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Mozilla Foundation Releases Firefox 7
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 7.0. It hasn't actually reduced my memory footprint at first glance, but let's hope that the memory usage doesn't keep growing like it used to. We'll also see if it crashes less often than once every three days or so."
The initial memory use of Firefox should remain similar to previous releases, but at least the heap shouldn't grow infinitely as it does in previous releases.
When did I miss Firefox 6?
Since people compare software by version number, one is at a competitive disadvantage in number software sensibly. FF7 would be FF4.3 were it not for chrome, why not call it ff 2011.3 and be done with it.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
What's with all the bitching about memory use? I have been using Firefox since it was called Firebird and have never seen any really huge memory use. For example, right now Firefox is using 231 MB. Now, being an old fart from back in the dark ages, the idea that a web browser would be using hundreds of megabytes of RAM seems really absurd. But, considering that I have 8 GB in my computer, who gives a shit how much memory Firefox is using?
Since the new "major version release" change, every time I've updated Firefox, I've had to fuss with incompatible plugins. I just upgraded to 7, and luckily, it didn't require yet another install of Firebug, though there were a few other incompatibilities. It's pretty much "add-on" roulette. Is this because of the new version system and version checking with plugins? Or just a coincidence. I can't imagine that so many things would be ACTUALLY made incompatible with each release. I can only suppose it's a flaw in the "checker".
Now that FF changes versions every time you blink and each one has at best minor changes, why even bother posting the new versions here? It's like posting that the sun came up in the East today.
Maybe a story about the acceleration in market share loss FF has suffered since this rapid release BS started would be more interesting.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Are people still bitching about that? Since I'm usually putting my computers in sleep mode or connecting to VMs that are running 24/7 I am having Firefox running for over a month straight on a regular basis. Both on Windows and Linux. About the only time I have to restart Firefox is to apply a version update. I can't even remember the last time that I had it crash on me that wasn't the fault of something like Java or Flash. I would definitely catch all sorts of hell from my immediate family if Firefox was crashing often or causing slowdowns due to memory bloat and they don't even use NoScript. I'm not sure what people are doing to make Firefox bloat or crash but I'm willing to bet that the cause is add-ons and extensions that they've installed and not Firefox itself.
Actually testing the code wouldn't be in line with Agile methodologies. If you don't like the code, you'll just have to live with it until the next patch.
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and hired whole departments full of people to test and document a stable release of software before it went out the door; these expenses can be done away with by outsourcing QA to end users in the form of autogenerated coredumps, and the documentation to the end users by third parties hosting banner-ad-funded wikis and web fora. Sure, the product was more likely to actually work, but the unacceptable downside was that under waterfall, users had months between patches, and were consequently several weeks behind the hottest trends in masturbatory UX fashion design.
Agile's so much better than that stodgy old waterfall methodology, because with Agile, you're always on the upgrade treadmill, and only have to wait a few days for the next patch full of bugs comes down the pipe. You may not know what version of the software you're running, but at least you're always up to date!
To suppress the URL trimming functionality, set the 'browser.urlbar.trimURLs' variable in about:config to true.
It's not that it's not tested. It's just that what the Firefox designers want is now completely divorced from what the users want. This has been clear for me since the 'awesomebar'*.
I'm trying out Opera. I used to be a Firefox promoter, moving people off IE6 and onto FF every chance I got; but now... all the browsers seem like necessary evils.
*Not that adding the awesomebar was bad... but forcing the awesomebar, and eliminating the option to turn it off, was. That's the behavior that indicates a company is putting marketing ahead of engineering.
I checked the developer summary earlier today and this new version actually contains some useful features for a change!!!
At least banks will let you use their web site because 3.6.x is tested.
v4 to Infinity? not so much.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
You're on the wrong tab dude, this isn't TrekBBS!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox isn't intended for other than consumer use.
Want stable and fast? Use Opera.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Actually I'm pretty sure it is Mozilla's fault. It's not the addon devs who decided to go to this ridiculous rapid release schedule.
Addon devs are volunteers. Expecting them to update stuff several times more often because some people in the ivory tower think that releasing every couple of weeks is a good idea doesn't mean you blame the addon devs. You blame the clowns who are screwing them over.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
A software platform that changes and breaks compatability every few months is a ridiculous idea. I have programs that I haven't changed in 15 years that I still use. Google aren't updating Google Toolbar for newer versions of Firefox, and it's just stopped working for me with this release of Firefox. Google Toolbar (specifically, Google Bookmarks) is the only thing that's been keeping me in Firefox.
Is there a browser or extension (other than IE with Google Bookmarks) that lets me use Google Bookmarks as a menu like in Google Toolbar? I've tried Opera with a third party add on but that just makes random icons hover in stupid places that don't do anything.
You do realise trolling is supposed to waste other people's time, right?
*Not that adding the awesomebar was bad... but forcing the awesomebar, and eliminating the option to turn it off, was. That's the behavior that indicates a company is putting marketing ahead of engineering.
about:config->browser.urlbar.maxRichResults->0
It just pisses everyone off.
We hated IE having 90% marketshare and was seeing the internet die to an MS only platform was frieghtening and killed the spirit of having it there for everyone. Firefox was a savior and a great fast product when it was new.
Without Firefox we would not be able to browse the web on our phones or Ipad as sites would still to this day only work with IE 6 & 7. IE 8 would never come out, as MS admitted it was to play catchup.
If IE takes over again it would be a return to 2004, where those of us who ran Linux back then had to dual boot to Windows to fill out job apps and goverment paperwork on the so called "open" web and that was insane.
So Firefox does something so stupid and insande that it turns the tides backwards after so much work and then makes us look incompentent at work when we have just finally got Firefox in our corporate images of browsers is offensive.
I do not care anymore. I run IE again because it is the best browser again on Windows 7 if you have verison 9. I do not like to, but Chrome's UI is too minimal and lacks too many features for me. If Firefox fixes the bugs and slows releases again I would consider going back.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm not sure what people are doing to make Firefox bloat or crash but I'm willing to bet that the cause is add-ons and extensions that they've installed and not Firefox itself.
Well, now-a-days, extensions are a standard in every browser worth of that name. Different people have diferente needs and preferences, and that's why we want/need extensions in our daily workflow.
That being said, the fault rests on Firefox developers for not having adressed the problems that might be caused by the extensions. In fact, they didn't even adressed the extensions archaic system for years since people started complaining.
When was the last time you had to restart a mainstream browser to install/update an extension? Oh that's right, you didn't except if you use Firefox.
When was the last time your browser crashed on you because of a misbehaving extension? Who that's right, it didn't because Chrome and Safari (IE, anyone?) sandbox their individual pages, and if something crashes,then you just have to reload a page not restart the all brows...err Firefox.
There is a much better programming methodology...
I've never seen an SDK make such a big fuss about absolutely nothing and never felt my time so pointlessly wasted, and I've seen plenty of SDKs in the past 20 years...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Crap like personas would be a start.
Proper Agile is like true Scotsmen. Everyone's willing to tell you about them, but if you ask, no-one has actually ever seen such a thing for themselves (but they usually know someone who knows someone who did - usually a guy who wrote a book on it).
You need to test the product as well, not just the code.
Like, you know, click around that shit and make sure that it works as intended? 100% unit test coverage is not guaranteed to do that - in fact, it can be very far from it.
It isn't as rosy as it sounds, at least in my general experience (practice always deviates from theory right?).
The theory is you write your unit tests first, and then code until you pass. In practice two things go wrong:
1) You make a mistake writing unit tests (I have seen many times where *only* buggy code could pass the incorrectly written unit tests).
2) Passing even a well-conceived unit test inspires overconfidence. I have encountered more than a few people who honestly believe passing all unit tests as an automated part of a build process was sufficient and no human testing was required.
In short, sure, officially it endorses testing, but really only speaks much to automated unit tests and less to actually taking the time to let some users dig in and do nothing but make sure those users validate you did the work correctly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I love the awesome bar. It's made my browsing faster and more efficient.
Same here. What's not to like about the awesome bar?
Some people can't withstand awesomeness of that magnitude. Like bacon.
That's not it.
And reading through it, as couple of years ago, I do not see any way to disable the awesomeness bit they have added.
I do not mind it at home, but I can hear my office laptop's HDD cringe and Fx freeze every time I try to type/search something via URL bar.
The problem is not the "awesomeness bit" itself - the suckage is inside the SQLite used in the background, degrading performance by hitting HDD way too often and with high latencies. As if it can't cache the few MBs of the history/bookmarks in the RAM... Just like all browsers did it before and all sensible browsers go on doing it right now. But Mozilla IIRC is dead set on using the SQLite... Well, I'm on 3.6 - time will tell what my next browser would be. Not FireFox, that's much I'm sure of.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
It obfuscates the distinction between content and control. URL goes one place, search terms go another place. I don't want it searching from the URL box any more than I want it searching from my login screen. When MS introduced Clippy, everyone hated it. But when Mozilla does the same thing, everyone gets creamy. Ridiculous.
Firefox used to be about fast and simple. Not options. You shouldn't have to search the internet to change the options on a software program like this. There should be a fucking checkbox in "tools | options".
It's not that it's not tested. It's just that what the Firefox designers want is now completely divorced from what the users want. This has been clear for me since the 'awesomebar'*. I'm trying out Opera. I used to be a Firefox promoter, moving people off IE6 and onto FF every chance I got; but now... all the browsers seem like necessary evils. *Not that adding the awesomebar was bad... but forcing the awesomebar, and eliminating the option to turn it off, was. That's the behavior that indicates a company is putting marketing ahead of engineering.
I think Mozilla really have shot themselves in the foot. I've used Opera for years - since it was a paid-for application - with Firefox as a fall-back for the odd site with non-standard design. It's easy to knock Opera for being closed source but I've found it has consistently had the best interface and changes have mostly been incremental and fully tested prior to release. Opera have also made a lot of innovations in ease of usage making it a very aesthetically pleasant and ergonomically refined browser. Firefox in comparison has a clunky (in my opinion) interface and occasionally breaks. Good luck with your trial. I hope you find Opera as satisfactory as I have.
"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead!" - Stan Laurel
Mozilla has let people turn off the smart location bar since Firefox 3.5. Preferences > Privacy > Location bar > set to "History" or "Nothing"
It's painful like seeing a great book being turned into a terrible film by focus-group driven studio executives.
I genuinely wonder how long this will last before enough geeks get annoyed enough to start a credible fork and push it into the mainstream as the presumptive replacement for Firefox. The backlash has been obvious, public, and intensifying with every version since the silly numbering fiasco started (and all the other problems that have come along with the runaway release process began, since the numbering itself is mostly an unimportant distraction).
Firefox is open source, and major open source projects typically don't fork on a whim, but there is now a flashing neon sign inviting a few geeks with the time to do it properly to get very rich by making a Firefox clone with the good stuff kept, a lot of the not-ready-yet stuff dropped until it can be done properly, a more gentle UI evolution that is driven by actual usability testing and not the whim of whoever is in charge these days, and a PR guy who can eat Dotzler for breakfast in front of the business audience. I'm sure many people have considered this, and if a group with not only geek credentials but also good marketing and business savvy does it before Mozilla gets its house in order, then Mozilla is a dead company walking.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I don't want it searching from the URL box any more than I want it searching from my login screen.
So, set "keyword.enabled" to false in about:config and Firefox will not search from the urlbar (that's what the code calls it, so that's what I call it...if they don't call it "awesome" in the code, then even the developers don't believe it is).
Although Firefox 3 didn't expose every option to allow full control of the urlbar, by 3.5 they were pretty much all there, and you can now set just about any combination of behavior you want. I do think more config options should be exposed in the "options" dialog, but even an addition of a help on the context menu forr about:config options would be enough for most power users (assuming that every configurable option is listed there, and it should be, even if it is set at the default).
Firefox is pretty much a finished product (I don't care what Mozilla says) and we need at least one stable browser.
The Mozilla Enterprise Working Group are considering this proposal at present: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal
This would provide a 42-week 'stable' release of Firefox, with incremental backported security fixes "just like the old days".
Whether this will come to fruition or not is unclear at this stage, but at least it's being discussed.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Yes, users can choose another browser. Is that really all the choice that the FF developers wish to extend to their users? This "take it or leave it" attitude was one of the reasons that I quit using Gnome. The next feature that Firefox forces on you might be one that you don't like.