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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."
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.
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?
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)
I hope someone will be annoyed enough to start a fork which removes this gimmicky crap but keeps the security fixes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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?
coding is life
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
I dunno... I like the awesomebar.
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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.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
All new features in firefox should be implemented as extensions. That is all.
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.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
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.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
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.
:q!
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.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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...
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?
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!
#DeleteChrome
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.
new sig
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.
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.
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!).
coding is life
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.