Firefox 8.0 Beta Available

An anonymous reader tips news that Mozilla has released the beta version of Firefox 8, only a few days after going live with the final version of Firefox 7. According to the announcement, the big changes this time around include the ability to use Twitter as a default search engine, more versatility in restoring tabs on startup, and improved user control over add-ons. "Users will receive a one-time notification to review and confirm third party add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete. When Firefox starts and finds that a third-party program has installed an add-on, Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted in, giving users better control over their Web experience."

Comments

fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

getting tired of their stupid rapid release schedule. who does it really benefit? what happened to stability and confidence in their product.

Re:fuck firefox

[Joce640k]

Um, the rapid release schedule is what gives Firefox its stability and confidence.

Re:fuck firefox

[Tsingi]

I use nightly. Updates every day. No problem doing that.

Re:fuck firefox

[JonySuede]

I use nightly too and everything is working fine, seems*1 faster than chrome and most importantly not a google spy.

1-Perception of speed is more important than a synthetic benchmark number....

Re:fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

They've just using the major number for what the minor number used to mean.

Very stupid.

Re:fuck firefox

[kilodelta]

Sure, because I note every version since 4 breaks certain JAVA functionality. That's why I note they're still updating v3.6.x and are on v3.6.23 now.

Re:fuck firefox

[AdamJS]

The rapid release schedule that started after version 3.?, you mean?

Re:fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, the rapid release schedule is what gives Firefox its stability and confidence.

You've got a point. Now that the UX team has moved on, I'm pretty confident that 3.6.22 is stable!

Re:fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are breaking Java, they are doing you a service.

Re:fuck firefox

[SiMac]

1-Perception of speed is more important than a synthetic benchmark number....

What!? You mean that "Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch's Scheme2Js compiler" don't capture the use cases of modern websites?

Re:fuck firefox

[lennier1]

But, it's got electrolytes!!! ;)

Re:fuck firefox

[Megane]

Just got 3.6.23 today. I guess it wasn't.

Re:fuck firefox

[Megane]

Try Seamonkey instead. It's still an old-school browser, and as a Mozilla product, it's been benefiting from the good parts of Firefox.

Re:fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC is not lean and agile enough to appreciate the significance of the new suit-muscles-teeth-and-botox.

Re:fuck firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling it every single mention of Mozilla is just as stupid.

• It's not going to change it.
• Nobody cares how bad your butt hurts.
• You're wrong. (I'd elaborate but you're also stupid. No point and redundant at this point)
• The correct moderation for your post is -1 Redundant.

Im confused

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Is 'firefox' a browser or a unit of currency in Italy?

Re:Im confused

[pixline]

Is 'firefox' a browser or a unit of currency in Italy?

Currency in Italy grows quicker than firefox version number, sadly...

Re:Im confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Is 'firefox' a browser or a unit of currency in Italy?

Currency in Italy grows quicker than firefox version number, sadly...

No, you are getting it wrong, in Italy currency is currently Euro, Firefox instead matches the number of underage whores bailed out from jail from the prime minister.

Re:Im confused

[RStonR]

Mozilla foundation has become crazy, maybe IceCat can become a full fork of Firefox?

After reading this article I think maybe they want to destroy Firefox on purpose.

Re:Im confused

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the Italian currency is Euro. It has been this way for almost 10 years. Update your jokes!

Re:Im confused

[marcello_dl]

I heard FF version number wants to track how many times Berlusconi has issues with justice. They lag behind, a bit.

Re:Im confused

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I'm not updating my jokes until overlords and flying chairs stop getting modded up. So take a chill pill and quit bein a turkey.

Re:Im confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a conformal mapping of the post WWII governments of Italy to the browser space, with a lemon twist.

Re:Im confused

[Darinbob]

But these jokes are stable and well maintained. There's no reason to update them as long as the IT back office guys are still laughing. These aren't those "your browser's so fat" jokes that change constantly.

Re:Im confused

[pmontra]

Italy recently slowed down the release cycle of its governments (3 since 2001). The post WWII governments of Japan seem a much more appropriate target for this kind of jokes. They've always been much faster at creating new governments than the Italians (50 vs 21 after WWII). The question is: which is Chrome and which is Firefox? :-)

Re:Im confused

[pmontra]

Bug fix: 50 vs 41, not 50 vs 21.

Re:Im confused

[Anonymous Coward]

They've always been much faster at creating new governments than the Italians

That's the magic of the Toyota Production System. ;) if something doesn't work, improve it right from the root. In that sense, the quick release of big version numbers and the resulting noise and breaking of add-ons suggest Firefox being the Italy (left vs. right) and Chrome being the Japan (LDP).

Re:Im confused

[Norailyain]

It's also a conformal mapping of the post WWII governments of Italy to the browser space, with a lemon twist.

mod parent up [funny, but with highly nerdy mathy humor]

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely not worth a new major version.

Re:Seriously?

[Beelzebud]

It's just a number. Deal with it.

Re:Seriously?

[underqualified]

I think you should stop caring about version numbers. They are just numbers after all. I personally prefer having small updates on something like a weekly basis allowing yourself to slowly accept changes rather than having large releases every couple of months and have a paradigm shift shoved down your throat.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most users immediately recognize that 7 -> 8 is typically more significant than 7 -> 7.01.
Now you're telling me I should wait for "Firefox Ack(n+1)" to experience significant changes from version Ack(n)?

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

... wait for "Firefox Ack(n+1)" to experience significant changes from version Ack(n)?

Um, Ackermann's Function takes two parameters.

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

You're wasting your breath. You might as well ask people to stop making "First Post!" or say "Gobal warming? it's freezing outside!" every time there's a cold day.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

My bad, Ack(n) is a function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function). Ackermann's function is A(m,n).

Re:Seriously?

[DarkOx]

If that is what you wanted you have been able to get nighty builds for a long time, before that you could have done CVS snapshots and done your own build, (easily scripted).

Major releases were nice because it meant as someone publishing stuff to the web you could count on the major it of users having one of about three browsers, times one or two previous revisions of those. It made it relatively possible to test things.

As end user you could be mostly certain that whatever version you downloaded or were rolling into your system images, had received some level of community exposure and any major problems would be known.

It just a matter of time before something really embarrassing like cookies not working or other such obvious thing that would have been discovered quickly makes it into a major numbered Firefox release now. This is STUPID>

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

Major releases were nice because it meant as someone publishing stuff to the web you could count on the major it of users having one of about three browsers, times one or two previous revisions of those. It made it relatively possible to test things.

As opposed to what...? Everybody having the exact same version as you since the updates became automated and invisible?

Re:Seriously?

[Anrego]

It's supposed to signify something. That's the whole point of having a major and minor (and build) number.

<something big changed and may require config changes>.<something relatively minor has changed and I should just be able to keep working>

I have no idea what the purpose of this whole versioning/rapid release scheme is... but from my vantage point it looks very silly.

Re:Seriously?

[mcvos]

The fact that they have a dot in the middle suggests that they have some structure; that the number in front of the dot is more significant than the one after the dot. Why call it 8.0 when it's just a meaningless number? And why is mine called 7.0.1 instead of 7 or 7.1 or 8?

In fact, why not just use build numbers? Just give me Firefox 7136 and I'll admit that it's just a number with no implication of meaning or structure.

Re:Seriously?

[Tridus]

I wonder at what point the people who support this nonsense will stop trying to reverse the tide by spitting at it. People DO care about the version number, no matter if the ivory tower planners think they should or not.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

No reason why you can't have both.

1) Security updates and serious bug fixes on an ad hoc basis
2) Incremental changes done weekly or monthly (no weird shit, like replacing all UI elements with touch pad gestures)
3) Reference releases x number of times a year, allowing plenty of time for developers and deployers of Firefox to prepare for serious changes.

Re:Seriously?

[Luckyo]

Or in case of proper firefox releases, 3.6.23. The last number was for minor crap like this release, middle number was for minor and major features, and first number was for very big changes.

Good thing 3.6 is still supported. Someone at mozilla foundation still has a shred of sanity left.

Re:Seriously?

[Luckyo]

As opposed to goal post that shifts every other day, and any of these days may break your desired functionality.

Re:Seriously?

[rubycodez]

You are wrong, the version number changes cause problems and break plugins, access to websites,and use of web-fronted configuration softwares. The computer cares, so we do too. Quit spewing that ignorant bullshit.

Re:Seriously?

[nschubach]

Obviously, the second is optional and defaulted to 0.

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

As opposed to goal post that shifts every other day, and any of these days may break your desired functionality.

If you're not following the standard then that's your problem, not Firefox's. If a minor release is going to break your website then it was going to break on the next major release anyway.

Under the old system you'd then have to support the old browser and the new one, I fail to see how that would be better....

Re:Seriously?

[schnikies79]

Deal with it is right. I no longer use Firefox.

Re:Seriously?

[Luckyo]

No, that's end user's problem.

You know, the person that can simply click "uninstall this shitty crap that breaks my favorite add-ons every two weeks" and be done with it. Which is what is happening now, with firefox shedding market share faster then ever.

Re:Seriously?

[surveyork]

Incidentally, Firefox 7.01 was released on September 30. http://www.ghacks.net/2011/09/30/mozilla-rushes-out-firefox-7-01-update/

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Changes to addon handling certainly may require config changes... But internal changes is where the major version really comes in: might break anything. They decided to have that ability with every release so that stuff like the Firefox 7 memory improvements could be pushed instead of sitting on the back burner for a year.

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

It's the end user's problem that you're not following the HTML standard?

I'm not sure I'd want to hire you.

Re:Seriously?

[Luckyo]

I wouldn't want to be hired by someone that doesn't have a faintest clue on how real world, and customer services that function in it work.

That's a recipe for being jobless in a year.

Re:Seriously?

[NotBorg]

I honestly don't care about version numbers. They really do not matter at all. I don't understand why everyone is so OCD about them. Do you actually chose products by how they number their releases? Why is it such a big deal that every single mention of Mozilla someone has to complain about the version numbering? I honestly wish they'd correct a spelling error in a /* comment */ and release it as version 2371 just to piss you silly ass clowns off.

You have more to say about the version number than about how the product works. It's like writing a negative review for a product on consumer reports based solely on the model or part number (except that Slashdot doesn't really have the effect you think it does). "This is a horrible product because the part number is 38271. If it were shorter like 123 I could remember the number and save $$$hundreds of man hours$$$ when filling out requisition forms." Are you for real? Version numbers the down fall of Mozilla?

TBH, I'd rather have more frequent smaller releases than a jumbo release once or twice a year. It's loads better than having 50 features that they've been sitting on for half a year (or longer) in various states completion all rolled out at one time so that it takes another 6 months of testing just to see if it all works together. It's got to be simpler to just pick a few features that you feel are ready, iron them out, and release. There's no pressure to roll that half baked feature. You don't have to worry about the feature being delayed for half a year just because it didn't get picked up. Instead you might have to wait a few weeks. When it's right: it goes. It's got to be better than: when it's crunch time it gets jammed in just so it doesn't have to wait a year.

Good riddance gargantuan releases. Hello sane incremental releases with a few ironed out features (even if it pisses off the version number nazis).

Re:Seriously?

[Joce640k]

Maybe you could cite a "real world" example to back up your vague handwaving.

ie. A concrete example of how the new update system has made your life more difficult then the old system.

Until then you're just in the "talk is cheap" category of interviewees.

Re:Seriously?

[Rhaban]

I think you should stop caring about version numbers. They are just numbers after all. I personally prefer having small updates on something like a weekly basis allowing yourself to slowly accept changes rather than having large releases every couple of months and have a paradigm shift shoved down your throat.

I would be cool with frequent small update with any numbering system, if it didn't mean that half add-ons would stop working because of the new version number (whether or not the update actually broke the extension; most of the time the only change required is to declare "this extension works with firefox version x.y")

Re:Seriously?

[Luckyo]

Take your pick of a dot com company that went bust. That's people with your state of mind. Those that completely ignore the facts because they do not match their imagination. In this very discussion, there are MULTIPLE examples of exactly what you request here. Which you ignored, because they didn't match your ideals.

are you kidding me?

[hymie!]

I was just about to point out that I had to revert to Firefox 5.X because Firefox 6 broke a web site I need.

Then I read this:

the ability to use Twitter as a default search engine,

and I'm seriously wondering why I don't run Opera or Chrome.

Oh, right. FoxyProxy is the reason why I don't run Opera or Chrome.

Re:are you kidding me?

[facetiousprogrammer]

I switched to Opera this week. bye bye chrome and firefox.....

Re:are you kidding me?

[Joce640k]

and I'm seriously wondering why I don't run Opera or Chrome.

Have you checked out Chrome's release schedule? You get new versions weekly (more or less). The last updates were 18th and 21st of September (three days between them, tada!)

The only difference is that Firefox uses simple, consecutive integers and Chrome's version numbers look more like IP addresses.

Re:are you kidding me?

[MechaStreisand]

No, the difference is that Chrome doesn't fuck with things on every new version, and Firefox DOES.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my Chrome version: 14.0.835.186
So if you take the first number to be the main version number, Chrome is currently 14, way ahead of Firefox.

Re:are you kidding me?

[JonySuede]

Why is that I run nightly and I have not encounter any problems? What are those things that were fucked in the last release ?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to switch to opera too, but the inability to make opera link(the opera synchronization system) work with an own server instead of the cloud one is a showstopper for me.

I don't like depending on third party server for this kind on things. It's not just a privacy concern(it too) but also a depending on others problem.

Re:are you kidding me?

[RogueyWon]

The really sad thing? The other week, the latest release of Firefox 6 decided that it wanted to intermittently crash my Nvidia drivers. Until I figured out I could fix this by disabling the hardware acceleration option (which has absolutely zero impact on performance anyway), I was coming to the conclusion that rather than Opera or Chrome, if I was going to switch, it would be to IE. Having not used it for years, I was pretty shocked at how much it had improved in the interim.

That said, I think there's some deep part of me that would just find it hard to trust IE.

But yes, Firefox has long since passed the point where a new version meant "oooh, new features" and reached the point where it means "oh god, what have they broken or ruined this time?"

Re:are you kidding me?

[BZ]

Is there a bug on file on this? We try really hard to not break websites, obviously; if we broke something without realizing it we would _really_ like to know.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Coopjust]

Chromium does, they're just doing it at a more frequent rate. People acclimate to minute changes made very often (every few days) over bigger/more changes made at once (even if it's every few weeks instead of every year or so).

eBay changed the color on the background of a part of a page from one color to another - IIRC it was yellow to purple - and users flipped so much they changed it back. Then, over the course of several weeks, they did many intermediate colors, changing it a couple days a week. Suddenly, no one noticed the page they complained about in the past had, again, changed color completely.

The Chromium team has done a great job in that regard.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Enderandrew]

Bug fixes and security patches can come out days apart, but it is six weeks between release numbers for Chrome.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Zhiroc]

I have one extension (at least) that doesn't support FF 6.0 yet. Until that changes, I don't move.

Re:are you kidding me?

[mcvos]

Are people switching TO Opera? I'm in the process of abandoning it. It used to be an amazing browser, way ahead of the curve. But all its interesting features have been copied by everybody else by now, and too many websites just don't work well in Opera.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Frenzied Apathy]

Chrome is currently 14, way ahead of Firefox.

Yeah, but with FF's current numbering/updating scheme - they'll be "way ahead" of Chrome in like, two weeks! :P

Re:are you kidding me?

[Baloroth]

Like which websites? I've used Opera consistently for about 7 years now. It used to not work with a few sites, but it's been a while since I've come across anything that is actually broken. And it still has a large number of uncopied features (like a mail client) which I've simply become used to having around. Ever since it added extensions, I really think there isn't a good reason to use Firefox anymore (aside maybe from an extension that hasn't been ported yet.)

Re:are you kidding me?

[MrZilla]

I tried switching from FF3 to FF6 recently. I did not like it at all.
Currently been running Chrome for a few days, it's OK, but has some irritating issues (for me).

Will try Opera next week.
Then IE.
Then I will give up and move to some deserted island and avoid modern browsers for ever.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Frenzied Apathy]

Firefox has long since passed the point where a new version meant "oooh, new features" and reached the point where it means "oh god, what have they broken or ruined this time?"

Ditto here...

Re:are you kidding me?

[Creepy]

Extensions. They invalidate them every major revision and they've been revising on a schedule where many of these plugins aren't keeping up. It was much better when there were point releases that didn't break the extensions, but now they're broken every 3 months and the vendors can't keep up.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference is that Firefox uses simple, consecutive integers and Chrome's version numbers look more like IP addresses.

Nah, the real difference is that no one particularly cares what Chrome's version number is while Firefox is still bragging about beta release version numbers.

Re:are you kidding me?

[webnut77]

Did you fix the kerning problem with A being after T like in INTERSTATE and TOTAL? (font-family:Arial,Helvetica).

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

There's an extension for that.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=api

Everything I used that worked in FF7 still works for me in FF8. Even one that hasn't been updated since FF6.

After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you're using. If you notice that one of your add-ons doesn't seem to be working the same way it did in previous versions of the application, just open the Add-ons Manager and click Compatibility next to that add-on to send a report to Mozilla.

Even if your add-ons all work fine, if they're marked incompatible, please let us know that they work fine by submitting a success report so we can encourage the add-on developer to update their compatibility information.

We'll collect all of the reports and let add-on developers know what users are having problems with, or if their add-ons seem to work just fine in future versions of the product.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because both Chrome and Firefox have a roughly 6 week release schedule. Since they are releasing at the same interval, FF will never catch up.

Re:are you kidding me?

[BZ]

I have no idea which problem you're talking about, so I don't know whether it's fixed.... I personally don't work on the guts of text layout, so you'll have to help me out here by pointing to a bug report.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use 10 extensions, and the only time they break is when a new stable version is realeased and my Firefox 9 changes to 10. And it takes about a week to get those updated. And if needed, I just download the xpi files and change a single line to make it work. So, running nightlies and it all works.

Re:are you kidding me?

[icebraining]

If Firefox is able to crash your Nvidia drivers, it's the drivers - or possibly the Windows graphics subsystem - that are fucked, not Firefox.

I know this is irrelevant to you as the user, but we're on /.

Re:are you kidding me?

[nkh]

I installed Firefox 7.0 recently because I needed a SQLite manager and it's available as an add-on. But I'll stay with Chrome for the moment to browse the web, it's fast, stable and has all the features I need.

Re:are you kidding me?

[kangsterizer]

why didn't you switch when you could use ebay as search engine in firefox? or wikipedia? or amazon? or bing? or yagoo?
have you noticed, default is google, and every single engine can be set as default, should you want to.

basically, you're dumb.

Re:are you kidding me?

[kangsterizer]

and yes i wrote yagoo. ;-)

Re:are you kidding me?

[JMJimmy]

I'm right there with you. I'm sticking with FF3.6.x until end of life then off to Opera it is. I could care less about rapid release but the UI issues make FF4+ more of an annoyance than anything.

Re:are you kidding me?

[webnut77]

Sorry, I didn't file a bug report. I thought it was so obvious that surely someone would file one. It's been there since about two releases ago.

I did find a link tough.

Oh, BTW, thanks for all the work you and the FireFox team do.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd tell you about my problem, but firefox (7 I think, but then who the hell can keep up?) crashes every 5 or so minutes.

Honestly, if y'all can't/won't do basic fucking quality control on your releases, I ain't gonna bother with a bug report. I put up with this shit for the 4.0 alpha because it WAS noticeably better than 3.6. But your current 'release' is a goddamn joke. And this beta...
Twitter? Really? You don't think that belongs in a fucking addon? Fix the god damned memory issues and other outstanding bugs before you integrate inane bullshit and try to copy chrome.

I actually did not use chrome at first due to it's many annoyances. But y'all've got right on ahead and copied (badly) all of them. So now I use chrome or chromium. If I have to put up with a browser that randomly updates itself I may as well have one that's stable.

Re:are you kidding me?

[PixetaledPikachu]

And it still has a large number of uncopied features (like a mail client) which I've simply become used to having around.

Not having mail client is actually one of my major reason in adopting firefox, and abandoning netscape

Re:are you kidding me?

[BZ]

Not that obvious, apparently! I do watch incoming core bug reports and haven't seen one about this.

Thanks for the mozillazine link; I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690806 on this.

And you're very much welcome!

Re:are you kidding me?

[LordLimecat]

You probably want to get new drivers. If a userland piece of software is able to "crash your drivers", sounds like most of the blame goes to nVidia.

Re:are you kidding me?

[LordLimecat]

You could always go back to the older browsers. You can still download Phoenix 0.5 (aka pre-firefox firefox) right here, and Firefox 1.0 here. Im pretty sure you will discover that its a case of "the grass is always greener", though.

And of course, theres always lynx.

Re:are you kidding me?

[JonySuede]

is that a closed source extension or an open-source one ?
If it is a commercial extension I understand you but if it is a open-source one, you should patch it, or request a patch on the dev list....

Re:are you kidding me?

[Luckyo]

This is something that makes me wonder as well. The only reason I still use FF (3.6 in my case) is add-ons.

If Opera supported FF add-ons, or had alternatives for all my current add-ons, I'd switch now and never look back.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, if you have the infrastructure to do it yourself, why don't you already run your own proxy or better yet, OpenVPN?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Firefox is able to crash your Nvidia drivers, it's the drivers - or possibly the Windows graphics subsystem - that are fucked, not Firefox.

That's bullshit. Every single API has edge cases which produce undefined behavior if you don't follow the documentation and use it properly.

Re:are you kidding me?

[0ld_d0g]

You are using a free product. There is no need to be rude about it. Why do you think you are entitled to anything?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Waccoon]

I developed the exact same problem with my ATI drivers after updating to Calalyst 11.7. Blue Screens of Death after watching exactly 3 YouTube videos under Adobe Flash.

I disabled hardware acceleration in Flash and now the system is perfectly stable.

I'm still using Firefox 3.6.x

So, either Flash is the culprit, or there's something wrong with trying to use "hardware acceleration" (of what?) through the overlay that Firefox is using. Does Opera/Chrome/IE have similar problems? I've just accepted that Flash itself was the problem, and haven't tested any other browsers.

Re:are you kidding me?

[asavage]

They actually don't anymore. They haven't since version 5. They scan all the extensions and if they are compatible automatically bump the compatibility number. If they aren't compatible, they email the author beforehand so if the extension is still being maintained it can be fixed. The vast majority of extensions and all that I use have worked with 5, 6, and 7.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Baloroth]

I suppose I could see that for netscape, but if the mail client adds no overhead, either in installation size, performance or screen estate, I can't imagine why you would still do that. Opera, for reference, has an install file size of 9.9MB, while Firefox is 13.4MB. That is with Opera's IRC chat, mail client, BotTorrent client, ad-blocker, and whole host of other built-in features.

Opera manages to incorporate a whole host of extra features at seemingly no overhead. That is why I never moved to Firefox, even before Opera had extensions. Most of the extensions I would need in Firefox came in Opera by default. And lets not even get into customization of the interface: no other browser comes even the tiniest bit close.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Zak3056]

why didn't you switch when you could use ebay as search engine in firefox? or wikipedia? or amazon? or bing? or yagoo?
have you noticed, default is google, and every single engine can be set as default, should you want to.

basically, you're dumb.

I don't think he's complaining about the fact that there are search engine choices, but rather that the biggest new feature in a major version update is "you can use twitter as the default search engine." I mean, seriously, this is Mozilla saying, "We broke all your addons, but in return for the massive inconvenience, we've given you a trivially implemented new feature."

Re:are you kidding me?

[rubycodez]

The BUG is between your comrades right ear and left, they are DESTROYING a once-good software because this version churning breaks plugins, breaks access to web sites, and break use with other web-fronted softwares. Your team is ignoring user needs and flying off on a ridiculous tangent that does the users no good. People are getting fed up with this crap and ditching Firefox. Your project will LOSE MONEY that it gets based on user share. Tell them to quit being ivory tower dumb-asses working in a vacuum and start taking heed of the real world of users.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed the same problem. Thanks for the suggestion too, I tried it and it solved my problems as well.

The Microsoft crash reports linked to information that told me to do this, but I just didn't like the sound of removing hardware acceleration. anyway, I moved the slider the the third position from the left and that seems to work for me.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Stalks]

Duh. Read what you are replying to?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Unequivocal]

When I just upgraded to FF7 it disabled a bunch of plugins from virus companies + java that I hadn't been able to figure out how to remove myself. All the tools I use were compatible. So progress!

Re:are you kidding me?

[shutdown -p now]

Like many Google websites. Go to blogger.com and click "Try the updated Blogger interface" to see an example of that.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Desler]

What a nonsense reply. If you don't want anyone complaining don't release to the public then you can circlejerk to your hearts content.

Re:are you kidding me?

[shutdown -p now]

An API that is accessible to userspace code and can crash the system, or otherwise significantly affect all processes running on it, is unacceptable. "Undefined behavior" that crashes the calling process only is okay. "Undefined behavior" that crashes the driver in the kernel is not.

Re:are you kidding me?

[BZ]

Just to be clear, complaining is great if it's actionable.

"A site got broken, but I won't tell you which site or what broke" is really hard to take action on...

Re:are you kidding me?

[BZ]

We obviously do quality control, but not in the full set of circumstances (malware running on the same machine, various extensions, etc) that our users run in, because there are unfortunately just too many possible configurations.

  We also track crashes via the crash reporter and fix them. This works great for crashes lots of people hit, but not so well for a crash only a few users hit.

Would you mind going to about:crashes in your Firefox and letting me know what those links are? That would hopefully give me enough information to figure out why you in particular are crashing. If you're willing to do that, I would really appreciate it.

For the rest, there's a bunch of memory improvements in Firefox 8 even compared to Firefox 7, tons of bugfixes, lots of user expeience and web standards improvements, and so forth. I can't help it that the Slashdot summary writers just listed 3 items out of a much longer list in the original blog post, which is itself not exhausrive.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you'll be back. I switched to Chrome because Opera wouldn't work on some websites I used with features on the site I was trying to use like a shared login system of one websites. Chrome is so much worse than Opera, I've switched back today and it is like a breath of fresh air. Sure some other browsers have the features but I spent about a day getting extensions for Chrome to get it anywhere near where Opera is with 2 extensions. Same with Firefox when I tried to switch to that a few years ago.

Re:are you kidding me?

[MozeeToby]

Odds are very high that your extension will run just fine. Install the add-on compatibility reporter add-on and try it out. Only very rarely have I ever hit problems, and that's running whatever the latest beta is.

Re:are you kidding me?

[thetoadwarrior]

What sort of shitty site breaks on Firefox 6 yet works on Firefox 5?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Ash-Fox]

has all the features I need.

Out of curiosity, does that mean Firefox is lacking some features you need?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever heard of plugins then?

Re:are you kidding me?

[Grishnakh]

I'm in the process of switching to Chromium now (I've installed it and tried it out preliminarily, but I haven't had time to switch my workflow over completely, should be done this weekend). So far, it looks far better than FF (3.6.23), which is just annoying me too much with slowness, and random freezes and lockups.

Luckily, I don't have to mess around with proxies, so as long as AdBlock works, I'm happy.

Re:are you kidding me?

[yuhong]

If you want a mail client, you can use SeaMonkey.

Re:are you kidding me?

[bipbop]

You could check out SeaMonkey. It's a lot like Firefox, without the UI annoyances. There are tradeoffs, of course. For example, there's no separate search bar in SeaMonkey. (I like that, but the lack of a search bar is apparently a deal breaker for some users.)

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware acceleration of video decoding.

Re:are you kidding me?

[moonbender]

Just to let you know I appreciate the customer outreach you're doing here. :) Keep up the good work, I like where Firefox has been going recently and, despite how it may sometimes look, I doubt I am the only one.

Re:are you kidding me?

[A beautiful mind]

Sure, without any security updates. That is a brilliant idea on today's web.

Re:are you kidding me?

[bky1701]

Nice excuse. That's the kind of thinking that ran me away from Linux back to Windows, after having been a Linux user and open source proponent for several years. My ATI drivers do not (and do not) work properly, and despite my best efforts, cannot be made to. Developers don't care- "it's ATI's fault [and yours for having an ATI card]".

I'm sorry, but that's not a professional or serious answer. If your software is so poorly designed it breaks the systems underlying it, and indeed breaks around half of the video drivers out there, then your software is the problem. If Firefox is crashing his Nvidia drivers (which I do not see as unlikely with the level of atrocious design in open source these days), then it is Firefox's problem. Claiming it isn't just makes open source looks like amateur hour.

Stand by your software, or people will go elsewhere. Real developers stand by their code and by refusing to do so, you just show you aren't taking it seriously.

Re:are you kidding me?

[bky1701]

The question remains, if it was only Firefox doing it (a reasonable assumption in this case), why do you not think it is Firefox's job to fix it? In the real world, you can't expect everything to be perfect. Sometimes systems misbehave, sometimes users misbehave. Just like you sterilize input, you need to account for known problems in your subsystems. Passing the buck, especially to people extremely unlikely to do anything, just makes you and your software look bad. This is why open source is slowly going down the tubes.

Re:are you kidding me?

[shutdown -p now]

Oh, absolutely, Firefox should fix it if they can.

Indeed, don't they do exactly that already by e.g. explicitly whitelisting 3D drivers on Linux and falling back to software rendering where they know that a given driver is buggy and will crash if they do accelerated H/W.

Re:are you kidding me?

[icebraining]

Of course Firefox should fix it. Nobody said otherwise.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the difference is that Chrome doesn't fuck with things on every new version, and Firefox DOES.

Because that mandatory print preview dialog thats appeared recently isn't the most annoying POS ever....

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called "Proxy Switchy!" on chrome...

Re:are you kidding me?

[couchslug]

"Not having mail client is actually one of my major reason in adopting firefox, and abandoning netscape"

I don't USE the mail client, so it poses no penalty.

Re:are you kidding me?

[surveyork]

Just to add a bit more info: I've been using Firefox nightlies since Firefox 4 with Add-on compatibility reporter. From 3.6 to 4, many extensions were truly broken. Once they were updated to work with 4, most of them will work with Firefox 10 nightly without need for updates. I'm currently using 24 extensions, about 10 are marked incompatible with Fx 10 nightly, but they work anyway.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you figure that whomever is convenient to yell at is responsible? If your crappy video card dies when it's too hot out, are you going to punch the weatherman?

The professional answer is that "it's a video card", whatever data it receives shall have the only side effect of making colorful dots appear on the screen. Any undefined input shall be accepted, and not interfere with other COMPARTMENTALIZED workings of the computer. You paid what is most likely money for a non-deterministic pseudo-calculation machine, and for that I'm deeply sorry.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The BUG is between your comrades right ear and left

Let's try to be constructive here, shall we?

they are DESTROYING a once-good software

The Mozilla team believes they are IMPROVING software that used to be worse than it is now. Clearly, their criteria for determining what is "good" are different than yours. If you want them to address your concerns, you must convince them NOT that "good" is the correct direction to go, but that your definition of "good" is the correct one.

because this version churning breaks plugins

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. This is a legitimate concern. Add-ons are marked as being compatible only with a particular version, with the understanding that the next version of the browser may break compatibility. If these "major releases" they're churning out every month or two are actually breaking compatibility with common add-ons, then they should strive to create a stable add-on architecture that can remain stable even as version numbers change.

breaks access to web sites

Obviously this isn't supposed to happen. You can help by downloading and installing the beta, using it to browse to your favorite sites, and reporting bugs if you should find something that works correctly in an older version but is broken in the beta. If you report it now, hopefully it will be fixed prior to release - that's the whole point of having beta tests.

and break use with other web-fronted softwares

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you elaborate?

Your team is ignoring user needs and flying off on a ridiculous tangent that does the users no good.

Mozilla believes that the recent changes they've been making are for the benefit of the users. If they didn't care what users thought, they wouldn't be working so hard.

People are getting fed up with this crap and ditching Firefox.

Firefox and IE are both losing market share to Chrome, but it's not clear that Mozilla's rapid release cycle is a major factor.

Your project will LOSE MONEY that it gets based on user share.

The vast majority of Firefox developers aren't getting paid at all. They're not terribly concerned about losing money.

Tell them to quit being ivory tower dumb-asses working in a vacuum and start taking heed of the real world of users.

That's all well and good, but "taking heed of the real world of users" is precisely what prompted them to go down this path in the first place.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to file a bug for that.the only way changes are made to firefox is via a bug.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I developed the exact same problem with my ATI drivers after updating to Calalyst 11.7. Blue Screens of Death after watching exactly 3 YouTube videos under Adobe Flash.

I disabled hardware acceleration in Flash and now the system is perfectly stable.

I'm still using Firefox 3.6.x

So, either Flash is the culprit, or there's something wrong with trying to use "hardware acceleration" (of what?) through the overlay that Firefox is using. Does Opera/Chrome/IE have similar problems? I've just accepted that Flash itself was the problem, and haven't tested any other browsers.

I've seen problems in the recent past with nVidia drivers on Windows 7 64 bit crashing when the 2D Acceleration option is turned on in Acrobat Reader 10. Turn that off and the video driver crashes stop. Adobe must have some sort of widespread acceleration issue.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if it will do everything you need, but I use Chrome's Proxy Switchy at work and it works wonderfully. Might want to give it a look.

Ranttime: Chrome has a vibrant extension community, and while it doesn't yet offer as many addons as FireFox, it does offer solutions for the most common browser issues, so I'm always a bit sad when someone (on slashdot!) dismisses it out of hand for lacking some addons that could easily be found by a 5 seconds google search. Every other day here someone says "but Chrome doesn't have Adblock or Noscript!", and I make the sad face.

Re:are you kidding me?

[at_slashdot]

Take a look at Proxy Switchy! for Chrome it might do whatever you need from FoxyProxy.

Re:are you kidding me?

[JMJimmy]

I'd be one of them. Search box = new tab search show results, address bar = same tab I'm feeling lucky search. It's key functionality for me. What I'll probably have to do is install dozens of extensions to mash the UI back into something less annoying.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

For Firefox, at least, if you hold down the alt key while pressing enter in the address bar it will open in a new tab instead. That might work in SeaMonkey too, I'm not sure. That might not actually help you, come to think of it... ah well.

Re:are you kidding me?

[kangsterizer]

pretty obviously this is one of the changes, or maybe small changes shouldn't be done and reported right? only big changes allowed! so that we can complain on how they made a big change (which is also usually the case)
i think people are just looking for reasons to dislike it

Re:are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when Firefox could be trusted to be the stable browser. IE was antiquated crap and Opera was about as irrelevant as it is today. It was the standard bearer for great browsing on the browser compatibility matrix for a FEW companies I worked for. Most of this came from the fact that your releases could be trusted and were reliable. There was a long enough beta period to make changes to code that needed to be changed, or workarounds to code that had to cater to specific versions of different browsers.

People made bold stands for Firefox in the enterprise based on your excellent versioning and fantastic tools and plugins. Firebug became the defacto development tool... a REVOLUTIONARY tool.

Nobody added Chrome to the top level of the browser support matrix because they release indiscriminately and it's impossible to design around a browser that you can't count on a version for.

But now Firefox has abandoned developers and corporate IT and basically told them to suck up the unpredictability, and plugin breakage EVERY MONTH. Some of these plugins aren't being actively supported, so if we don't keep at least one commuter on thie lt supported versions, we can't use them. Firebug has broken on me twice now and I used IE developer tools because that's the closest I could get to the quality of Firebug while I waited for them to update. The most recent update broke Zend toolbar!

Nobody gives a crap about how high your version number can get. We don't want a race. We want innovation we can plan budgets and development schedules around. We DON'T want monthly support calls because you keel breaking stuff trying to win a numbers game nobody cares about.

Re:are you kidding me?

[Kalriath]

It won't enable extensions that have Native code components though (e.g. Cooliris or whatever it's called today).

Re:are you kidding me?

[Rhaban]

No, the difference is that Chrome doesn't fuck with things on every new version, and Firefox DOES.

+1 Informative

Really?

[Flipstylee]

Didn't i just update?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

You probably went from stable FF6 to stable FF7.

This announcement is about the new beta version. Since FF7 is now stable, the new beta is FF8.

Re:Really?

[icebraining]

It's a beta, not a release.

Never again

[Antisyzygy]

Firefox has been the most unstable pile of crap the last 3 times Ive updated it. I switched to Chrome.

Re:Never again

[Coopjust]

It's an addon/plugin/profile issue. I'd argue the last one is probably the worst because it's hard to diagnose without creating a new profile.

If you update everything (Flash/Shockwave/Java/etc. - I'd recommend Secunia's PSI to check your programs, including plugins, for updates) and it doesn't help stability, I would disable all addons and browse until you find the one causing the problem.

You may say "Why bother?". As a nerd, I enjoy addons with no comparable functionality in Chrome/Chromium and I support Mozilla. My FF7 installs work very well although I won't lie and say Firefox has been problem free (no browser has been). It may be worth examining if you liked Firefox as 7 is a good improvement over 6 even despite the development time. I don't seem to have the stability/bloat issues others complain about.

Anyhow, up to you if you want to examine it for you. In the end, whatever works for you works for you and you are either going to try to diagnose Firefox or ignore it.

Re:Never again

[GNious]

I'm on the Beta, so I'm getting updates ca weekly - I can say that 5+6 didn't go so well, but since then it has either been improvements, or "blah" (twitter-search? really??). Overall, last several updates have been all-good.

Re:Never again

[surveyork]

It's difficult to say what can be wrong with your Fx installation from here, but I can tell you about a drastic method that worked for me: I had Firefox 3.5 in my current computer, then upgraded to 3.6 and then to 4. Things weren't nice. Then, I backed up my bookmarks, wrote down my add-ons and uninstalled Firefox. Completely. Including profiles and all Firexox files inside system folders. Registry entries too. (There are how-to's out there.) Then, I installed Fx 4 anew, restored my bookmarks and added my add-ons again. No problems since then. It was a PITA :) Now I even use Firefox Nightlies and they work fine too.

TL;DR: It could be a dirty/old profile/problem with an add-on/plug-in. Complete Firefox uninstall and reinstall should solve the problem.

Re:Never again

[Antisyzygy]

I am not sure what went wrong. How many times do you get that in your help desk? I didn't look too much into it, because I simply get busy (I am serious, I work full time and go to school). I chose Firefox originally because, well, there weren't better alternatives that suited my needs. However, updating and getting strange loading problems sort of irked me. I suppose I should take a note of that, because I see the same complaints at work as a I.T. dude and discount them all the time as ridiculous :) . I really appreciate you trying to help me out, its a very nice thing to do since it seems that most people just want to make a point in a rude fashion. I get tired of rude people. It tends to make me an angry bastard even though I naturally am a non-confrontational and pleasant individual.

Why is this news?

[loftwyr]

With Firefox releasing betas/alphas and new releases every few weeks, why are we covering this? Can't we just have the ever six week release story and maybe another one if they do something innovative?

Chrome is on version 15 but I don't see a story here every number change.

Re:Why is this news?

[Microlith]

Because it gives Slashdot a way to garner page hits from the inevitable Firefox hatefest.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Can we see a blanket ban on "new version of Firefox" stories?

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually appreciate the updates, news for nerds, that's me. Quit wining so much.

Re:Why is this news?

[AmberBlackCat]

Maybe in version 8 they can add support for Page Up and Page Down. It's not working for me on version 7 right now.

Re:Why is this news?

[Baloroth]

This was my reaction too. This isn't even a release, it's a beta. AFAIK Firefox constantly has a beta out, it shouldn't be news to anyone on this site.

Re:Why is this news?

[cornface]

You have to press the keys with your finger. HTH.

Re:Why is this news?

[kangsterizer]

Because people still have to complain about the version number, so they up vote this stuff. It's important to them, because they want people to switch to Chrome.
Oh yeah, Chrome versions are worse and its released more often, but that's beyond the point. The point is to bash, flame, troll, the competition. That's what people like.
And then again, that's why this story is up voted.

Re:Why is this news?

[Tridus]

Agreed. FF release builds are barely news worthy at this point. A new beta most certainly is not.

Re:Why is this news?

[yodleboy]

along those lines, why can't i right click the scroll bar and select TOP or BOTTOM like in so many other programs? This has always driven me crazy when i'm on a loooong page and want to get back to the top where the navigation crap is.

Re:Why is this news?

[eepok]

Because there are young geeks out there that still care about messing with betas and don't know everything about all the topics Slashdot *has* posted in the PAST.

When I was a first year undergrad, just getting to learn Slashdot, I remember reading about the beta (maybe alpha) here. I downloaded it, installed it, and followed every single beta release after that. I installed it on other peoples' computers. There were other beta programs announced and I tried those, too. I watched the BetaNews feed in hopes of finding ways to make my computer do more things. Anything!

That's part of the fun of blossoming into a computer geek.

Then we get older. And as older computer geeks, we have less patience for volunteering time for beta projects. We have figured out (for the most part) what we want from computers and figured out how to get it.

But there are still young geeks out there that will come to the established Slashdot to learn and be alerted to geek news. Firefox betas are geek news. It may be for the younger geeks now (the ones with more time and energy), but it's still, wholeheartedly, geek.

Re:Why is this news?

[discord5]

Can't we just have the ever six week release story

How about we skip that step altogether and start ignoring these "major" releases. I mean, whooptidoo I can use twitter as a search engine. That's major release worthy.

one if they do something innovative?

Only if it hasn't been done before...

The only thing making Firefox still relevant for me is the extensions. And quite frankly, that's on the decline too.

Re:Why is this news?

[0123456]

Maybe in version 8 they can add support for Page Up and Page Down. It's not working for me on version 7 right now.

It seems to have disappeared somewhere between 3.6 and 7.0. I guess it was a confusing feature so they had to remove it.

Re:Why is this news?

[FooBarWidget]

What are you talking about? Works fine on my Mac.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Home and End keys. When the hell did /. become a whiner's paradise?

Re:Why is this news?

[Luckyo]

Which is a shame, as a couple of years ago firefox was a slashdot baby that everyone loved.

Re:Why is this news?

[Luckyo]

They broke home/end too?

(3.6 user here, clueless to what broke in FF since 4.x).

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the hatefest, while I still love Firefox and can't find anything better... Why did they switch to Chrome-like numbering? These are NOT major releases, they're bug fixes and minor updates.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try resetting your profile: -
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows

Re:Why is this news?

[Millennium]

On the hatefest, while I still love Firefox and can't find anything better... Why did they switch to Chrome-like numbering? These are NOT major releases, they're bug fixes and minor updates.

You answered your own question: they switched to Chrome-like numbering because it is Chrome-like. I also, frankly, suspect that they thought they might be able to get away from that awful drudgery known as maintenance.

I'm just hoping that Firefox will survive long enough for the developers to grow up and consider this an embarrassing chapter in its history.

Re:Why is this news?

[AmberBlackCat]

It seems that way. Somehow the web browser window doesn't seem to have focus. If I click in the text box and go back to the browser window, I can page up and down, and home and end work. But Getting the focus on the web page in the first place is tricky, and scrolling doesn't work until that happens. Just clicking outside of the webpage and clicking back on a webpage doesn't seem to be enough.

Re:Why is this news?

[Grishnakh]

Except that Chrome actually works much better thanks to having a separate process for each tab. When's Firefox going to work on that feature?

Re:Why is this news?

[AmiMoJo]

I though all Firefox users had AdBlock+ installed. They should really bundle it with the browser. Now that would be innovation.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for me.
File a bug.

Or just complain about it on /., that's cool too.

Re:Why is this news?

[Microlith]

And it's still a great browser. I updated Nightly to 10 earlier today and a couple of my addons were disabled due to the version number not having been updated, so I installed the Add-on Compatibility reporter and re-enabled them. They work fine.

AdBlock+ and NoScript have not once ceased functioning or been disabled, despite my having gone from 4 to 5 to Beta to Nightly, and without any updates the disabled ones work fine with the reporter activating them. And not once have I noticed a break in any of the sites I use.

So yeah, it's still a great browser. Much ado about nothing, IMO.

Re:Why is this news?

[Microlith]

Funny, they work fine here on Nightly (and on my work laptop, which runs 7 now.) Somehow I doubt it's actually broken and the lot of you have something fucked on your PCs.

Re:Why is this news?

[AmberBlackCat]

Funny, they work fine here on Nightly (and on my work laptop, which runs 7 now.) Somehow I doubt it's actually broken and the lot of you have something fucked on your PCs.

Well it's only fucked in Firefox. Opera, Internet Explorer, and Safari are still working normally on this computer. And the 3.x Firefox worked. I also notice when I click on the webpage text, the flashing cursor appears, as if the text is editable. I wonder if that has something to do with the scrolling failure.

Re:Why is this news?

[AmberBlackCat]

It turns out "caret mode" was on, which screws page up and page down. This can be turned off by pressing F7.

Re:___ firefox

[ackthpt]

Um, the rapid release schedule is what gives Firefox its stability and confidence.

We'll know for sure, when they release 9.0 Beta next week.

Huzzah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats to the Firefox team. I, for one, appreciate the regular updates. It's getting better with each release.

Nightly builds

[killmenow]

Fuck it. I may as well do up a script to check out the latest nightly updates and re-build FF every day for me.

Re:Nightly builds

[Microlith]

No need, Nightly happily updates itself whenever it finds a newer version.

Re:Nightly builds

[killmenow]

Is that the one that is/was labeled "Minefield" ? I was running that once upon a time. Chromium has been doing the trick for me lately.

Re:Nightly builds

[Tsingi]

They will do that for you. I use the nightly build. (It's called nightly)

Re:Nightly builds

[binford2k]

Which doesn't do any good when you build it yourself. Which the parent specifically said that he did.

Re:Nightly builds

[jalefkowit]

Don't bother, before you're done rebuilding a new version of Firefox will be out anyway.

Re:Nightly builds

[maxume]

READ MORE Reading.

Re:Nightly builds

[Microlith]

My point was that there's no point to building it yourself, when they're doing it anyway (and giving you an auto-upgrade path.)

Re:Nightly builds

[DigiShaman]

I seem to remember a slashdot article that ultimately the future of Firefox will not have a versioning system. The engine and other components would get updated multiple times a day like an anti-virus definition. So if you run into a crash or some other bug, it may not show up the next day. Conversely, you may now have a buggy webpage rendering improperly where there was never a problem before.

Sounds like it would make for an impossible app to load in a Terminal Server environment. Too bad as I prefer TS users to use this over IE.

Re:Nightly builds

[binford2k]

This holds no interest for those building it themselves. Otherwise, he would have downloaded the pre-built package in the first place.

Third Party Addons...

[nschubach]

Users will receive a one-time notification to review and confirm third party add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete. When Firefox starts and finds that a third-party program has installed an add-on

I assume this include Microsoft stealth adding extensions to the browser?

IE: Windows Media Player Plugin

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Richard_at_work]

Think Flash....

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Coopjust]

Users will receive a one-time notification to review and confirm third party add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete. When Firefox starts and finds that a third-party program has installed an add-on

I assume this include Microsoft stealth adding extensions to the browser?

IE: Windows Media Player Plugin

Yeah, addons that added themselves outside the normal system weren't always removable (through Firefox) and Firefox never asked about them. Yahoo Toolbar, Bing, etc.

Change for the better. Users who don't explicitly want something are unlikely to approve it (since it's disabled by default), and users who don't know better are more likely to ignore it (again, disabled by default). I think you'll have few "click-throughers" that will check the box to enable the addon then hit continue.

However, they're talking addons at this point (Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Greasemonkey, Skype etc.) - NOT plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java [except the Console, which is an addon], etc.). In the comments somebody asked if it applied to plugins and they said "Skype is an addon so it will have this" - I'm guessing it won't ask for plugins.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Firefox-speak, "Addons" includes extensions, plugins, themes, and maybe something else I'm forgetting.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Coopjust]

Mozilla blog mentions that it's for addons, which are different from plugins (plugins use NPAPI - Flash, Java, Shockwave, etc. - vs XPIs). They are separately listed in the addons manager for that reason. At this point, I'd say it probably doesn't apply to plugins, but the page doesn't give enough context to determine that.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Coopjust]

If that's true, then it's as comprehensive as I'd hope. I just wonder if Firefox will whitelist certain addons at the risk of seeming to play favorites (if people don't check to enable Flash and then try to go to Youtube, it won't work).

Either that or prompt when a plugin that's present but default disabled would be used and ask if they want to enable it with a notification. Not sure of the handling code for that, but I can't imagine it being impossible.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume this include Microsoft stealth adding extensions to the browser?

IE: Windows Media Player Plugin

I'd be surprised if IE didn't have a WMP plugin.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[icebraining]

(if people don't check to enable Flash and then try to go to Youtube, it won't work).

Flash is a plugin. This is for addons. They're not the same. Specifically, no websites depend on the latter to work.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

These days software frequently installs addons for various browsers and do so stealthily. This prevents them from running after a stealth install without the user's explicit okay.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Coopjust]

The Anon I replied to alleges that addons cover extensions (ABP, Betterprivacy, Ghostery, Skype, etc.) AND plugins (Flash, Shockwave, java - anything that uses the NPAPI).

So if my initial interpretation was correct (same as yours- this is for extensions not plugins), that won't be a problem; if his interpretation is correct (keeping in mind that he challenged mine - plugins/extensions are under the addons umbrella, both appear in the addon manager, etc.) it would be.

I guess the only way to find out will be to install a copy of the beta and then a plugin or two.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla blog mentions that it's for addons, which are different from plugins (plugins use NPAPI - Flash, Java, Shockwave, etc. - vs XPIs). They are separately listed in the addons manager for that reason. At this point, I'd say it probably doesn't apply to plugins, but the page doesn't give enough context to determine that.

Yes, this only really applies to extensions, which are a subset of "addons" in the Firefox dictionary, along with themes and plugins.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[aitan]

And Google updater...

Re:Third Party Addons...

[LordLimecat]

Yeah, addons that added themselves outside the normal system weren't always removable (through Firefox) and Firefox never asked about them. Yahoo Toolbar, Bing, etc.

The toolbars were always extensions, and removable-- unless they were installed in a system-wide fashion, in which case you need to manually remove them from the firefox program folder.

However, they're talking addons at this point (Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Greasemonkey, Skype etc.) - NOT plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java [except the Console, which is an addon], etc.).

Addons is a parent category that includes Extensions (Adblock and the rest) and Plugins (flash, etc). You can see this when you go to the firefox menu-- the "addons" entry takes you to a list of extensions and plugins. The "get addons" is referring to the fact that all extensions are, in fact, addons. Think "square is a rectangle".

What they appear to be referring to is any addon that installs itself outside of the normal context, which would be specifically aimed at MS' dotNet crap and Java's "next gen console" crap that were snuck into firefox installations once upon a time.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian and it's derivatives also stealthily add addons/plugins to Firefox, but I don't see anyone complaining about that.

Re:Third Party Addons...

[nschubach]

I'm looking at my plugins right now... I see Java and Flash. (LXDE, Debian Derivitave) There's nothing I didn't put there. However, on Windows when I delete the dll for Windows Media, it gets automatically re-installed.

I hope they are just missing a decimal point

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really 3.8.0 right?

Re:I hope they are just missing a decimal point

[Luckyo]

More like 3.7.5.

BROWSER WARS

[Anonymous Coward]

They are here again!

Re:BROWSER WARS

[Elbereth]

Did you seriously just link to the unfunniest webcomic in the history of webcomics?

You really like that shit?

What?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's dangerous! Firefox 8 has been EOL for nearly half an hour!

And guess what? memory footprint improved

[Anonymous Coward]

arg, just noticed i'm on Chrome.

Why is this an article?

[Tuan121]

It's the people who post this crap on slashdot that incentives mozilla to spit out version after version simply in the hopes that it will remind people to use firefox instead of the better alternative, Chrome.

A superior product doesn't need to keep shoving it in your face. And before someone mentions Chrome's commercials- that is to get the word out to audiences that are unaware of alternatives, it's not what mozilla keeps doing to keep it in the tech news where everyone is aware of the alternatives.

Re:Why is this an article?

[Coopjust]

Define better. It really depends on the usage scenario. Not in RAM usage or ability of addons to modify browser behavior beyond the highest level.

I have IE, Chromium, Firefox, and Opera installed and they each have strengths and weaknesses. However, my primary browser is Firefox.

8 is adding some neat features, but I think a quarterly check-in would be more appropriate. However, 8 beta does add some features Firefox users have been seeking for a long time, like opting into addons installed by third party programs.

What third-party addons?

[DNS-and-BIND]

The addons I want to keep? Sorry, I've never had this experience. It's more like, "the addons I want to permanently disable as they won't be updated to the latest version because the creator finished his project and moved on with his life". Seriously, a browser whose entire idea is 'you can extend it' combined with constant compatibility-breaking updates?

Re:What third-party addons?

[jcupitt65]

They have a new add-on update thing for exactly this reason.

Previously, all add-ons were marked "incompatible" by default on a major version change and authors needed to test their add-on and explicitly mark it as OK for it to work. This caused the painful loss of add-ons during major updates that you mention.

The new system scans the source code for every add-on automatically and flags as compatible all those which don't touch parts of firefox which have changed. As a result, as long as the author of the add-on didn't mess with the internals of the browser too much, add-ons will automatically move between versions with no work from anyone. I have 9 add-ons in my ff and they all moved to ff7 painlessly.

Add-ons which depend on some changed or removed feature will need updating, but there's not much you can do about that. Jetpack aimed to make add-ons less closely tied to the browser, but that seems to have gone rather quiet.

Re:What third-party addons?

[Beelzebud]

Then why is it that of the 8 extensions I use, I haven't had one of them break since the move from 3 to 4? You're barking out FUD that wasn't true months ago... At this point, there is no one else but yourself to blame for why you're still on 3.6.

Re:What third-party addons?

[Pausanias]

Allright, allright, I think I just need to add my experience: that since FireFox 5, updates have never broken ANY of my plugins. The list of plugins I use is below. I don't know what plugins are affected but all this ranting on Slashdot may just be symptomatic of this being Slashdot and nerds using weird hacked together plugins that scratch a particular itch and are realistically speaking, fringe. Can you name any popular plugins that have been broken since the recent high speed updates? You know what, I'm not a web developer, as aren't most Chrome users, and for me the FF experience has been just FINE.

AdBlockPlus
BetterPrivacy
CookieExporter
FlashGot
keyconfig
LastPass
NoScript
Open in Browser
Personas
Tab Mix Plus

Re:What third-party addons?

[Bieeanda]

There are two problems that I've encountered with the compatibility reporter: First, that it's virtually unadvertised; second, it's clearly marked 'recommended for alpha and beta testers only'. I know that they're covering their butts with that, but the vast majority of addons work perfectly well between versions.

I'd love to see them make the Reporter a standard part of an install, and expand its functionality so that it not only allows you to report incompatibilities, but lets it check against Mozilla's report database and alert users as well as the developers of addons that have actually broken.

Re:What third-party addons?

[DNS-and-BIND]

My experience is having my carefully collected plugins broken by updates. You check back at the maintainer's page, and the last note was in 2008. I love how the idea that it's OK to break perfectly good plugins is acceptable to you as long as they're not popular.

Re:What third-party addons?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Based on your comment above, I let Firefox update when the nag screen came up (AGAIN!). It's at v7.01 now, and what happened? "Your plugins are incompatible and have been disabled." OK, search for updates. Nothing. Fiddlerhook and Firebug, both of which I used, on the occasion I decided to use Firefox. Oh well! I'm a dumb user and deserve it, thank you developers from freeing me of compatibility.

Re:What third-party addons?

[LocalH]

Add-On Compatibility Reporter. Use it.

I'm holding out for version 23

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh

of course linux distros and FreeBSD and everyone else have the same problem too.... couldn't just be happy with 1.5 or 2.1.3 or 3.3.7
Has to be a big number... has to be impressive.

In fact the only OS I can think of that actually earned its current OS version number from scratch is Mac OS.

Re:I'm holding out for version 23

[Shikaku]

http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/

The current stable release is 23.3. To obtain it, visit the obtaining section.

It's already out.

Again?

[OpenDude]

Already? o_o Wow. OK.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

oh wow. twitter as a search engine? you sure it doesn't warrant an even BIGGER version number? like say 15? it's a major enhancement to the search bar after all

Re:wow

[Coopjust]

The development cycle is better but using major numbers is stupid and has rendered it meaningless IMO. Chrome ratchets up the version number similarly, they just don't trumpet it and instead silently update (which Mozilla is deeply opposed to).

Honestly I think the default option should be default stealth update like Chrome and, during install, ask if people want continuous silent updates. Let the nerds opt out if they have concerns and let everyone who doesn't like to know about every update get it.

Re:wow

[Tridus]

Why don't we just round it up to an even Firefox 2147483648?

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

We do monthly releases, but they are versioned as YY.QQ.MM, so 10.1.2 was the feb 2010 release.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly I think the default option should be default stealth update like Chrome and, during install, ask if people want continuous silent updates.

Using an optional update service or a daemon, with all the good security and transaction stuff would be nice for the release channel. That would make supporting far-away computer illiterate relatives much easier.

8 is soooo a few months ago

[Terranex]

Anyone on the Nightly update channel has been on Firefox 10 alpha 1 for a few days.

Re:8 is soooo a few months ago

[Xugumad]

Any day now I'm expecting they'll go versionless like HTML 5 did ( http://blog.whatwg.org/html-is-the-new-html5 ).

The version number is a red herring

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It's just a number.

No, it's not. It's also a mostly-automatic change in the software that people are running, and that is a much more significant concern.

Re:The version number is a red herring

[ekgringo]

I think someone in the development team accidentally changed the build number to be the first number of the version instead of the last. Marketing found out and so they were forced to go forward with that scheme.

Microsoft must be sick of this

[ZeroSerenity]

I mean, how much money have they spent on cakes?

Re:Microsoft must be sick of this

[kangsterizer]

they become smaller and smaller

Re:Microsoft must be sick of this

[LordLimecat]

This is, of course, the REAL reason theyve moved to rapid release.

Re:Microsoft must be sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

If they stopped lacing the cakes with speed Mozilla might chill the hell down with their schedule.

Re:Microsoft must be sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha, I was thinking exactly the same thing!

Poor Microsoft.

Dare I say this on slashdot, but at least they have a heart.
As far as I know the Mozilla team have never sent Microsoft anything for a major release?

Re:I'm Waiting

[qmaqdk]

I'm waiting for Firefox 23, so it will be the same version as emacs. I'm guessing it will be released around Christmas.

So long dumbass Firefox developers, I'm switching to Chrome.

Which does not display it's version number so prominently, but otherwise uses the same development schedule and version numbering.

Re:I'm Waiting

[robmv]

So long dumbass Firefox developers, I'm switching to Chrome.

that has the same 6 weeks release cycle, news about Firefox are very good troll magnets

Netscape

[Tourney3p0]

Glad to see that Mozilla has learned absolutely nothing from the Netscape fiasco. On the bright side, something good is sure to rise from Firefox's ashes.

Re:Netscape

[maxume]

Firefox 7 is a better browser than Firefox 4 was. There are minimal jarring UI changes between those 2 versions. Addon compatibility is being handled better with each release.

Not everyone sees those things as a fiasco.

Re:Netscape

[0123456]

Firefox 7 is a better browser than Firefox 4 was.

But Firefox 4 sucked, which is why most of us have stuck to 3.6. Perhaps by Firefox 15 it will be a suitable replacement by 3.6, particularly if they've given in and started supporting stable releases again.

Re:Netscape

[Tourney3p0]

A lot of people don't care if addon compatibility is "being handled better", when that means that only 3 of their addons completely fail to work for a few days whereas 4 of them broke last time (two weeks ago). Browser share is beginning to reflect this, with a drop of approximately 7% share in the last year alone. The way I and many others see it, there's very little reason to use Firefox beyond the add-ons. This is the type of stuff that needed to be handled in the alpha stage, not a new problem introduced and perpetuated several years into the product's release.

Re:Netscape

[maxume]

Firefox 4,5 and 6, combined, have more than twice the users as Firefox 3.6.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201108-201108-bar

And the trend is for people to move towards the latest version (6 was released in August and already beat 4 for that month...)

Re:Netscape

[maxume]

Does a slower release cycle really change any of that? Or does it just make the waiting for updated add-ons seem like it takes less time?

The busy work for add on authors to update their compatibility is not great, but extentions aren't breaking just because of version flags anymore.

Re:Netscape

[couchslug]

"On the bright side, something good is sure to rise from Firefox's ashes."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/74561/Phoenix_browser_rises_from_Mozilla_efforts

Re:I'm Waiting

[Mashiki]

Pft are you kidding? I have a bet that we'll see Firefox 15 by Halloween. At the rate we're going we might just see it. I'm kinda ticked at the stupidity of this though. I mean what's the point of actually using versions especially if you need to file bug reports if the user can't submit a bug report for the browser they're using outside of "10" or "23" or whatever else?

Bah. I'm looking at chrome as well. The only thing stopping me is the lack of something like noscript.

Brave decision

[dnewt]

It may have been a controversial decision, but IMHO a brave and necessary one for Firefox's long term survival. Mozilla are keenly aware that they've been outdone in a number of areas by Chrome. Their market share is decreasing and it'll take time to slow the momentum even if they come out with some big improvements. Their old release cycle could well have meant the improvements needed to bring Firefox back into the game would have been too late. Firefox wasn't ready for the switch, unlike Chrome that was built from the ground up with rapid release in mind. Trouble is, I don't think they could afford to wait until it was. My guess is that Mozilla were well aware that the new rapid release cycle would (a) cause people pain when it comes to outdated extensions, and (b) annoy enterprise IT departments. They just saw what great things Chrome are doing, together with their falling market share, and decided that the couldn't afford to wait until they could solve these problems before moving to a rapid release cycle. Enterprise users and users with lots of extensions are in the minority when it comes to Firefox. There's no doubt in my mind that a browser with a slow release cycle is going to loose out to a browser like Chrome in the long term, all other things being equal. Remember I'm talking mainstream here. Not enterprise users, or geeks.

Yes, the regular update cycles are going to piss of a few enterprise types for obvious and very valid reasons. But let's face it, the enterprise is definitely not Firefox's core market. Faced with having to make some tough decisions in an attempt to ensure Firefox's survival, enterprise users were put to one side. The right decision in my opinion bearing in mind the urgency implied by falling market share. However, Mozilla is hearing enterprise concerns and is proposing what they would call 'Extended Support Releases,' which are basically the same concept as Ubuntu's LTS (Long Term Support) releases. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal for details. I've thought this was a good idea since the start, and I have a feeling Mozilla knew all along was something they were eventually going to have to do.

Mozilla have said they're well aware of the incompatible extensions issue and plan to get on top of it. I also get the impression they want to follow Chrome in hiding version info and pushing out updates without any user intervention. Both in my opinion important if you want to have a rapid release cycle without seriously annoying users. For the vast majority of users, I think pushing updates without confirmation is a good thing. Most people really don't care about having maximum control over exactly what gets installed on their machine. They just want something that works well and stays secure. Trouble is they don't appreciate that means regular updates. Much better to do it for them in my opinion.

Re:Brave decision

[Colven]

For the vast majority of users, I think pushing updates without confirmation is a good thing. Most people really don't care about having maximum control over exactly what gets installed on their machine. They just want something that works well and stays secure. Trouble is they don't appreciate that means regular updates. Much better to do it for them in my opinion.

Except that's totally giving the middle finger to the core group of Firefox users, isn't it? That's exactly what I feel Moz has done. I loved the browser because of the control. It's been an invaluable tool for me, professionally (as a web developer) and otherwise, but since v4 I've been dealing with glitchy behaviour, multiple frequent crashes, and a bunch of updates that are mucking with my development cycle because I can't trust that the newest version won't be worse than the last one.

If they had just moved to rapid release and changed their version numbers, it would have been fine. Keep the program, make some changes, make them work, push them out. That's what they were doing, but that's not what they do now. They've made a new beast and killed the old one, and the new one's not as furry and friendly as the old one.

They're screwing themselves. Personally, I'm waiting to see whether or not this will calm down by the time they get to v10. If it doesn't, I'll probably ditch it, so that I can at least go with something stable and then enjoy FF once again in nostalgia.

Re:Brave decision

[Tridus]

So what is Mozilla's core market now? It's not the Enterprise, because they gave those folks the middle finger.

It doesn't seem to be power users anymore, because Asa's good at commenting on how he doesn't care what those people think and this whole rapid release BS has pissed that group off more then anybody else due to breaking addons.

Are they now aiming at grandma? See, the problem with that is that IE and Chrome already own that market and have better distribution to get there. FF's best method of advertising is power users installing it for people. You chase the power users away and grandma will NEVER get Firefox.

So by acting like a Chrome clone... who are they trying to please? Why chase off your core market to aim at one that doesn't care about you? There's some severe management failure going on.

Re:Brave decision

[dnewt]

I'd have to disagree. Firefox has reached a level of penetration beyond it being used by power users and their friends and family. It has a momentum of it's own. The figures for Firefox usage alone tell you that. I have loads of friends who use Firefox on recommendation from a friend who wasn't a power user. Sure, the seeds were sewn by power users, but the recommendation is third or fourth hand now. It's got to the point where a lot of people use it because it's 'cool'. 'Oh yeah, don't use that Internet Explorer, it's rubbish. Use Firefox.' Half these people don't even know why it's 'better', they're just following the fashion. The actual reasons for switching have been lost somewhere along the chain. It's the sheep principle in action.

This idea that there's either power users or 'grandma' is silly. It's not 'grandma', it's everyone, of any age, that wants to use a computer as a tool and not as an intellectual pursuit. If Firefox wishes to maintain it's market share, it's these people it needs to please, and that means taking some cues from Chrome. Power users are _not_ Firefox's core market anymore. That was a long time ago.

I'm a power user and I haven't been chased away. Besides, I think a lot of people on here need to be realistic. Sorry, but Mozilla doesn't care about you as much as they do the average non-techie user.

Re:Brave decision

[dnewt]

And as for giving enterprise the middle finger... Did you not see my link regarding extended support releases? Maybe a temporary middle finger at best. They had to make some hard decisions regarding priority to get things sorted, and quick. It's refreshing to see a company brave enough to take big decisions like that.

Re:Brave decision

[darrylo]

I'd have to disagree. Firefox has reached a level of penetration beyond it being used by power users and their friends and family. It has a momentum of it's own. The figures for Firefox usage alone tell you that.

Really? The figures for Firefox show a nearly flat, but downward trend. The numbers for chrome show a significant upward trend.

Don't like w3schools? Let's try another site. Oh, look, that one shows the same downward trend for Firefox, too.

And a third site (warning: flash required) shows the same thing, too: Firefox has a downward trend.

I like Firefox, too, but the devs actions seem to be driving users away. I'm only using FF because of the addons (but I'm getting really tired of some breaking every month or two).

I have loads of friends who use Firefox on recommendation from a friend who wasn't a power user..

My friends and co-workers are slowly moving away from Firefox to chrome. While personal anecdotes may be fun, they're not all that useful.

Re:Brave decision

[surveyork]

I think that many Slashdotters and ordinary users will switch to the Enterprise edition if they are given the option.

Re:Brave decision

[dnewt]

You completely missed my point. Yes, it's starting to head downward, but do you really believe that > 40% is just power users and their buddies? That was the original claim and the one I was responding to. Perhaps my use of the word 'momentum' in that context was a bad idea. My point was that Firefox has gained a following amongst your average internet users, and a figure of > 40% reflects that. My previous posts base their whole argument around the fact that Firefox's usage is on a downward trend, so what's your point?

Safari was pretty good until 5.1

[rsborg]

Now it sucks up processor and memory faster than Firefox using some "Safari Web Content" process.

Eastern Wallaroo

[tepples]

in Italy currency is currently Euro

So is a subspecies of the Eastern Wallaroo.

This is like losing my tools while trying to work!

[GarryFre]

You know how annoying it would be to have to stop and look for your tools because someone's pet monkey would sneak away with your tools? Well Firefox seems to have become that pet monkey. I'm deep into some project, and suddenly I get some upgrade notice and I have to review which updates are now broken? Oh then I got to find out what else is broke? Firefox, give us a break!! Er wait don't! You've been giving us plenty of broken tools, web sites.

""Users will receive a one-time notification"

[markdowling]

Oh Christ. Cue 100+ support calls.

Craziness

[suprcvic]

Am I the only person that thinks these rapid increases in version numbers is ridiculous? I get that some people see version numbers and say "well this one is higher than that one so it must be better" but damn. 7 just came out and 8 is in beta? Give me a break.

Re:Craziness

[Cyko_01]

that is how the new rapid release process works! They simultaneously work on 3 versions at a time. As we speak version 10 is being developed and 8 and 9 are being stabilized in the alpha and beta channels. As soon as the currently beta becomes a release version, the alpha becomes the new beta, and they build an alpha build from the nightly channel. This is only the first of several fx8 betas before release. New alpha and beta builds are constantly being created to fix new bugs as they are being found and as the builds are tested by new and larger groups of testers.

Re:Craziness

[suprcvic]

Your explanation doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Ooh wow, rapid release, awesome. What's wrong with minor version numbers? Rapid release just annoys me because every time a new one comes out there are extensions that don't work with it so I have to wait for the extensions to be updated again. Sure that happens with any major release, but with rapid release it happens more frequently and is thus more annoying.

Nonsense.. FF is slow and buggy.

[Anonymous Coward]

1-Perception of speed is more important than a synthetic benchmark number....

Hey... every time I look up in between reading a book.. this fat guy is ahead of the olympic runner on the track. Seems like hes better. Its another story that the olympic runner is in reality lapping him every single round when I'm not looking.

Perception is useless. Firefox uses all kinds of dirty tricks. Like on windows, when you exit firefox, the window disappears immediately but the executable remains in memory for a while longer doing god knows what. You will run into this sometimes if you accidentally close firefox and try to restart it. You get an error message because firefox is "already running".

Firefox is slow, buggy and has a amateur security model compared to chrome's elegant multiprocess sandbox model. Hell even IE9 and 10 have a better security model than FF. And thats embarrassing.

Re:Nonsense.. FF is slow and buggy.

[justforgetme]

This is a practice done for many programs nowadays. It is good because end user should never be faced with the application's destruct routines. Having big window applications just cluttering the desktop with unresponsive behemoths is plain bad UX. That is why all IDEs and productivity applications have splash loaders. Google chrome and chromium do that as well. you just don't notice it on them because they are multi instanced by design so when you accidentally close chromium you (theoretically) can re-launch it immediately because all you will do is create another instance of the application. You might argue that FF and Opera should not be single instance apps but that is another story entirely.

I don't know what security model you are referring to, can you elaborate?

I know that perceptive speed is not the key point of an app but it matters in workflows and UX more than you think (apparently). Chrome might be better than FF on handling resource hungry webGL implementations but for the average facebooks I don't think js engine differences are of matter.

I am happy with ff8(aurora) best memory performance I experienced in ff and as far as I can tell the fast development schedule has actually made that devs think about what new functionality they will include.

way to go

Re:Nonsense.. FF is slow and buggy.

[Kalriath]

FF9 is better. It's actually 64-bit (which means most native plugins - Flash included - do not work) and the memory performance is staggeringly better than FF6343635645346 or whatever is current. Still shitty memory performance, but tolerable.

grr THATS IT Im NOT UPGRADING

[Anonymous Coward]

grr FUCK THIS SHIT.....YOU JUST SCREWED YOURSELVES as MY HTTPS addon can't keep up
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:grr THATS IT Im NOT UPGRADING

[Cyko_01]

you are not expected to for another 6 weeks when the next stable release comes out. They simultaneously work on 3 versions at a time. As we speak version 10 is being developed and 8 and 9 are being stabilized in the alpha and beta channels. As soon as the currently beta becomes a release version, the alpha becomes the new beta, and they build an alpha build from the nightly channel. This is only the first of several fx8 betas before release. New alpha and beta builds are constantly being created to fix new bugs as they are being found and as the builds are tested by new and larger groups of testers.

Wow guys

[Joshua Fan]

We're finally taking a break from the Microsoft/Apple bashing. Always refreshing to have a new company to hate.

Re:Wow guys

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean organization: the Mozilla Foundation is not a company.

Waiting for 9.0

[GlobalEcho]

I am waiting for 9.0, coming next Thursday.

Re:Waiting for 9.0

[Cyko_01]

it is here right now in the alpha channel! It, has the new kick-ass type-inference javascript engine for a 44% speed boost on AreWeFastYet and has persistent app tabs.

I'll tell you exactly why we're entitled

[rubycodez]

Because they get MONEY because of the large volume of users using it, that's we the users helping to line their corporate pockets.

So if we tell them they are destroying their formerly great product with their version churning, then they had better damn well unplug their shit filled heads from their assholes and take notice. Otherwise they will wither and die without the funding that we the users enable. And we can be as fucking rude as we want to those clueless douchebags who are running off on a tangent without regard to user needs.

Since version 4 they broke the mouse compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugs like this, since version 4, make me think that Firefox don't give a damn for the user or they are working to make Chrome an alternative:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/810972

Until I find a replacement for the no script add-on I am going to stick with Firefox.

Seamonkey

[Megane]

Seamonkey is the original Mozilla browser without all the Firefox crap thrown in. (At some point they felt the need to rename it from Mozilla, but I can't remember why.)

No Microsoft code, no trendy crap like ribbon bars, runs Ad Block Plus.

Re:Seamonkey

[Ash-Fox]

No Microsoft code

Seamonkey is compiled against Microsoft's visual studio c++ runtimes on Windows, so, yes, there is Microsoft code?

no trendy crap like ribbon bars

I can't find the ribbon bar in Firefox 7, how do I enable it?

Re:Seamonkey

[Megane]

If you're so worried about Microsoft code, why would you be running Windows at all? I know there isn't any in my OS X.

I'll wait..

[Thraxy]

I'm gonna wait a couple of weeks until they release Firefox 24.

Re:___ firefox

[Stormtrooper42]

Technically, Firefox 9.0 is scheduled to enter Beta at the same time they release Firefox 8.0.
That means November 8. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases
Why yes, just 6 weeks after Firefox 7.0 release...

Seriously, calm down on the major releases, Mozilla.

Finally, plugin control!

[GameboyRMH]

Good move on the plugin confirmation, I've been saying Firefox needed that for years.

Firefox, Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who takes firefox seriously any more?

8?? They haven't gotten 7 working right yet.

[gc3]

I was running FF 7 when it was released for a few days, but there seems to be a really bad memory leak issue with it and I had to go back to 6.0 which works fine. I am running it under Windows 7 (64bit).

Difficult to decide

[Anonymous Coward]

My conclusion is

Use IE - if you want to do serious browsing and only browsing ----- rock solid performance, high stability, true hardware acceleration, but lack of add-on support

Use Firefox - if you want to increase usability but are ready to compromise on stability ----- Good add-on support, stability is a big question mark now

Use Chrome - if you a hell bent google fan - its a toy which is bout to crash every time you use it ----- pretty ridiculous with zero stability

Use Opera - if you want a mix of everything ----- not real good in anything and not real bad in anything either

Here's the formula

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear FF Gurus,

Here's the formula for market share, wealth, 24/7 access to nubile groupies smothered in Nutella and rolled in crushed peanuts, etc.

1. Stop this short development cycle bullshit. You know why so many people hate it. They're right, you're wrong, admit it, and undo the error.

2. Fix all the nagging, stupid things in the browser that apparently aren't as much fun to fix as is adding things like Twitter search. Example: FF 7 still doesn't print some web pages right. FF had a serious bug on the books for years (9, I think) in which it would only print the first page of some web pages. You finally got around to fixing that one, but it still mangles some pages, forcing users like me who save a lot of news reports for research purposes as PDF files to have to go fire up another browser just to get a usable copy of a stinking web page. This is beyond frustrating, and ranks second in the Software Stupidity Olympics to Microsoft's fetish with fixed-size dialog boxes in a world where 24", 1920x1080 displays are common.

Re:___ firefox

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I look forward to the next LTS release of Ubuntu, which should include FireFox 731.

proposal for branch that would have slow releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if this proposal has any legs? Or was this just blown off in lieu of the current, ridiculous release cycle?

Without proper version numbers

[pgpalmer]

Without proper version numbers, which this FF would be 4.4, how does one tell what a beta is anymore? The purpose of beta software is to test out the software so as to find faults. If you don't fix said faults and instead release another "major" version, which in turn becomes its own beta, at what point can I trust that the software is no longer beta (in practice, not theory)? Mozilla, trying to catch up with Chrome in version numbers is like trying to compete with an amplifier that goes up to 11 when your own amplifier only goes up to 4, even when the power output on both amplifiers is the same.

Re:Without proper version numbers

[stratdesign]

Haven't posted in years, but wanted to sign in to say "what (s)he said"
The version numbering is silly, and the release notes even seem harder to find since ~4.0
There are standards for what constitues a major number upgrade vs minor update. 7 should have been 6.1, and 8 should be 6.2, at best.

/ignore until load time is reduced

[lw54]

Firefox was eventually replaced because it loaded so slow. I went searching and found Chrome. If Firefox could load as fast as Chrome does, I might switch back.

Re:/ignore until load time is reduced

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand this as a concern, but I generally don't restart Firefox for weeks. I just restarted it because of an update, and my only complaint about the restart was that it started all my video tabs playing on load, so I had to hunt around and close those. Also, while it doesn't mean anything for you, mine loaded very quickly.

LOL

[loufoque]

is pretty much all I have to say

In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Firefox 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 and 8.4.1 have been released. Firefox 8 Alpha is available, Firefox 10.1 has been released; Firefox 10.9 beta is available, Firefox 11, 12, 13 are released, add-ons are no longer checked: they are all deleted after each upgrade. Firefox 14.36 alpha is available; Firefox 16 is released.
The Mozilla Foundation is proud to announce to its userbase of the last 400 aficionados that their version is now finally higher than that of Google Chrome.

Issues with websites

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a long time firefox user, but starting with the rapid release version madness I noticed too many websites started having issues with firefox (ie: buttons not working right, pages not loading, etc). So I switched to Chrome. Now I am the product.

NO

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got all of my addons 'n shit working after upgrading to v6. Then there's still 7 to worry about. I'm not worried about 8 for two reasons: 1. FF always has a beta and 2. I'm not using FF any more.

So...it's been real, Mozilla. You can jerk yourselves off in front of the world all you want, but I'm not gonna get any on my face. Thanks for the browser I used to like.

Tired

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of having to do things like find the option to make "http://" show in the URL bar. I'm tired of things appearing and disappearing out of thin air - like the view source option that used to be in the view menu (I think)... and can now only be found by right clicking a page. I've given up trying to figure out if version 1 milllion is better than version 250,000, because I'm two months out of date. I'm tired of trying to fix (as far as I consider) Mozilla's fuckups every few weeks.

I want a browser that just works, doesn't have a major revision every month, updates itself, doesn't break what I consider primary features such as displaying http:// in the URL bar, doesn't break extensions, and plainly just works. I could care less how memory efficient it is. As long it's a decent speed and doesn't do the above, I'm good.

Goodbye Mozilla. Your ship is sinking faster than I expected.

FF 8 already?

[LoRdTAW]

Is it just me or does it feel like we were using FF 3.x just yesterday? For a while it was mostly point releases now were on 8.x already? I must be living under a rock or something. That or I just forgot about FF after switching to chrome.

Re:FF 8 already?

[lvxferre]

Is it just me or does it feel like we were using FF 3.x just yesterday? For a while it was mostly point releases now were on 8.x already? I must be living under a rock or something. That or I just forgot about FF after switching to chrome.

I got exactly the same feeling.

I'm not against quick release cycle, but this version number race should stop as soon as Mozilla and Google "discover" that some users actually use version numbers to know if the update is just bug fixes (== update ASAP), minor improvements (new functionality) or major rewrite / interface rewamp (think twice before update).

IMO Firefox 8.0 == Firefox 3.10.

In other news: Firefox 7.01 released

[surveyork]

Firefox 7 had a minor but nasty bug so Firefox 7.01 was released. I think that really is news and not the release of Firefox 8 Beta. http://www.ghacks.net/2011/09/30/mozilla-rushes-out-firefox-7-01-update/

poor guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine using Firefox on Gentoo.

oh good

[smash]

At this rate, given what the rapid release has so far done to their market share, firefox will be down to 10% share by christmas, and they'll need to go back to considering what their user base actually want, rather than some project leader's fantasy.

patch

[wooptoo]

They need a binary patching system like Chrome has for updates.

Why not just name the next version Firefox Googol?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these guys paying any attention? 7.0 doesn't work very well! Chrome doesn't work with Google Plus very well, nor do 100 other things I do with Firefox. Had to use Internet Explorer to deal with Google Plus, today. And Firefox reminds me every 10 minutes that switching to 8.0 will whiten my collar, brighten my smile, improve my sex life, and cure the national debt. I've tried Safari, and I guess I just don't like quiche that much. ;-) Yikes!!!!!!

FF 8 and Lion

[dkholm]

Neither Firefox 7s or 8 work in Lion, at least on my computers. I wish I could go back to 5 but I don't think it works in Lion. I'm even pining after IE these days. One just can't get addicted to or rely heavily on any one browser –it will only break your heart.