now... not sure when that was added but it must have been recently.]

Who thought that was a good idea? I visit sites for work which generate PDF reports from javascript links. I can't right-click, save those. I sometimes need to print these reports once generated, or attach them to work orders or jobs in another web app. The built-in PDF viewer is completely useless for this. Nevermind if the PDF document has more complex features like forms, which don't work at all. Its one of the first things I turn off when I install the browser (and the inspiration for me tracking down the awesome ChromeAccess extension) now because it's so common for me to run into irritations with it.

Bloat Shit

[wadeal]

What happened to the browser that was based on being slim and having add ons for everything? Firefox is slower than IE9 as it is, this is just all useless bloated shit no one ever asked for.

Re:Oh well..

[dryeo]

SeaMonkey, status bar, normal menu, and for me, actually quicker then Firefox.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[dryeo]

My browser has a location bar that does exactly the same thing plus includes search. And you're right it is an excellent feature when used to it though a privacy feature would be nice.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[CyberPack]

+1 to the Awesome bar from me :).

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[ThirdPrize]

The thing is, you can only make a thing so "lean and mean". After you have optimized it to within an inch of its life, then what are you going to spend all that Google ad revenue on?

I'm really starting to lose faith

[Olipro]

First Slashdot posts a load of crap about how nenolod supposedly cracked the Motorola Android certs (hint: he didn't, it was a troll) and now you're quoting bullshit from some no-name site as gospel, go ask someone who actually works for Mozilla what's actually going to be in Firefox 5 and you'll discover that most of that article is complete and utter wank.

Why not just call it RockMelt 2 and be done?

[Goffee71]

Or, there's always that pesky IE9 upstart? But RockMelt (and FlocK) are at least trying to be brave and bold - PDFs are not a feature to brag about.

HTTP Auth dialogue

[cripkd]

Does anyone else HATE how the HTTP Auth dialogue blocks your entire browser? I thought they were working on this for FF4. Safari/Chrome already fixed this. Firefox changed all other notifications, alerts, password saving dialogues etc to tab-blocking (or straight up non-blocking) UI elements, why not http auth too ???

Re:Oh well..

[Elbereth]

I always knew they had something against me...

I must have been thinking of Chrome. Time to download Opera again.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[AmiMoJo]

They have the same problem as TV salesman. Most users never change the settings from default, so you have to make the default as impressive as possible. With TVs that means turning the brightness and contrast right up, giving the picture a slight blue tint and cranking the volume. Most people don't want it that way at home but it certainly looks good in the shop.

Similarly Firefox has all the "awesome" features enable by default but any serious user will turn most of them off. That would be fine, except that you can't turn some of off at all. They also like to randomly re-design the UI or depreciate settings that you were using. I am on FF4 RC now and half the add-ons I have installed are just to restore behaviour that the developers removed.

Should have been split process from day 1

[Viol8]

Using a multi threaded program when your HTML and javascript parsers were flaky enough to crash the program was a moronic decision. And AFAIR the Netscape browser used to be split process so did someone think that was old hat and multi threaded was the latest and greatest flavour of the month so thats the way Firefox had to go?

There is no excuse for using threads with todays versions of unix with copy on write and other efficiencies , its just lazy programming. Sure, use threads with Windows which has a hobbled process model but keep it out of the Unix arena please.

Re:Should have been split process from day 1

[wye43]

Having one tab hog all the resources and block another tabs is so old.

All the other big browsers have switched to some kind of multi-threading model quite a while ago, and I see Firefox will still crawl with a single line of execution model even in 5.
I remember quite vividly when the other browsers started having a solid multi-threaded model, it was when Firefox was at version 2.x. I remember boo-ing at the head dev lead at Firefox deciding that they will avoid the multi-threaded "sync mess" until version 4.0.

Now Firefox 4 was released (without multi-threading), and the plans for FF5 still don't include any plan to touch this very essential feature.

And now I see they plan to bundle commercial crap inside too
I'm glad I stopped using it
/rant

Re:Should have been split process from day 1

[Viol8]

Err , firefox does use multithreading. But a crash in one thread can bring down the whole process hence their desire to go back to multi process.

Chrome v Firefox.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I like Firefox because of NoScript. So I set Firefox as the default browser and use it to visit all sites outside our corporate firewall. I use Chrome without extensions, full permissions for javascript etc, to visit all servers on this side of the firewall. So corporate applications are happy. I am sure I will not accidentally trigger a drive by download. Firefox with NoScript with a very tiny whitelist creates a very limited and crippled web experience. That is good on my work machine. Less distractions.

In my home machine I am sticking with Firefox for now, till I figure out the equivalent of NoScript for Chrome. Firefox + NoScript + FlashBlock + AdBlock allows me to control what I allow to run on my machine and take up real estate on my screen. I am not giving that back to the servers and pages. Ever!

Fix Extensions/Addons

[mangusman]

They should really look at forcing extension developers to optimize their code simply because poorly written extensions trump all the latest and greatest speed improvements that they're coming out with.

Re:Time for a reboot? Make it not suck on OS X!

[forrie]

With all due respect, as I love Firefox, please improve its performance under OS X 10.x.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[Maritz]

Seems to me that people who have extensive, well-organized bookmarks are more likely to hate the awesome bar. Personally I think it's great and it's one of the things that keeps me on FF instead of other browsers.

Re:Idealism Vs. Reality

[Cederic]

FF introduced AwesomeBar in 3, and even today, no other browser comes close to the level of intuitiveness achieved by it. Chrome's Omnibox, IE9's onebar, they all pale in comparison.

Intuitiveness? Unholy fucked up stupidity beyond comparison. Nobody else has got close to it because they want their browser to remain usable.

I love firefox, and use it on all platforms (including my mobile) but please, don't insult us by pretending AwesomeBar was anything other than sardonically named.

Smartbar

[elucido]

If they would have called it this, nobody would complain.

Just Make Facebook/Twitter Add-Ons?

[doodaddy]

I'm all for new *light* features. But before Firefox copies every Chrome feature, please keep in mind that Chrome is supposed to be an OS and so it has some heavy stuff in there.

Maybe certain "signature add-ons" could be added with a check during installation. This could include the new Facebook and Twitter integration.

An add-on I'd love by the way, is popover blocking. I hate those things.

Re:Firefox5 would be fine if it's a major advance

[strikethree]

Or perhaps a person wants an address bar to be... wait for it: an address bar?

Or perhaps a search tool should be a search tool?

Or perhaps a person wants the history to be displayed when they use the drop-down functionality of the URL/Address bar?

Gnome, KDE, Firefox. The morons are legion. I will just stop using all of your products... Or perhaps that is what Microsoft wants?

What is with the designers nowadays? Have they been reading 1984? What twisted contortions of logic have to occur in order to assume taking away control from the user empowers the user? How does someone arrive at "4.0 is an alpha"? How does someone think that taking something from one paradigm and twisting it to another without any cues is a good thing?

Meh. I will eventually write my own software stack for *my* own use since what is currently out there is not even worthy of being called dog food (except the GNU command line utilities). Maybe if someone else likes it, I will share it with them... and then two decades from then, some smartass can "rework paradigms" again and claim everyone loves it.

strike

WTH?

[guidryp]

WTH?

I started a new empty profile and I still have this problem... I can't click any embedded links...