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Firefox 6 Ships Next Week, 8 Blocks Sneaky Add-Ons
CWmike writes "Mozilla is on track to release Firefox 6 next week, according to notes posted on the company's website. 'On track with a few bugs still remaining. No concerns for Tuesday,' the notes stated. Firefox 6 includes several noticeable changes, including highlighting domain names in the address bar — both Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 do something similar by boldfacing domain names — and reducing startup time when users rely on Panorama, the browser's multi-tab organizer. Meanwhile, Mozilla said this week that starting with Firefox 8, Mozilla will automatically block browser add-ons until users approve them, which should put an end to sneaky installs."
I'm using FF8 alphas on the Nightly channel, which is part of the Moziila PPA in Ubuntu. It's fantastic. It uses way less memory and is way faster. It's also way stabler than nightlies were when I was running Moziila nightlies in 2001, and they were pretty good even then. The only downside is extensions that haven't caught up. If you're clear for those, I heartily recommend it.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
FireFox7, aka FinalFantasy7, will have a huge step forward dealing with memory. FF6 doesn't have such nice awaited features. I'll skip #6.
-- Rastignac was here.
I'd rather they add some easy way to let users install addons that say, "Does not support Firefox x.x". They can put a big disclaimer/warning/alert to make sure the user knows what they are doing, but with the Firefox rapid release schedule I am tired of having my addons break because of version string issues.
One example is the Stylish addon. I am using the Firefox 6 beta in Ubuntu 11.10 alpha and Stylish refuses to install due to the version string. The addon info says it supports Firefox 3.6 - 6.0a2 (key part being "6.0.a2"). That tells me that it should work in later alpha/beta version 6 builds.
Firefox really needs to address the issue of how addons determine whether or not they are out-of-date. The browser version is no longer a useful metric for that.
First 4, then very quickly Firefox 5 and now version 6? Where is the consistency?
The consistency is that they are only incrementing the version number by '1' each time. Just be glad they didn't decide to use prime numbers or a Fibonacci sequence.
I suppose it's no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to Firefox development for the past several years, but for fuck's sake, listen to your users and stop with the version number inflation!
Seriously, what makes this a Firefox 6 and not a Firefox 4.2? What new features does it add? Apparently the only really "stand-out" feature is graying out anything that isn't the domain name in the useless-bar. I mean, Awesome Bar.
(Seriously, I like the concept, but I've had quite a few instances this past week where instead of finding "the page I was just on five minutes ago" it does something like "page 3 of this article you read two months ago" with no hint of the URL I'd opened literally ten times already that day. Awesome. Here's an idea, can Firefox try and fix it to make it useful? Like sort based on number of times a page was viewed, counting reloads, so that typing the URL to a forum doesn't find page 2, 3, 4, and 5, but never page 1 because I don't click on the page 1 link enough, I just reload the forum?)
But back to the version number issue - quick, how many people know what version number Chrome is up to off the top of their head? Anyone?
How many people using Firefox 5 here have literally forgotten that they're using Firefox 5, because the last really major update was Firefox 4? I still think of it as "Firefox 4" because it looks identical, and have to be reminded that they've inflated the version number for no useful reason.
Seriously, stop blindly aping Chrome! If you're going to copy something Chrome does, try and understand it! For example, take removing the status bar. Chrome will expand the little URL popup that replaced the status bar if you continue hovering a link. Firefox 4 and 5 don't. And for some reason they randomly switch between left-aligning it and right-aligning the popup. And for fuck's sake, why don't you just expand the popup to fill the entire horizontal width of the window?! I've got the room to display the entire URL! Why doesn't Firefox bother doing so?!
But kudos for aping (poorly) the feature in IE 9 that warns when third party addons have been installed and gives you the option of not using them. It's nice to know that you're going to go ahead and do that after crying about how it's impossible to do, even after IE had launched with that feature.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
They can't block "evil" addons like that, sure, but they can block "well behaved" addons that install as part of some other software.
Take the Skype addon, for example. In IE9, IE will ask you if you want to enable it the first time IE9 runs. Firefox provides no mechanism for that, and instead just blindly runs it.
This will tell you "hey, there's a new addon, do you want to use it?" and then you can opt out.
You're right that "sneaky" addons that decide to play evil will be able to get around it. But given that the way Firefox currently works, all "system-level" addons are "sneaky," this is still a good fix.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
FF6 has a new Tools > Developer submenu, and they moved Error Console, View Source and Web Console there. Moving View Source there was a big surprise. Any reasonable developer might get totally freaked out searching high and low for View Source if they didn't know about that move.
In case you missed it, Web Console in FF5+ is like the console in Firebug when you have it set to enter JS commands at the bottom of the pane. But the difference is, Web Console is always available. It's not a plug-in like Firebug. So it's something you can count on, even if you upgrade and Firebug breaks in the new version.
It is probably more aimed at commercial entities installing their crap without asking, rather than malware authors. That way something that causes instability will at least have be mentioned to the user reducing the risk of Firefox itself being blamed - like an extension to the facility already present to disable extensions that are know to cause instability.
While a malware author won't think twice about hacking around such a measure, a "legitimate" company will if they think doing so will create an opportunity for a competitor to give them bad press.
I'm probably pissing in the wind responding to an AC but here goes anyway. I've used Firefox since it was Phoenix 0.6. I've run Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox on Windows 2000 Pro, Red Hat/Gnome, on Pentium III and Pentium 4 systems. Firefox has always had an appetite for memory but I've never observed the kind of consumption you describe. I've loaded the high res HST image of the Helix Nebula with the intent of breaking Firefox and it didn't break. It just used seven hundred meg and wow, none of the memory leaked, it was all released when I closed the tab. I've opened two dozen posts on /. in separate tabs. I've opened a dozen tabs on a dozen windows and every time I closed them most all of the memory was released. So prove it. Download Sysinternals Process Explorer or something comparable for your OS and show us a screen shot that documents this claim.
The only downside is extensions
I've been loving Firefox for years, but this fast release schedule is driving me nuts. Every time a new "major" version comes out now, at least one or two of my extensions break. The first one to go (on FF4) was Ubiquity, which still isn't fixed, and the stupid thing about that is Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs extension. It's pretty sad when their own damn extensions can't even keep up, let alone 3rd party stuff.
So, back to your point about extensions being the only downside, honestly, do we use Firefox for any other reason? I could have ditched FF for Chrome or even IE9 (shudder) but it's the extensions that make Firefox so awesome, and that's what's suffering the most with this bullshit release schedule.
I still haven't gotten Firefox 5 completely back to the old 3.6 look and feel, which was more workable and required fewer button clicks. The last nagging issue is the one that Firefox no longer displays in the drop-down the history of links in the current tab, so you can't quickly go back to the top of a rabbit trail that you started down. Sometimes that was my only way out of stupid sites that disable the back button.
Oh, and the Federal Student Aid site (FAFSA.gov) only supports Firefox 3.5 and 3.6, one of which is no longer supported by FF and the other of which will also soon be not supported.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Really? You're actually trying to make an argument using product names as version numbers? You do realize that all those operating systems have actual version numbers, right?
3.11, 4.0.950, 5.0.2195, and 6.1.7600 respectively.
yes
I'm always suprised when I see reports like this because on my computer (4GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 7 Home Premium), Firefox and Chrome are pretty comparable memory-wise and Chrome is slightly faster, but only by a little. I very rarely have more than 10 tabs open, mostly documentation type stuff, not to many images or flash, and I've never seen a browser take up more than a couple hundred megs of memory. I'm definitly not calling bullshit on anyone who says this, but what I am wondering is if Firefox is just holding on to the memory to speed itself up and will it give the memory back if another program needs it. It's like in Linux, where if you just look at a simple graph on the memory your system is using it will always be around 90%, but if you investigate a little deeper in to the issue you'll see that most of that is being used as cache. It's very possible Firefox could be doing something similar.
Even with only 4GB of memory, I find I really have to go out of my way to start hitting the swap. If you have 16GB of memory, and the amout Firefox is taking isn't really hurting anything else, why not just let it have it? All it's going to do is make for a faster experience. The real question is what happens when Firefox's allocated memory starts getting in the way of other programs, it would be interesting to see some experiments testing that out because according to Mozilla themselves say they have most of the major memory leaks fixed.
Other issues could be poorly written plug-ins and bulky websites. I know there are a few plug-ins that allow you to manually clear out the memory Firefox is using, and can provide some more data on what exactly is being used.
Firefox 3.6.19 forever! I am now treating Firefox like an abandoned application. Google developers have now taken over. It may still be the best current browser due to its useful extensions, but it is like a bad copy of Chrome and imho inferior to Firefox 3.6.19 in most ways.
If I had to choose between Chrome and Firefox 4+, I really don't know what I would choose. Despite the horrible interface and all the badly implemented Chrome-ness Firefox 4+ still has unique functionality in the form of extensions like NoScript, Adblock Plus, and Scrapbook. They contain functionality that I just cannot live without and I haven't seen 100% replicated in any other browser. So I would probably be forced to stick with Firefox 4+ even though I prefer Chrome, Opera, and even MSIE in terms of the interface and usability etc.
Sure Chrome has NotScript, but it just doesn't work very well compared to NoScript. It's not a viable replacement. I ended up using the built in javascript whitelisting functionality which was a huge PITA. It was like going back to IE4 when I had to manually add sites to security zones by actually typing in the URLs.
If it some point a critical security flaw is found in Firefox 3.6.19 complete with exploits in the wild I may reluctantly migrate to Opera. Or maybe by that time someone will have forked Firefox 3.6.19 to at least apply security fixes as needed.
As of today Firefox 3.6.19 is still downloadable for Windows and Mac OS X and is available as a binary in the repositories of both of the Linux distros I use: ArchLinux and TinyCore.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
And am I the only one who has had issues with FF5 hanging CONSTANTLY?
I used to have 2 instances of FF3 and 4 open, one instance was 5 tabs of normal stuff, and the other instance was 12-15 tabs of flash pr0n (yeah, my dick has A.D.D. too) and it NEVER crashed....
Now with FF5, I open Facebarf, Gmail, and Stumbleupon, and it crashes like a college kid after a coke binge....
All you need is lurv.
There's a lot of people using the word "leak" probably without understanding the contextual meaning. I've never denied that Firefox uses a lot of memory but even back when I was running nightly builds during the v3 development cycle I didn't see the kind of memory consumption often claimed here at /. or Mozillazine. Your post made me realize that my test was tainted. Sometime in the recent past I began using Noscript to keep those pesky scripts from shoveling malware onto my system. Noscript can be an annoyance but it is better than the alternatives such. Now; dol we blame Firefox for memory problems caused by Java Script or do we blame Larry?
Could it be that Moz is using the Intel compiler? Because my exp is the opposite of yours but I am using AMD CPUs. If one doesn't set very specific flags on the Intel compiler it puts out crippled code for all but certain Intel approved CPUs. I have also noticed FF seems to behave a little better on X64 than X32 which may also explain why you aren't seeing it.
I can say on the AMD nettop I'm typing this on FF is unsuitable for purpose and has been since the 3.6.x branch due to CPU spikes and memory suckage.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What, are they doing a major rev every couple of months now to catch up to IE's 9?
Anyone else here having memories of the Slackware/RedHat/Debian version wars of the 1990s?