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Ask Slashdot: Life After Firefox 3.6.x?
Mooga writes "I am a hard-core user of Firefox 3.6.x who has chosen to stick with the older, yet supported version of Firefox for many years now. However, 3.6.x will soon hit end-of-life, making my life, and the lives of similar users, much more complicated. 3.6.x has been known for generally being more stable and using less RAM than the modern Firefox 10 and even Chrome. The older version of Firefox is already having issues rendering modern websites. What are others who have been holding onto 3.6.x planning on doing?"
I do not understand techie luddites. Why didn't you upgrade? Why the anxiety? It's a fucking WEB BROWSER. Life will go on.
the same was probably said of netscape 4
What exactly is a "hard-core" user?
Doesn't seem too long ago that I was having the same questions about Netscape Navigator 4.5. I survived.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
Stop being a pain the ass and upgrade.
It's a browser, not some server software.
Not quite as good as FF used to be but it is not bad after you get used to it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I was a firefox user for users until I realized that chrome is what firefox used to be.
I have switched to Chrome and am happy with seamless updates.
Really, what advantages do you have with using an old, outdated version? Smaller memory footprint, well, are you actually low on memory? RAM is cheap. You already said that version 3.X is slower than modern builds.
The only suggestion I have is live with the new version progression, stop being concerned with it and live with what the developers are doing. Either that or move to gentoo and compile you own!
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
Firefox 9 is perfectly fine. No problems.
Who gives a shit if it uses a little bit more memory. I just bought 16GB of RAM for $75. It isn't 1991 anymore.
I don't like the bullshit upgrade schedule where they make a few minor improvements and call it a major new release. That's why I'll probably stay with 9 for a while. But there is no reason to stay with 3.6.
People like Asa Dotzler and the failure of the plugin-container to contain Flash from causing even kernel panics made the move to Google Chrome (or Chromium) a no brainer.
It is just a browser - not a believe system.
If Mozilla shows trash like Asa Dotzler the door and marketing stops writing the code I will switch again.
"Betrayal" is the privilege of the end user.
Memory management has improved somewhat in their later releases and I believe Mozilla has changed the plugin system to be compatible with their new release cycle. Additionally, the JavaScript engine is so much faster in later releases and HTML5 support has improved a lot as well.
Let it die.
(Then again, I became a Chrome user recently and haven't looked back. Their plugin and web app support is fantastic and built-in Firebug capabilities are great. Really love how well it synchronises with Google services and their Android version is looking very promising.
Making your life "much more complicated"? It's an outdated web browser. Update to something modern and move on with your life.
If you want to browse the current web, use a current browser. You may *want* to use an older browser, but clearly it's not working out for you. I may *want* to spread butter with a screwdriver, but I'd be better of using a tool appropriate for the job.
I'm sure you're feeling indignant about being "forced" to upgrade, and I'm sure you think your reasons for wanting to hang onto an old piece of software are valid. Nobody else cares. Either fix it for yourself or move on.
I just wish my addons would work then I would upgrade. Without my addons, I may as well use any other browser. You have the typical AdBlock Plus, NoScript and Cookie Managers which have alternatives but things like X-Forwarded-For Spoofer (Gaining access to idiotic region restricted US-only websites), FireBug, Certificate Patrol and other various utilities have non-trivial alternatives when using other browsers.
I actually don't agree with your premise. While Firefox had some issues around version 4, Firefox 10 is actually faster and more stable than Firefox 3.6 was, and RAM usage is on a downward trend. I understand that Firefox ~4 turned you off because I was really irritated by the regressions that came around that time, but things *did* get better. If you give it another try and make sure you give it a fair shake without already having decided it's worse, I think you'll find it's actually an improvement over what you're using right now. It's not like Firefox 3.6 was a speed demon in its day either... Firefox's memory hog problems go back way further than that.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Upgrading.
You want SeaMonkey. Modern Gecko, archaic memory management model. Required system specs page says 128 MB of RAM and 233 MHz Pentium. It even sits in your system tray if you ask nicely enough. Not exactly pretty by modern standards, but I gather that's not your highest priority.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
using less RAM than the modern Firefox 10 and even Chrome
Firefox is currently using 500MB on my laptop, I assume most of it from caching. Are you really that desperate? Send me a pm, and I'll give you a gig of RAM free, which I have laying around after my last upgrade. Or buy it here yourself for $32.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/category/memshrink/
Start there. They are working thru the memory issues. They have a pretty good idea where they are at (and how to fix them). They just figured out a huge one with a common plugin (mcafee) that they do not control.
They are also building in metrics to help people find the bugs instead of 'in task manager it is using 1.5 gig' (about:memory).
All in all I have been pretty happy with the 4-10 series. The only thing that pissed me off was the movement of controls. "learn yet another layout..." sort of thing.
Most of the speed increase for this last version came from the memshrink project (it was a decent one too).
If you are seeing crazy memory metrics they have steps they would like you to help them with to get it fixed...
On modern systems consumer systems which have 4/8/12/16 gigabytes?
Tell me you're using some really old hardware and then your complaint might be justified.
Do we just give any nagging luddite wanker a soap box now? Maybe I should write a submission about how my ball-maneuvered mouse is finally dying, and ask how people avoid those optical mice these days? They use more electricity, you know!
If your computer is crashing or running of memory using the latest browser, you need a new computer. You're a geek, you're supposed to be using beta versions, and contributing to development of new software and standards.
Unless you're being forced to run obsolete software by some perverse corporate mandate, you have no excuse nor valid reason for running such outdated software. You are the smoking clunker on the highway of the internet. You are the grey haired granny in the fast lane of the web. The road hazard. The surfing security hole.
Are you getting it?
You are the security risk.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'll skip the obvious question about why you don't like new Firefox or other browsers and try another tact.
Since this is all open source software, why don't you find like minded people and make a new fork based on Firefox 3.6? If you want to go older than Firefox 3.6, you can always use K-Meleon.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I'm going to whine on /. on how betrayed I feel by a company whose free products I have enjoyed using in the past for free without having given back anything to them now that there are better alternatives and I don't feel like switching because I feel that company owes me for some reason.
FTFY.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
I read this article, and went, "WTF?" Why would you use Firefox 3.6? For a finer browser, I recommend NCSA Mosaic—it uses even *less* RAM than Firefox 3.6! OP, you would probably like it very much. Mosaic was from the start a good, reliable, lightweight browser, without any of that CSS garbage and JavaScript crap! It's such a shame nobody supports it anymore, although that hasn't stopped me from using it daily on Windows 3.1! Why can't everybody just stick with what we already knew was the best in 1993? Stop succumbing to needless upgrades that do nothing but demand such ridiculous minimum system requirements such as 2 GHz processors and broadband internet connections! Planned obsolescence, I tell you! Nothing more!
Dammit, the Slashdot comment CAPTCHA doesn't work in Mosaic! I'd better just ask the kids to lend me one of their new-fangled Eye-Phones so I can share my intelligent, thought-provoking views over the internet super-highway.
The New Penny is equal to the old 20 Shilling piece, or whatever. Similarly, Firefox... what are we on now... 10.1? Firefox 10.1 is basically Firefox 3.8.01 in the old number system. They just did the same basic thing Netscape 6 did, when they just skipped release version 5, to keep up with Internet Explorer's Jones'.
It's not worth loosing sleep over.
You have essentially two choices: stay on 3.6 after EOL and deal with it, or upgrade.
Staying on 3.6 (Which I have to do one one machine because it's a G4 Mac and already has no support) is an option, but eventually, depending on what kind of websites you frequent, you may get pwn3d. But if you restrict yourself to known-good websites, and use extensions like AdBlock, FlashBlock, and possibly GreaseMonkey, you can probably coast along for years.
Upgrading to a new browser (Especially on Linux) is also not a terrible idea. Firefox 10 is actually pretty good about RAM use (Better than Chrome 17, for my uses), and you can set the interface to match Firefox 3.6 so you don't have to re-train yourself to the new look and feel. It's even a bit more snappy than Firefox 3.6, and it does have some nice features for web-centric users (Like pinned apps, and Firefox sync).
I understand the "I'm staying here" feeling, but unless you're willing to make some serious compromises, you're on your own.
... And so it comes to this.
The sad thing is that we're now in the position we were ~10 years ago with Netscape Navigator, except that this time Mozilla is playing the part of Netscape, and there's no Phoenix on the horizon...
Nobody owes you anything. Quit your pathetic nerd raging.
Chrome for facebook, Opera for general browsing, and Firefox 3.6 (with all but the most necessary plugins disabled, and the .net shenanigan addon completely removed) for things that must be Firefox. IE for corporate intranet sites that require it.
give up the F.U.D. and enjoy the FUN!
If you can't stand the constant updates you can always get the ESR (extended support release). If you have javascript enabled then upgrading is absolutely worth it. Firefox 10 also has add-ons set to compatible by default so your add-ons should work unless the developer has opted out, or the add-on uses binary components. Memory usage has also improved leaps and bounds since 4.0 - I dare say it is better then 3.6 since I can now leave it running overnight with no adverse effects when I go back to it
I never used 3.x. Or rather, I used it, then switched to Chrome until 4.x came out (there's a nasty bug that makes the browser stop rendering while updating Live Bookmarks - and I had nearly 150 of those, meaning once an hour or so, it would freeze up for about five minutes).
I did, however, keep a copy of 2.x installed on my then-secondary backup desktop (later became my tertiary backup desktop), because it has the lowest RAM and CPU usage, and said redundant desktop is almost a decade old. A 900mHz Athlon and 384MB of RAM is not quite sufficient to run FF4+. I'm not worried about security (384mb of RAM might technically be enough for Windows, but I'm not stupid enough to find out), and
However, I have no complaints about the current releases of Firefox on reasonably-modern machines. Well, the scrolling in bookmark folders is kind of wonky on OS X, but that's about it.
My advice to you is therefore dependent on how good your machine is. If it is at all modern (64-bit capable is probably a good rule of thumb), and above the power range of an Atom, I would advise you to upgrade to current and suck it up, or possibly convert to Chrome. If, however, you are sticking with it because you're running it on ancient crap, just deal with it being "unsupported". Or, hey, it's open-source, just backport the security patches yourself.
no longer use firefox...and i was a host that helped get the original communicator out....TOTAL CRAP NOW every browser.
last real decent one was netscape 3 gold.
I am a hard-core user of Firefox 3.6.x
Dear Slashdot,
I am a hardcore Windows 98 user and I don't accept the fact that my outdated software makes me a security risk. What do I do?
Sincerely,
A fucking dummy
It's a common misconception that the luddites were against modern technology - in fact, their campaign was about job protection.
They didn't ruin all of the texture factories - just ones where people were losing jobs as a protest against the loss of jobs - not against the (more) modern technology.
Firefox 4 was released less than a year ago. What websites are suddenly incompatible with Firefox 3.6? The browser hasn't changed that much in a year.
Maybe he isn't using WIndows?
The benefits you mention are immediately negated by the horrible UI that Firefox has had starting with version 4.
They threw out decades of experience, knowledge and convention, for absolutely no gains whatsoever.
Getting rid of the menu bar by default was just plain stupid. Then they followed it up with the status bar bullshit. These are among the worst UI design decisions ever made in an application that's so widely used. They both harmed usability significantly, with no benefits. The 20 extra pixels at the top and bottom of the screen, when most users (even laptop and netbook users) have over a thousand vertical pixels to work with, are not worth the loss in usability.
There have been many other stupid and unnecessary changes recently. What was one an effective browser to use is now a mess. Any performance improvements in the past few releases have been completely negated by these UI screw-ups.
It does us no good if pages now load a half-second sooner due to performance improvements to the JavaScript engine, if simple actions that were easily accessible via the traditional menus now take us 30 seconds or more to figure out how to do, if we can even do them at all, since the UI changes have been put in place.
Here you go, now you'll be able to start using all the proper diagnosis tools like about:memory?verbose
Don't forget to follow the Memshrink and Snappy progress.
Mozilla is the descendant of Netscape Naviagator, so I'm not surprised.
here's what you were really asking through your raging: Why did Firefox drastically increase build numbers for only minor releases?
great question AC, here's the answer. Public opinion held consensus that the higher the build number, the more advanced the browser. As IE was in build 9, Google chrome was in version 10, and Opera was in version 11 when Firefox version 4.0 came out, Mozilla decided to abandon their convention for build numbers and play catch-up. Nothing more than public opinion.
I think this was a smart decision.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How often should people be required to upgrade? Keep in mind that upgrading does break things very often, and Firefox is among the leaders of breakage. Upgrading takes time. And with something like Firefox, that's a very critical point to be broken, because you may not be able to access anything until the glitches and other bugs are worked around (which is often slow when answers are not forthcoming on the forums where asked). My last Firefox upgrade took 2 weeks to get it working right.
And of course you will see a lot MORE straggling this year because of Ubuntu's switch to Unity, and people holding back in versions 10.04 or 10.10 to "wait and see" what happens. At least I'm going to try Xubuntu 12.04 on a separate machine and see how well it works. If it works OK and I can get Compiz running under Xfce this time, and the Firefox version on it can be made to work in multi-instances OK, then in about 2 months after that I'll switch my main desktop over to that, and then be on whatever that version of Firefox is.
I now wonder if the question I started this post with will even be answered.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If it weren't for it's complete inability to deal with Roaming Profiles and magically ignoring the fact that it's pinned to my task bar.
So I switched back to Firefox and w/ v10 it's not too shabby. I miss the multi-threading of Chrome, sometimes it'd be nice to go to another tab while waiting for the 'script is eating your CPU' dialog to come up. It's nice to have search actuated by / again, although I didn't miss it quite enough to hunt down a solution for Chrome. I also think the bookmark tools are a little better in Firefox.
. . . and upgrade it any way you like. That's what all /.rs do, right?
Please find me a person that actually believes that. Or better yet find me a typical "Joe Sixpack" that knows what version his browser is. I want citations, not just some random anecdote you made up.
3.6.x is not obsolete. The most recent security update for it was just two weeks ago - v.3.6.27, released February 17th, 2012.
I hope you're simply misinformed. It's not like Mozilla stopped pushing security fixes for it - in fact, that's what is motivating the submitter to ask this question, so that he avoids the very situation you so hyperbolically described.
One of the most important aspects of the 'Open Source' movement is that projects only die by neglect. No person, committee, or corporation can kill a project by mere decree once source code has been made Open Source. So, if there are enough people who want to stay with Mozilla 3.6, they should band together, and fork it. Yes, with a lack of technical competence and knowledge of this specific code, this may be difficult. But, perhaps those who do not have the skills or time to keep the code up-to-date as far as critical things like security patches, could HIRE some programmers with the skill do do the work. Yes, imagine PAYING for software? Some people seem to forget that programmers have bills to pay, too. So, MOZ36-fans, form a forum, raise money on kickstarter, find some programmers, and PAY them. Or bake them cookies. Something.
I'm in the same boat, I just (two weeks ago) switched from 3.6 to 10. I still have 3.6 installed just in case, but so far I'm adjusting.
In order to have some stability though, try the ESR version, it's what I'm using. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html And if you want to read the FAQ, go with http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
So far, there are a few hiccups. There were a few add-ons that didn't make the switch, but they were rarely used, so I haven't noticed their absence yet. The tab size is annoying and I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. The old about:config fix doesn't work, and the userchrome.css fix just screws things up more.
I did need to readjust the default layout, the lack of a refresh and stop button is just annoying, but they're easy to add back. I like having a user interface, so yeah, that.
Noscript and Adblock plus work. I recommend the "status-4-evar" addon to get the status bar back.
Overall, I haven't noticed the slowdown or memory consumption. Of course, everyone's mileage will vary.
One new feature, at least new for me, is that you have FF restore all your tabs after you close your browser, but when you start back up, the tabs won't load unless you click on them. I really like this feature. Back in 3.6, it could take a really long time to restore a browsing session.
Overall though, the shock of switching isn't as bad as you think.
I think I should probably end this post with instructions on doing a side-by-side install. Before installing anything, make a copy of your firefox profile. Then edit the 'profiles.ini' to reflect this, it's up a folder or two from the profiles. In the profiles.ini, make a new name, something like myff10stuff for your profile. Then, get the ESR build and install to a different folder, but do not start FF at the end of the install. Edit the existing FF shortcut or make your own, but put -P on the end. it should read something like
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 10\firefox.exe" -P myff10stuff
All that is because the profile manager doesn't let you copy an existing profile. You can delete, rename, or create a new one, but you can't copy. You'll probably want to do the same thing to the 3.6 copy and use the 3.6 profile.
In the past, upgrades usually brought at least some benefits. There'd be useful new features
The reason 3.6 can't render some web sites is because it doesn't have the new features.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I've honestly regretted allowing FF to update past 7, because every time the major version changes, another tool I have been using gets turned off. If there's an update to the add-in, there's just the time needed to install it, but... more and more of the rather limited set of tools I use are broken, with no replacement. The latest (going from 9 to 10) was a utility that the only replacements available won't save to your local hard drive - the only way to do that is to let it upload to the particular social network the tools was designed for, THEN download it to your computer. Another add-in always seems to get their update out just in time for the next incompatible update to FF...
Maybe if they actually do this "we won't break things for two years, honest, we promise!" "enterprise" version they mentioned...
I use a webapp at work that only works in IE7 or Firefox 2.x/3.x... Anything newer and it doesn't render properly. The version of the software was released mid-2010. Since I need the software for daily business, I'm stuck with an "outdated" browser.
But the latest FF seems pretty stable to me. I'd go straight to the latest release and get the status 4 ever extension.
If you can't handle that chrome is great choice too.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
After using the Chromium Browser and its variants (chrome, srware iron etc..) for about 2 years, I went back to firefox.
Except this time I am using Waterfox a 64bit version of FF. All the proper add on's work with it as well. Noscript, adblock etc..
I left Chrome because of the HORRIBLE memory issues and the fact that any little instance of flash loading on my screen caused my browser to hang forcing me to reload a page. Even on a fresh install of Windows 7 (and making sure only one version of flash was installed)
Please spare me the flash hatred I get it. There are sites I enjoy use it.
Right now Firefox/Waterfox might not be the fastest game out there but when it comes to memory usage and stability, as of late (for about six months) it is beating Chrome hands down. Have a look at the recent benchmarks. The test reflect the truth I speak.
People need to start comparing the browsers again, instead of jumping ship every time something NEW comes along.
Then they should have skipped all the intermediate version numbers and went straight to version 11.
...I began hitting more and more web sites that wouldn't render properly with Firefox 3.6.x. I finally got fed up with it and upgraded -- in quick succession -- to FF8.x, then 9.x, and finally 10.x. For those of you eagerly awaiting FF10.0.3, please be patient. It'll be released the day after I upgrade to FF 10.0.2.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I heard all these arguments about Firefox 4, which caused me to hold off on using it. Now I'm up to Firefox 9.
I really don't notice the difference, they're just incremental improvements.
These FUD stories are subtle and clever and they do work their FUD, even on me.
It would have been helpful if the Firefox developers had provided for a means to install, AND run, EVEN concurrently, more than one version of a browser at the same time (without the need for virtual machines or even different user logins). But it seems from their actions that their intention is to have you either upgrade and break current web based apps, or stay behind.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Really? I seem to recall a FireFox ad placed in the New York Times. Once they start advertising, the whole 'you get what you pay for' argument is useless.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Once they start advertising, the whole 'you get what you pay for' argument is useless.
You'll have to explain that one to me.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Opera is where I went after I stopped feelin' Firefox. Tab groups, notes, mail/irc/bittorrent/rss clients built in, Opera Turbo for those times you're tethering and need to conserve on your wireless cap, gestures, widgets and extensions (including AdBlock and NoScript), speed dial, session preservation, private browsing, reasonable memory usage, skins and themes, configurable download behavior, configurable keyboard shortcuts, a sane release schedule, and performance that frequently rivals Chrome. Also, it runs on basically anything - Windows (as early as 2000 with the current version, I believe), OSX, virtually every flavor of Linux, and Solaris (and basically every mobile operating system ever developed), and the Windows installer for Opera is nearly 33% smaller than the most recent edition of Firefox. While it's not Richard-Stallman-Free, it is freeware now.
To be fair, the only issues I've had were with some IE specific sites. The most prominent example is...basically every version of Outlook Web Access Microsoft ever released, even though the more recent versions have worked correctly on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. The Sharepoint at work does work correctly, however lists aren't rendered in database view the way they are in IE. Opera tends to take standard compliance to the point where it seems as if the browser says, "if I don't render it right, the site is wrong". While technologically correct, in practice Firefox handles these kinds of sites with much more practical grace, in no small part because FF is almost invariably a part of website design testing, while Opera is less frequently tested. Still, it's the rare exception for websites to not display correctly in Opera, at least to the point of getting the content you need, but even these discrepancies are relatively infrequent.
Most of your complaints are settings that you can change, or are altered by add-ons. For instance the status-4-evar add on will restore the status bar functionality.
I did find that after 4 I needed to upgrade my ram. 2x2 GB sticks cost $50, and everything ran better.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Stay with Firefox 3.6. No worries. Now I have always used multiple browsers. So I work recommend you supplement withe Internet Explorer 5.0, and Mosaic 3.0. For web pages that refuse to render in the stable tried and true web browser try the latest Lynx Browser version v2-8-3.
You don't own the road. Granny has as much right to use it as you do, and she can drive as slowly as she damn well pleases. And she poses NO risk to you. Your security is your own business. It's up to you to see to it - don't try to make the rest of us responsible for it.
The highway is large, and there's plenty of room on it for everyone, regardless of whichever particular vehicle they prefer to drive.
Once they start advertising, the whole 'you get what you pay for' argument is useless.
True. If it doesn't work as advertised you're entitled to a full refund.
Blank until
Really? Um, okay. It's real simple: They want you, so how do they go about keeping you?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I use the Debian packaged Firefox (Iceweasel) from http://mozilla.debian.net/. It works just fine. I don't understand what all the hooha is about new releases of Firefox.
That's like saying PHP4 isn't obsolete.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
They want you, so how do they go about keeping you?
Uhm... by producing a product that you want to use. For free.
Which is a strategy they're apparently currently failing at.
So, what does this have to do with your last two comments?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
For me Firefox uses way less memory than Chrome on both my computers. Less than 50% with the same tabs open. This is with many Firefox extensions installed and only one Chrome extension. On my older computer because of the memory issues Firefox is way faster as it isn't swapping like crazy. On my brand new i7 I also have all my youtube tabs crashing on Chrome pretty frequently. I just have to refresh the tab to get it back but I don't get anything like that with Firefox. I use try to use Chrome for using Google services and Firefox for everything else.
I'm going to whine on /. on how betrayed I feel by a company whose free products I have enjoyed using in the past for free without having given back anything to them now that there are better alternatives and I don't feel like switching because I feel that company owes me for some reason.
FTFY.
Seconded. All those in favour, say aye.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
They'll stop providing security updates in a month, though, so it's certainly obsolescent and will be obsolete shortly.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
They want people, not necessarily "you," particularly if "you" are a whiny bitch who demand unrealistic service.
portableapps is what you want.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
haha
I really don't understand why I'd need to connect the dots for you. You said it yourself.
... by producing a product that you want to use.
It failed for him, he expressed his displeasure. If they want him back, they know how. Simple. 'Free' doesn't matter, it's still a product.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Is it at all possible to put the tabs on the bottom of the window in newer Firefox versions? I haven't been able to manage this through userChrome.css, about:config, or with any addon I've tried. My limited Google searches made it sound like the first two methods are out because of underlying design changes; and I'm currently using some "tree style tab" addon that has an option for bottom tabs, but could never get it to actually work there (I can move tabs to the sides just fine though).
This is the biggest reason I still keep and primarily use a Firefox 3.6 install.
baaaa... buy new, baaaaa..
Right, there's a threshold. Big deal. The point is the 'you get what you pay for' argument doesn't fly with Firefox.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
In the past, upgrades usually brought at least some benefits. There'd be useful new features
The reason 3.6 can't render some web sites is because it doesn't have the new features.
May we please have some hard data? Please list websites that Firefox 3.6 can't render properly. Thx.
Preferably websites that actually matter, but any will do.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
If they're paying money to convince you to use their product, then why aren't you allowed to criticize the product if you haven't contributed to it?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where you got the idea that a Firefox version, which was introduced almost two years ago, is more stable than the current version. Also, it's 2012 - RAM has not been an issue for several years now. If you're having issues with RAM shortage, the browser version is not your real problem. Plus, there's the very crucial HTML5 revolution you're not being a part of.
Don't be a Luddite. Take the plunge and upgrade. In a week, you won't even notice the changes.
You mean like Firefox -P -no-remote ? http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Managing-profiles I can understand that end-users with little computer knowledge think it doesn't exist, but you are posting on Slashdot and are supposedly an advanced user that can check his facts, that was the first hit on google for "Firefox profile management". This feature exists since... forever (Mozilla Suite even had it), I have 2 versions of Firefox running happilly at the same time with separate profiles. How do you think that web developpers check their pages in different versions of Firefox ?
Videos and games necessitate Flash for the most part. So, why not have a separate browser (like Opera) solely for the purpose of Flash?
I still use 3.6.27, and it isn't because I care about its memory footprint or potential security holes. I have plenty of memory and am fully capable of creating and maintaining a secure system.
The reason I stick with the older version is because I cannot stand the change in Mozilla's design philosophy in later versions. I loathe the menu navigation, I despise how it feels like Chrome (that's its own particular tangent), I vehemently disagree with the version pacing that more rapidly breaks my favorite add-ons, removed some features I enjoyed...
Go ahead and call me a Luddite. You won't be right, but you'll feel better about yourself.
You can criticise anything you want any time you want, but don't always expect a positive response because every group has it's share of douchebags (F/OSS is no exception). The Mozilla Foundation advertising on a web page, in a newspaper or by planting little flags in dog turds makes absolutely no difference in law or custom, that's something you've imagined.
Blank until
So? Does that mean they owe him a good product or anything?
Company offers free product, of course in the hopes of attracting people.
People shrug and move on.
End of story.
Some people of course feel like they have a right to bitch and moan instead of simply moving on to greener pastures or actually getting involved in producing a product that they like (which in the case of Mozilla is an actual option). That doesn't mean these people aren't a pain in the rear.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Nope. Granny's got to stay in her own damn lane and go at least 40mph on the interstate just like everybody else. Granny also has the option of shredding her license and not driving anymore if she's too blind to see the road.
So, basically, everyone else was lying about how advanced they were, so Firefox should, too?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My FF 3.6 plays videos all by itself from web sites run by webmasters smart enough to realize this works, and adhered to the altruistic principle of gracefully degrading (and, what an older version can do, let it still do it). It can't render the non-Flash video sites only because those sites put in some gotcha-code to break it and spit out some HTML5 BS. It's the website doing it, not the browser.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Although stability and performance are the only 2 issues for me, not website rendering issues at all, specifically performance. I don't get many memory leaks but the browser (infact no browser) is fast enough for me. I have 4/8 (HT) cores, 8gb of ram and an SSD and goddamn if no browser is quick enough, they all feel too sluggish.
Anyhow,.. I stick with 3.6 because the user interface fits precisely and utterly what I want in a web browser. The tabs are below the address bar, the awesomebar is included. All of the addins I want and need are supported.
(Adblock Plus, LastPass, Xmarks but most importantly Tabs Menu and Tab Mix Plus)
Furthermore there are some subtle but stupid changes in Firefox 4 and onwards (correct me if I'm wrong please, I refuse to use it) - Example the back and forward buttons in Firefox 3 has a small downarrow, showing you a quick convienient history of the last 10 pages per tab. (I hear that's removed in 4 onwards)
Also quite importantly 3.6 is NOT fucking updated every month breaking my goddamn addins. (There are several more issues but those 2 are the first which comes to mind)
So to summarise, yes I completely agree with the OP asking the question, as for the answer on what to do, I'm utterly stumped. Firefox seems finished to me, they have gone 'drunk' on versions and lost their way. I simply do not have faith in them anymore.
IE, well a lot of people give IE shit but it's improved a lot - but not even half as good as FF 3.6
Chrome annoys the shit out of me, one of the google guys who has something to do with it to my knowledge posts on shacknews, he's a nice enough guy but he has made it clear how stubborn google are regarding the UI, it's simply not going to be customisable to the levels I want, they are convinced that tabs on top is how it should be, period. The browser itself is quite fast - although my Xmarks bookmarks sync from FF to Chrome sucks too, because quicksearches (keywords) break (%s in a url, if you don't know what it is, go look it up, extremely handy)
I genuinely don't know what to do, for the time being I'm sticking with 3.6 - people don't realise it but for some reason that branch keeps getting updates. I think they split at 3.6.16 or so about 12 months ago and now we're up to 3.6.25 I think. It continues to be graphically and input wise PRECISELY what I want in a browser, utterly 100%, every behaviour, hotkey, etc - I can customise it exactly how I want it (Thanks TabMixPlus)
So, I sit and wait for someone to fix Chrome so it's usable full time or ,.. well I don't know what.
"Free" doesn't mean "exempt from criticism." I wish people would stop saying things such as this.
It's a good time to check out the competition.
Try out opera, its fantastic and gets all too little attention with Firefox and Chrome around.
Too bad adding RAM for me would mean one of the following:
1) Installing a different version of windows (and having the PC not work right for weeks).
2) Buying a SATA (or PCIe) RAMdrive and putting the pagefile there to emulate having more RAM (costs more and is slower, but more convenient than #1).
3) Somehow transplanting files from Windows 2003 to make xp recognize more than $GB or RAM without actually installing 2003 or a 64bit version of Windows (costs less than #2 and is most convenient, but may not actually be possible).
Exactly because, you know, most blokes will be playing at 10. This one goes one higher.
blog
Still on 3.x too, 3.6.27 to be exact. I had upgraded to 10.0.2 but that is an utter piece of shit. Once example, when typing on a web page I can bang out a line of text and wait for it to render.
Mozilla is STILL maintaining the 3.x line because they know what a pice of shit 10.0.2 is. But I find myself using Chrome more and more. I do this because I think Mozilla is going in the WRONG direction. Firefox used to be fairly fast, and you could tame memory usage and cpu usage. Now it's a bloated piece of crap.
I've run Firefox on very old machines, and I can tell you that 192M is about the lower limit for version 10. Firefox 4 was a memory pig, but they started this Memshrink program. Firefox 10 really does not take much more than Firefox 3.6, and it's getting better. Currently, for memory usage, Firefox is the best of all the big browsers, better than Chrome, Opera, and IE.
Firefox 10 works okay on a 350MHz Pentium II with 192M RAM, but is unusably slow and flogs swap mercilessly if the computer has only 128M. I have run Firefox 3.5 on a 133MHz Pentium with 96M of RAM, and it's barely usable-- takes 30 seconds to launch, but it does work on simple web sights. So, yes, 3.6 is still the leanest reasonably modern version.
You can find computers with more than 192M RAM in the trash. I suggest the poster go dumpster diving. Or if he's just a few megabytes short, grab an alpha of Firefox 13. Or use Dillo. Or live with a text based browser such as lynx or links. Or use wget or curl.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Anonymous Coward, argh good chance you aren't going to see this. But IE 8-9 has a compatibility mode option. Seems to work pretty good. Click: tools->developer tools and in the middle of the toolbar there is a document mode: you can pick 7 8 or 9 in version 9. So ... you can get the eye candy of ie 9 with the rendering of ie 7. I'm not sure if there is a way to save the setting so that it only applies to a specific page. I think the !DOCTYPE header in the webpage is supposed to control what version of IE mode that IE >=8 tries to render the page with so if you have access to the page try adding the appropriate flag to let browsers know what you want.
Low RAM usage, pretty stable on Windows 98 & 2000. Yeah, IE 5.5, that's the ticket!
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
add that to 3.6, feel at ease and install the damn thing.
Thank me not!
Whatever with this Firefox nonsense. I still got IE6. Who needs these new browsers and their HTML5 and newfangled graphics? Just uses more RAM. It's all after my RAM, I'm telling you.
Check out the Firefox and Thunderbird ESR packages. The roadmap is clear, and the mailing list group is active. Also, use the CCK wizard, as I read that the author added in functions to make Firefox 10 look like the 3.x line.
Them's some pretty strong words there, pard.
Look, computers are all about productivity, right? You get everything in your system configured just the way you like it so you can be as productive as possible with the things that lie in your critical path. The less time you spend re-learning an interface (MS ribbon interface, anyone?) or fixing things that previously worked but broke when you upgraded something (face it, the first 5-6 years of linux were sketchy that way), the better.
And "upgrades" are not always better or more desirable. *Unity* cough, cough. Heck, I still prefer the classic interface to Slashdot because the new one looks and works like a pack of flying javascript monkeys got to it. Also, older does not equal less secure. Throw a bunch of hapless H1-B's at a rock solid code base built back in the day by guys of the caliber of ESR and you're almost guaranteed to render your latest iteration less secure.
Last, but not least, as much as the groupthink might equate "upgrades" with progress, so very often it's just marketing BS designed to get you to buy the same shit over, and over, and over.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
You're like the pedophile of browser users man-- Real men use Mosaic! None of this fancy newfangled javascript bullshit.
Look, you can mod my posts down if you like. Fine. Just remember, though, that when you start talking your product up, you're elevating it from "community project' to "this is ready for prime-time". That means it'll get criticized. It doesn't matter what the price is, that door has been opened.
"You get what you pay for" is a common cop-out with complaints about OSS. When you do that, you're not saying "see, OSS really can replace proprietary software", you're saying "It's inferior, you know that already, don't bitch."
Don't play that card, it only hurts OSS.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
we've been using 3.6.xx because of stability.. not necessarily the application itself (it isn't any better or worse than newer ones, imho) but in release cycle.
the chrome-like rapid release schedule sucks ass. when 3.6.xx goes EOL, we'll be moving over to firefox ESR so at least we'll be on a stable version for a year at a time...
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html
Congratulations, why don't you move to IE6? I hear wonderful things about it.
Seriously, that browser is ridiculously outdated and web devs shouldn't (and often don't) have to cater to people who willingly choose to be so far behind standards. Fine, you don't like the new Mozilla, go find another modern web browser you do like. Either way, get over it and move on.
Firefox has still some Netscape feeling in the way it downloads and renders pages. There are some similarities with elements appearing on the screen and how the status bar shows progress.
This old argument again...
There'd be useful new features
There still are. Particularly features useful to web developers. That's why Firefox 3.6 is already having trouble rendering some sites - they're actually using those new features. They're able to do that because a large majority of Firefox's users are using Firefox 10, with only a small minority refusing to upgrade from 3.6.
The alternative is getting useful features and then not being able to use them for 10 years, because a huge number of users are stuck on an ancient web browser and can't / won't upgrade. That's what happened to IE6, after all.
there'd be performance improvements
Again, it still has those. Lots of them, in fact. Firefox 10 is much, much faster than Firefox 3.6, right across the board. It might not be much faster if you're running it on ancient hardware, or an ancient operating system, but on anything remotely modern it kicks the hell out of Firefox 3.6. There's plenty of stuff you can do easily in Firefox 10, but you couldn't even dream of doing in Firefox 3.6 because it's just too slow.
there'd be memory usage reductions
Again, yes. Despite it's reputation, Firefox really doesn't use a lot of memory, especially considering what it needs to do. It's comparable to any other browser (within a few percent, unless you're running some leaky add-ons), and has actually been dropping since Firefox 8.
Everything we liked about Firefox, like real menus, having a status bar, and showing the protocol in the URL bar, have become very broken.
Erm... You mean looking like it was designed in 1998? Did you really only ever like Firefox because it looked like IE6?
Basically, they did the same thing that Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Opera all did. They discovered that the vast majority of people never use the menu bar, never look at the status bar (which is empty most of the time anyway), and don't understand the protocol part of the URL. In fact, they realized that the majority of the browser's chrome is completely useless to 99.9% of all their users. So they got rid of it, because the space it took up can be put to better use.
I don't miss any of those features. At all. The menus were never really useful anyway, the status bar was only ever useful to see where a link would take you (and all current browsers still do that), and the protocol part of the URL is completely useless anyway. Whether you're on HTTP or HTTPS is clearly shown next to the URL, and modern browsers don't really support any other URL protocols anyway.
Then they pulled these stunts.
Making the browser better? Trying to move the web forward? Realizing that their release schedule was no longer good enough, and they needed to move much faster to keep up? Not wanting Firefox to become the new IE6?
of us have moved to Chrome. After all, if we realistically have to choose between Firefox's poor imitation of Chrome, and Chrome itself, we might as well just use Chrome. At least it feels faster and seems to use less memory than Firefox does, even if it does have all of the same drawbacks.
You're switching to Chrome because Firefox is too much like Chrome? In what crazy universe does that make any sense?
We have 2 choices. Use the pig that is IE, or pay our software vendors thousands to upgrade their plugins to support this insane version race. Contrary to the marketing bullshit spewed by Mozilla, plugins do not "just work" across versions.
Cheers,
bt
Nobody's as dumb, as I appear to be
Try running FireFox 10 on a Windows XP 32 bit system. Everything works, until you hit the Gbyte RAM mark. Yes, you can put more than 2G of RAM in your machine, but PAE on XP/32 with FireFox, will stall your entire machine for seconds more than once a minute. Given the fact that XP/32 is still the most used OS on the planet, arguments like "RAM is cheap" simply don't hold up. Making sotware work on systems that are common 5 years from now is very future proof, but you have to make it work on today's systems if you want anyone to use it at all.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Since FF 4 came out i have noticed a lot of glitches and stuff that didn't work and therefore didn't even bother with trying the later versions and still am using 3.6.X
What really annoys me further then the technical issues (Which i believe are already solved at Ver. 10) is the graphic UI....It is just the same as Chrome! Really uncomfortable UI and why to make a copy from Chrome in the first place? Who said it is easy to handle?
In my opinion they should at least give an option for "Classic UI"
Profiles are poorly managed. For example, Firefox won't start the correct profile when visiting a specific site. Stuff gets mixed up when they do because the provide identities are unpredictable. Instead, I did develop (way back in version 0.8) a system to properly manage the browser in multiple instances. And mine does automatically run the appropriate "profile" based on what site is being visited. But it does take longer and longer with each new version to adapt this to the new version. Maybe they are trying to thwart it? Or it could be the fact that they just change everything around. But in any case, it is much work to figure out how they changed it and adapt to it. And that work seems to be increasing. So my upgrading is in larger steps ... 0.8 ... 1.5 ... 3.6 ... ???
Profiles do not make for new versions. Versions collide, at least for the common packages, because file names and directory names are the same. Just try installing two different versions of Firefox under Ubuntu. You end up with a mess.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The sad thing is that we're now in the position we were ~10 years ago with Netscape Navigator, except that this time Mozilla is playing the part of Netscape, and there's no Phoenix on the horizon...
I live in Tucson and Phoenix is on the horizon. And it's getting a little closer every day...
:(
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
my favorite feature on newer firefox versions is you can select a plain text link, i.e. a link that is not quite a link, right-click and open in current tab, new tab or new window. I used to install an extension for that. it's maybe the only useful new feature but quite a time saver.
You would have a point except they're reaching out to people who are not programmers and cannot contribute to the code.
I believe he is simply stating that once you start soliciting users then the users can complain. Before soliciting users they were mewling freeloaders or something (can't complain). They will complain either way, of course.
The slashdot article isn't even on the same planet as right and wrong.
1. Browsers are more stable, secure and sandboxed than they were. You sacrifice all that but not upgrading and add some risk to your data security.
2. RAM is forever getting cheaper. Web browser memory usage is a non issue. If it is, you probably have a slot free for a sub $20 stick of memory
3. Web pages are forever becoming more complex. Memory consumption is not always the browsers fault and will invariably get worse over time.
4. Web browsing used to be quite taxing on a typical computer, moores laws seen to that.
5. What is this luddite doing with the rest of his ram that is so crucial? I surf Slashdot while I'm waiting for 1080p videos to render. It does make much difference.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
get a new computer.
how the hell is this even a frontpage article for slashdot?!?
And once again it takes Hairyfeet to throw a really tough counterweight into the discussion.
I have bad UI gripes about the other browsers, especially Chromium-Family ones, so I am more in a "do something about Firefox".
My solution has been to run the Derivatives. Currently CometBird is interesting, with additional built in FlashBlock abilities. Yes, it takes an extra click to view Youtube videos, but on the plus side, Hulu can't figure it out, so I get nice peaceful Silence instead of Hulu ads.
It also avoids an annoying "collection" routine when I close it - Firefox Natural on my home XP machine goes and "gathers" memory, or something, sowhen my habit of "close a window and make a new instance" kicks in, I get all these "Firefox is already open" messages. For better or for worse Cometbird doesn't do that.
I used to use PaleMoon on the same principles "Subset of Firefox" but lately it started getting buggy on my use cases so I dropped it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Here's a full list of web features that 3.6 doesn't support and FF 12 does. If you use a website that employes any of those technologies, you'll lose some of the experience you were supposed to get.
And web developers won't care. I think this is an important note. Old IE users (6/7/8) make up a large enough chunk of the web that legacy support for them is considered a higher priority for most, but FF 3.6 users are very much a minority, so you can't expect any support going forward.
However, 3.6.x will soon hit end-of-life, making my life, and the lives of similar users, much more complicated.
Why? Who needs support to use a web browser?
i was a holdout until about 3 months ago, basically long enough for my addons to catch up. maybe i'm lucky in that respect. i've reasonably "3.6-ized" it, as far as the user experience. as far as customization there's still no other game in town unfortunately. chrome won't even let you have a status bar anymore, ,
Since they came out with the whole plan on making small changes then calling it a new version I think is annoying, they don't need to play 'catch up' on version numbers with chrome and IE because Firefox hasn't been around as long as IE if you don't count it's source being a part of what Netscape ended with. I didn't mine version 6 and when 8 came out I was happy. I started to become annoyed with 9 and 10 of Firefox because the people who make all the add-on’s I use are running in to compatibility issues. As for chrome, sure it's fast and cool looking but it still doesn't load 100% of the internet like IE was made to do Perfect example is www.Comcast.net . Until Google fixes its issues I'll never use it. I'll stick with Firefox and IE
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
You can use a software ram drive to access memory above the 4GB limit in XP 32-bit. See http://superuser.com/questions/292207/is-there-any-way-to-use-memory-above-3-25gb-using-windows-xp
Your option 3 is definitely possible, as people have done it, although only WHCL-certified drivers are likely to work once you've done it (a lot of drivers fail when passed addresses beyond 4GB, apparently, which is why MS disabled PAE in consumer versions of Windows).
Smart, unless you thought that vast swaths of extensions (which are, for a lot of people, the ONLY reason they use Firefox instead of something else) were broken for long periods of time over the last year, leaving people generally with the option to either use an older version of Firefox, or deal with not using the extensions (which, for many, was an easy decision to switch to a Chromium based browser). They seem to have hopefully figured out how to get this a bit more under control (I'm not in the IT field, nor did I put THAT much energy into researching it, so not much detail on this from me), which is why I came back into the Mozilla fold. But no mistake about it...life without a full working set of my favorite extensions was scary for a year or so there. The web without NoScript, HTTPS-Everywhere, Googlesharing, and RequestPolicy at the very least is a bit of a bad neighborhood.
Nope, no name calling... you don't seem to be ignorant, just possessed of a different opinion. Can't fault you for that unless I can prove you wrong. I haven't tried and didn't know about Comodo Dragon, but I've known about Comodo for years and at times have used their AV and firewall and other software. They use the free apps and the feedback they get from them to improve their enterprise products, a win-win business model from the perspective of consumers, I guess.
I'll give Dragon a try. Personally I used to have enormous behavioral problems with Firefox after cycling dozens or hundreds of windows/tabs back in the 3.6-era and before days, but not so much now. Back then it would eventually begin to freeze up periodically for seconds at a time, in particular. I don't recall it doing that in quite some time, even when I leave one instance open for days. I still see it suck up hundreds of megabytes of RAM, but I also have twice as much RAM now as I did back then (8 vs 4), so it may simply be a larger amount but the same proportion as if I still had just 4.
MS disabled PAE in consumer version of Windows so that people would by the Server version. Otherwise it would be an option (that is disabled by default).
My motherboard is workstation-class so the rivers for it probably will work OK. The question is the soundcard (creative X-Fi) and video card (ATI Radeon) drivers.
Thank you for the link. I'll definitely try it (and buy some ECC REG DDR1 RAM). As for the third option - if people have done it then I'll try to find out how to do it without wrecking the system.
How did you manage to get Firefox 3.6.x running in any case? I thought 2.0.0.20 was the last version to support Windows 98.
But seriously, the memory thing is ridiculous. Yes, browsers use a fuckton of memory, but that's been the case for every version of Firefox I've used since at least 1.5.x (earlier versions randomly crashed before using that much). When I was on a computer with 256MB memory (and later with 512MB) I regularly had to kill and restart Firefox because it became unresponsive. This issue only got better after ditching XP for Ubuntu (same memory usage, but faster paging) and even better after getting a computer with more memory. Yes, Firefox 13 is using more memory than Firefox 3.6, but it also does more. It's not the browser's fault people decided to turn the web into the operating system. When I need to open a page without the fancy rendering, I use lynx.
You go to seamonkey, new gekko classic but maintained interface and compatible with most ff Addons. Naturally as with FF the Addons can be a source of trouble, unlike ff as of late seamonkey is well behaved out of box
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
So maybe you shouldn't be running an eleven year old operating system?
Firefox version 3.6.0 was released on January 21, 2010. Firefox version 4.0 was released on March 22, 2011. How is this "many years", again? Less than one year ago 3.6 became an "older" version of Firefox.
Yea, go with whats popular instead of whats accurate/sane. That'll fool the newbs. Good thinkings!
And web developers won't care. I think this is an important note. Old IE users (6/7/8) make up a large enough chunk of the web that legacy support for them is considered a higher priority for most, but FF 3.6 users are very much a minority, so you can't expect any support going forward.
Web developers are a huge part of the problem (as was/is IE in general). The whole idea of HTML in the first place was that the browser shouldn't matter... You should be able to render a reasonable version of a page with any browser! That hasn't worked for a long time and the content is mostly to blame. It should never return different data depending on what browser you use. It shouldn't have to by design... but it's broken!
So? Does that mean they owe him a good product or anything?
Company offers free product, of course in the hopes of attracting people. People shrug and move on. End of story.
Some people of course feel like they have a right to bitch and moan
True. Some people will complain no matter what.
However, the sentiment:
instead of simply moving on to greener pastures or actually getting involved in producing a product that they like (which in the case of Mozilla is an actual option). That doesn't mean these people aren't a pain in the rear.
is counterproductive. Yes, some are PITA and should be ignored. However, others have valid criticisms that can be used to build a better product; and to help it gain wider acceptance. As long as the sentiment is "it's free; so don't complain if it doesn't do / have what you want it to ..." OSS will be relegated to small niches because it is free (and people can't afford alternatives) and viewed as not ready for real world use because it is simply an inferior copy of commercial products. As long as the perception remains that the OSS is primarily a group of zealots that don't take criticism well and believe free is the main selling point then it will be an uphill fight to gain widespread acceptance and use.
"...simply moving on... is just another way to say "forget about OSS ever gaining a reasonable foothold in the broader market."
I say this as someone who uses OSS and have encouraged others to do the same - especially for MS Office replacements - and would like to see OSS gain broader acceptance; but the signs are not encouraging.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
So, basically, everyone else was lying about how advanced they were, so Firefox should, too?
Welcome to marketing 101. As you can see form the syllabus, the course is pretty easy, and all you have to do to succeed is leave your soul in our safe deposit box...
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
How is chaging the version number at a different pace lying?
I understand your concern, but it is just a version number. If the perception of users is being taken away by your competitors, why not adapt?
Sure, it would be better to live in a world where companies did not resort to such misleading tricks, but it is not lying.
Numbers do not semantics have.
Among the browsers mentioned, Chrome was really the only one "lying about"/inflating its version number. IE and Opera has been around much longer, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they have released more versions.
I made a graph of browser version timelines.
My laptop only has 2GB of RAM, so I can't run Firefox anymore anyway, so I switched to Chrome.
A browser should not consume 1.2GB of RAM (and Firefox 10, 11, 53, 1275, or whatever they're up to now, WILL consume that much if you leave a GMail tab open long enough)
I still don't understand why they stuck to version numbers. If the intension is doing time based releases they should name their releases by release date like Ubuntu, at least the name would have some meaning.
If it was really that good, someone would have forked it.
Even KDE (which is a *much* bigger project than Firefox) got forked successfully when sufficient numbers of users disliked the move from KDE3 to KDE4. KDE4 is now pretty good, but the Trinity project forked from KDE3 is still holding its own.
So if Firefox 3.6 is such an fantastic browser, and so much better than the subsequent versions, then why has no-one forked it?
Answer: because there's no need to -- the current version of Firefox is so much better than FF3.6 that there really isn't any argument to be had.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
FF10 interface is a bloody mess... I have switched to Opera which is better. What happened to SAA? It was perfectly good and much better than the "modern" (read, "totally inconsistent") interfaces with a flavor of the day designed to cater to 12yr old with ADD.
Seriously?
Install FEBE extension to FF3.6 and backup your full FF3.6 profile. Uninstall FF3.6 then install latest FF & load said profile to latest FF using FEBE. See if it works upfront, if not do some tweaking until it does. If all else fails you can reinstall FF3.6 & reload your original profile.
I was travelling for 6 months and missed FF5 through 9 completely and had no problems with the upgrade from FF4 to FF10 using the above method.
Sure. Too bad I can't replace an operating system the way I can replace a CPU. Just plug the new one in and that's it - no need to reinstall all software, adjust all settings, remember what I did in the last 4 years, what settings I made. That is assuming all my programs are compatible with the newer version of Windows. If some aren't, I may have even more problems.
Oh, and 4 years ago it was XP32, XP64 or Vista. Too bad I didn't choose the 4th option - 2003.
It wasn't about anyone lying. Just about people's perception.
Fuck Mozilla for hiding the download behind 3 pages of "you shouldn't be here, you're in trouble" (http://b5.cs.uwyo.edu/bab5/snds/dummy1.wav), but everyone should only install the esr release from now on.
Worked for Pat Volkerding....
I just found out that on my Debian Squeeze, the current stable, Firefox is at 3.5.16, so it's not like the submitter has got a particular ancient version that nobody else uses anymore.
And as I've pointed out in the past, this was a reaction to Pat getting tired of people thinking Slackware was out of date compared to some other (ahem) popular Linux distros, who were shipping basically the same software but with a much bigger number slapped on it.
> I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. [...] ;)
> Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again
http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general
Of course it's not lying, just "expectations management." In totally unrelated news, why do version numbers (Linux's, Microsoft's, anyones) never go *down* instead of up? After all they're just numbers with no semantics or meaning.
+1
The new IPython notebook interface. Certainly matters to me, and !*@# FF3.6 on ^#@! &^%@!^&#^ RHEL 6 can't use it.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
So, basically, everyone else was lying about how advanced they were, so Firefox should, too?
Yes.
even with all the patches.
Firefox10 or the latest chrome will run just fine on that.
I have an old machine (Pentium3 1Ghz) with this config and it's running great (not my main machine).
One thing you may want to avoid is Flash. Flash-heavy sites will pin the CPU at 100%.
If you need it sometimes then install the Flashblock plugin for firefox.
You may want to keep IE6 (for the occasional IE-only website) on such a machine and avoid IE8. not sure. I'm on IE6.
You definitely want to steer clear of IE7.
You can't install IE9 on XP (not supported).
Your box is costing you money in its power requirements. Buy a used atom box on ebay. You'll save money in the first year, if it's always on (in my state, you can get a good estimate of cost by dividing the watts by 2 -- a 200 watt computer costs you $100 to run for a year always on).
It will boot faster, if it's not always on, saving you time.
The "reuse" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" only makes sense if you also factor in your ongoing costs.
Are you freaking kidding, saying it takes more than a day to do a Windows upgrade?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Firefox WAS my favorite browser for years. The newer version hangs constantly. Pages refuse to draw. Each new version brings hope that they have fixed the issue, and each new version does nothing to fix it. More and more I am forced to use Chrome, and more and more I am liking Chrome better. It's nice to have a browser that is fast and draws pages reliably, even if it is less customizable.
Yes, but it does mean your criticism and threats are stupid and only harmful, because they hold no water with anyone but yourself.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
What? If the software is bad (which is subjective of course), whether or not it is free will not change that. The quality of the software does not change, and neither does the validity of your criticism. I'd say it's arrogant to suggest otherwise. I think people need to stop being babies about criticism.
As always, commercial or not, they don't have to listen to your criticism. But then again, when did I ever say that they did?
Do not worry there are life after Firefox 3.6. For example Epiphany, Midori, UZBL (www.uzbl.org), QTWeb (qtweb.net), Kazekakase (kazekakase.sourceforge.jp), Galeon (galeon.sourceforge.net).
I've been using FF from the start as well, and I'm still using FF3.6. My reason is the new ribbon-style interface, and I realize it's more an MS issue than an FF issue, but why do I have to learn a whole new program every time FF decides it's time for an update? Sure, I understand all the new features, and I'd rather be running a newer browsers, but I'd also rather spend my time using my computer rather than relearning how to use my computer.
Even looking at the FF10 features list, it seems like a lot of "new features" are "moved button xxx to yyy". Why? Just to slap your users in the face?
I've actually mostly migrated to OSX. It was actually an easier transition than moving to from one version of windows to another. I just have one PC left because apple doesn't have a mid-range desktop box, but when I leave FF3.6 It'll be for Safari. Actually Office 2010 pushed 4 of my co-workers to the mac side so far just because the interface is so horrible, and yet so similar to the newest FF versions.
But the latest FF seems pretty stable to me. I'd go straight to the latest release and get the status 4 ever extension.
If you can't handle that chrome is great choice too.
The status 4 ever extension can't even shine the original status bar's shoes in terms of functionality.
Anyone who thinks that it can act as a replacement is kidding themselves.
There is a entire backend that went along with the firefox 3.0-4.0 Beta 6 's status bar.
ps: There will never be any version past firefox 4 Beta 6 on my system, any of my kids systems or clients systems.
I'm sorry... but that's just the way it will stay until some drastic turnaround happens over at mozilla and they wake up and smell the coffee.
Firefox turned into a slow, unstable piece of shit when they copied chromes tabs in the title bar thing. And then shortly after they started an extremely short development cycle that the only purpose of is to break your add ons every couple weeks. Use chrome, opera our even internet explorer. Fuck firefox!
My laptop is a 7-year-old PowerPC 7447A 1.33 with 1.5GB RAM running Debian, and I'm really pleased with Iceweasel 10. It's snappy and I can get at (most) of the web without plugins.
Srsly, what are you running? An Atari 800?
I was about to comment when I checked my 'About Firefox' and it said FF version 3.6.13! Both of them EOLed! Yikes! I feel your pain, OP!!
But who encourages content developers to write browser-specific code?
Isn't that the same technique Apple uses? "We are the most revolutionary phone!"
If marketing works for everyone, why shouldn't work for Mozilla?
Ohh no you will lose some precious milliseconds a few times per day and it will takes a few megabytes of supplementary ram on your 12GB available, how will you survive? Well, for one you will have better security.
How is this modded insightful? They are not lying. Not about features, not about enhancements and certainly not about miracles performed by a revolutionary web browser. The only thing they did was to change their numbering system. Something that for many /. people have other implications due to a number paradigm.
/. don't understand. Having very low numbers can be perceived as a staled product, a slow moving one or a really new one. People wants to be reassured they use a product is being worked on not just 'patched'.
The old one doesn't help with popular adoption which is what people in
AS someone answer already.... it's a web browser, no life is expected to depend on it.... yet.
By not upgrading, your making my job (web developer) a LOT harder. Thanks a lot pal.
I'm surprised by the tenor of some many comments. So much hating, snobbery and elitism. The problem I see is that Firefox 3.6 is only about 3 years old. That may be ancient history for programmers but out in the real world things are expected to last a lot longer than 2-3 years. So people come to expect their programs to work fine for years at a time. As it happens at world I use a computer with Firefox 3.6. IT has the computer locked down so I can't upgrade. At the same time IT is so busy trying to keep the system from collapsing (which it does regularly) that I don't bother asking them to come around to upgrade my browser. They've got bigger fish to fry. Still it seems crazy that a 3 year old browser can't render web pages properly. I see this as a problem with web designers using too much fancy crap and not remembering to include a downwardly compatible version for older browsers. I thought the internet was all about gracefully degrading as needed, but it would appear that bleeding edge web designers are fking that up.
My notebook is two years old and has 4GB of memory. I paid about $800 for it when I bought it, and figure it's a pretty average computer by current standards. Honestly I couldn't have told you that I was using Firefox 10.0.2 before I looked about a minute ago. My life is not "much more complicated" than when I was using Firefox 3.6, and I've never had stability problems with any version of Firefox I've used. I just let Ubuntu automatically keep my system updated, and everything hums along nicely. I have 14 extensions installed, and usually have at least 8 tabs open at any one time.
Maybe your stability problems have little to do with the browser, and more to do with crap hardware and/or running an old operating system.
I have 1 chrome window open with 1 gmail, 1 ebay, and 2 slashdot windows. No youtube/etc.
It is using almost 1gb (~925M if my quick math is right)
So What? total system memory used is 3GB and I have 5 open. Who cares?
15+ tabs open, and firefox has been open for a few days now. It's only using 313MB of RAM and I have 10+ addons installed (NoScript, Adblock Plus, ghostery, etc)
U derpin man?
Love how you've discovered power laws gazing upward at the belly of the beast. According to the 80-20 law, 20 percent of your usage requirements account for 80 of your system requirements.
Yes, if you're willing to lop off the tall poppies, life is good on ten year old platforms. If the demanding 20 percent emanates from your ADHD social network (e.g. document sharing) welcome to hermitville.
Just download FF 10 and realize it is fucking stable, it just never crashes, and it uses a fine amount of RAM.
YOU WON'T Notice the difference, except the UI is 10 times better, and you can group tabs easily and you'll have access to all the plug-ins and extensions (which in turn might THEM be fucking buggy or slow but stop bitching about mozilla)
Also go see a shrink and talk about web browsers RAM usage and what it means for you because you're sick dude, really sick.
Yea, because disliking a particular browser version makes a person insane. Like O M G Seriously!
There are some options but unfortunately they are limited.
First I highly recommend everyone here take a look at the NoScript extension. There is one available for both firefox and chrome.
Since no one as of yet has "taken the reigns" past 'Firefox 4.0 Beta 6' (which is where things started to really break down for the browser) there exist literally no options until someone picks up the codebase from that point forward. There are a few PGO builds available of Firefox 4.0 Beta 6 which some of us have been lucky enough to download before they where removed by their respected authors only at that point to be updated with whatever 4.0 Beta 7 build and so on and so forth that they probably didn't have to much relevant knowledge at the time to what roads mozilla was going to take in the future.
One of those is --palemoon, another option would be the tripple core browser --lunescape which i recommend for avid web developers.
--Flock unfortunately REALLY screwed its users even further and didn't even keep up with updates and was very slow to release source code so I would tread softly if you want to take that route.
Some other PGO builds.
- Swiftfox is a option but their releases are extremely fragmented
- Swiftdove and Swiftweasel are PGO optimized builds that have additional optimization for the linux distro you use.
And their are many more PGO builds on the mozillazine forums you can look through.
Now there are some alternatives TO firefox but since they are mostly all based on a completely different backend they won't have mozilla's gecko core.
Here are a few that I have found to be "useful"
- SRWare's "IRON" browser.
- Rockmelt
- Chromeplus
- Comodo dragon browser
I also highly recommend people take a look into this history of and current status of both the **JonDo** projects as well as the P2P Net and different P2P nets that have been popping up ever since SOPA and ACTA reared their ugly heads. Those combined with tribbler and you will pretty much be back in the game.
A love note to mozilla:
I will NOT be upgrading any of my clients systems past 4.0 Beta 6 until you guys get your act together starting with a forked version that brings back the status bar and a new commitment to old but incredibly useful lab projects like prism.
And i have about 3000 clients in the north east alone so you guys have your work really cut out for yourselves if you still want firefox to continue to have success in keeping market share.
sheesh. It's better, faster, supports all the latest web standards. Just do it, you won't regret it. FF10 is the new LTS option, so it will be the most stable option going forward, but personally I always have to be on the bleeding edge and am on nightly-ux FF13.
So, basically, everyone else was lying about how advanced they were, so Firefox should, too?
Yes, basically. Welcome to the real world of marketing. IT sucks, terribly, but unfortunately either you play this game or you lose.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
1) Installing a different version of windows (and having the PC not work right for weeks).
I don't quite get this. Do you have to train the PCI slots on your motherboard to accept the new RAM? Give it little treats? Feed it tiny resistors? Spank it?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Chrome is the new Phoenix. Very lightweight and supports more standards while the others are playing catchup.
If fast updating still scares you there is always IE. IE 9 is a good browser and is not crap like IE 6 was (even that was a big improvement over Netscape). IE 10 is competitive with the other browsers and even beats FF 10 at HTML5test.com when I ran Consumer Preview of Windows 8.
http://saveie6.com/
Why, you should just upgrade to the latest firefox! And now you can set it up to continuously slip in updates forever after, in the bold new world of permanent betas, you can enjoy all of your plugins spontaneously breaking (stable API? backwards compatibility? what's that?), you can enjoy learning new ways of working as your favorite features suddenly come and go ("Bookmark All Tabs"? Wasn't that here a minute ago?).
What are you, some kind of wimp that craves stability? I bet you don't even use Facebook.
Yeah, I know Firefox is free. But it's still very disrespectful what Mozilla has done to us long-time users. We helped spread the word about Firefox. We helped it become quite popular. The Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation benefited financially from this. Then they pulled these stunts.
lol oh man. I can tell by the amount of whine with this cheese that you need to get off of my lawn. spoiled child.
Still running on a custom-compiled FF 2.0.0.20 here.
Rendering is mostly OK, except for fscking Slashdot! Can't beat user interface speed (GTK1, yeah!).
Why I am sticking with it? I run an old CentOS 4 install, dont like all that bloaty new stuff, dont like gtk2 and the systems is stable and great.
And I'm no "ubuntu I need the latest and greated" Linux guy.
Try the Dragon, its ABP also blocks those damned Hulu ads. i'll take 30 seconds of silence over their over loud screeching ads any day of the week. it also has some really nice security features like the optional "Use Secure DNS only in the browser" which blocks a LOT of malware that is hidden in ads and it blocks referrer (again optional) which helps with privacy. it also doesn't do as you pointed out FF does with all the memory hanging crap.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why? Is it considered "fashionable' to be snarky?? get off it. Grow up.
It is lying only to the extent that it gives some people false expectations. The statement that they are lying is only relevant to be expressed to such persons that misunderstand the change. If someone claims that FF has now picked up the pace and is doing 3 to 4 years worth of major innovative development in 2 months, over and over again, of course it is that person whose perspectives need to be changed. So I say TO THAT PERSON that the FF devs "are lying" as part of changing that person's perspective of understanding. Within the incorrect understanding that person has about it, that is the effect. As seen by that person, FF going from version 5 to version 6 to version 7, and so on, within that person's belief that the first digit is always a major change, this must be making FF doing major changes rapidly. It's all about getting that person to change their understanding to realize "oh sh.. these are not major changes".
I stand by my use of it "it is lying" ... as a tool to knock some sense into some people.
And we appear to have a number of people who have lost their way as a result of Firefox's altered scheme of numbering. While many software projects do have widely varying version schemes, few projects change the scheme in mid-course. In part I do blame Firefox devs for doing that. And in part I blame the people who think what Firefox has done was a spurt of innovation (when really it is a spurt of marketing waywardness).
Normally, a major change of software makes it time to take a look and see when an upgrade can fit into your plans. But instead we get a bunch of people saying everyone must upgrade NOW because they are 6 or 7 major versions behind.
IMHO, it's time for an independent group to evaluate software and report when releases do constitute a reasonable time to start exploring and scheduling an upgrade. In the case of Firefox, some people have upgraded TO the 3.6 class of browsers a mere year ago. Some even more recently due to the release cycles of distribution adoption, because distributions intent on being more stable will spend some time to evaluate a new project release (both in in-house testing and in watching the information flow about it) before committing it to their next distribution release.
Someone on Firefox 2.0? Sure, I'll say it in time to upgrade real soon now (as in expedite that upgrade scheduling). But for 3.6 I'll say they should just be forwarding looking and begin to examine where an upgrade fits into their plans for the future. An actual upgrade from 3.6 might well be a year or so from now in that case.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
and instead of moving to Chrome, I decided to see just how bad IE9 really was and got the surprise of my life as it proved to be more stable the either FF or Chrome and didn't use anymore memory then FF/Chrome with 20 tabs open. The only thing I still don't like is that MS hasn't gotten it through their head to Deny All by default and allow us to select what is allowed to run but no, flash is enabled on all sites along with java script and any other damn plug-in that's installed such as Acrobat Reader; all of which are infection vectors that MS could fix simply by Denying all and asking if a website should be allowed to run flash/shockwave/javascripts and what not. Give me the option to either permanetly or temporarily enable it for each website that wants permission and as people figure out who the advertisers are, the damn flash ads would no longer be seen and we'd finally get them moved to HTML5.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I'm using Win7-64 and a radeon card. The drivers work fine so that shouldn't be a problem. What may be a problem is AGP instead of PCIe. Those drivers for Xp64 were 32bit and worked quite well in testing. The problem was that Xp64 stunk as far as stability goes. Personally, I'd say bite the cost and get an Upgrade version of Win7 as it will have both 32/64 versions. Of course before you do, you'll need to run the Vista/Win7 upgrade advisor to see what software wont work. Not much at this point but you could be in for an expensive surprise if you don't.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I'll stick with 3.6.x until it's EOLed.
I'm looking for a browser, not a "platform." One that doesn't break usabilty for the sake of whizz-bang Chrome ripoffs and fuck up stored password management.
Mozilla, for whatever inexplicable reason, is trying to be Chrome. Chrome sucks for usability. Now so does firefox. Google is a user-hostile company backing the browser. Now so is Mozilla. (Apple, obviously, isn't even worth mentioning).
So I'll start resetting my passwords (I'll definitely miss the passwordmaker extension) and start making the transition to Opera.
So much for open source.
Doesn't work on said webapp. If that was the case, we'd be using it already.
What about applying constructive criticism where it's of actual use? Like, filing bugs in the relevant bug tracker, voicing valid points on the relevant mailing list, submitting patches, or doing other work within the Mozilla community? Whining on /. is the one thing that has absolutely no impact on the final product.
I could make a full-time job out of whining about shitty products on /., that doesn't mean I should do it nor that anyone would enjoy it.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
On the contrary, Moore's law has more to do with memory than with processor speed. Moore's law is an observation that transistor density doubles roughly every 1.5 years. When transistor density doubles, the capacity of a memory circuit on the same die size doubles. And as developers incorporate Moore's law as an assumption in their designs, we get Wirth's law.
If fast updating still scares you there is always IE. IE 9 is a good browser and is not crap like IE 6 was (even that was a big improvement over Netscape). IE 10 is competitive with the other browsers and even beats FF 10 at HTML5test.com when I ran Consumer Preview of Windows 8.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised with IE's diagnostics and debugging (via F12) recently, I had to use a machine with only default software installed and managed to diagnose a website problem with just the standard out-of-the-box browser. It's come a long way. The only downside is that (a) all the malware targets it and (b) you can't get NoScript for it. Pretty much the sole reason I'm still on ChromeFox is because of the plugins (I know you can get some equivalents for the real Chrome, but not enough to jump ship yet).
fasilitas crome yang aku suka menu auto terjemahan. walau terkadang terjemahannya amburadul..
But you have to realize you stopped using it as your primary computer for a reason so just because you have a faster computer from work
No, you use the dinosaur because your faster computer from work is for work only, not for personal use. Didn't you read the story Ask Slashdot: Using Company Laptop For Personal Use?
It is quite simple. The PC now has a lot of software installed. Some I use frequently, some maybe once a month some maybe even less frequently. Also, there are various settings made that make the PC better (for me).
The first few weeks after reinstalling Windows is usually full of these situations:
1) Ok, so to do this, I'll just start that app... wait, where is it? Oh, right, I forgot to install it since I don't use it very often. OK, so where's the setup, more to the point how is it called? (after half an hour searching all the hard drives) OK, I'll google it. (after half an hour of googling) finally!
2) Why does my PC not work right (stability issues, too slow etc)? (after an hour of googling) Oh, right, I forgot to add this to the registry. Now it works better.
Because of that I only do a fresh install if I replace enough hardware that the previous system fails (or basically build a new PC).
It is easier, far less risky and thus far less costly to make incremental upgrades than it is to make sweeping changes every so often.
How does one make incremental upgrades when a new CPU needs a new socket, which needs a new motherboard, which in turn needs new RAM and a new OS license, as OEM licenses are tied to motherboard serial numbers? Do they even make incremental upgrades for, say, a laptop?
16GB of ddr3 ram is something like $100-150 today
And worthless if your PC's motherboard is too old to be compatible with it. How much RAM will fit into a typical 10" laptop?
While all the bleeding edge Dotters here scream "Upgrade" I'd like to ask why? How many web pages are actually using the new capabilities of the upgraded browsers? And how many pages just changed one minor widget? I maintain there's _zero_ reason to tell people they can't view a page without upgrading. It's the old days of "Best if viewed with Internet Explorer" all over again. As you all say, disk drveis are getting huge and the old pages take almost zero space. Add note saying it's not supported and here's a link to the latest and greatest. People who want the new abilities will upgrade.
Remember, you're not the not the only provider on the net. If people only the choice of: 1) Change their entire web serving experience to increase the job security of yuor web developers, or 2) Leave your site, you and your shharreholders might not like the answer.
What should a game or a vector animation use instead of Flash? There is no wide support for SMIL. What about a microphone- or webcam-controlled game? There is no wide support for such devices in HTML5 yet. And how do I take a Flash game whose author has abandoned it and run it without Flash? Or do you include all unmaintained software in "PHB reasoning"?
they want you to replace the whole cpu/ram/mobo combo at once.
The problem is that if I replace the CPU/RAM/mobo, I'd have to replace the keyboard/screen/HDD too because unlike desktop PCs, laptop PCs didn't really have interchangeable motherboards in standard form factors last time I checked.
4GB has been like the minimum threshold for any halfway decent computer built in the last four or five years. It is peanuts for ram.
My two-year-old 10" laptop came with 1 GB. Crucial.com says it won't go higher than 2 GB.
Build a new machine.
Good luck building a laptop.
Xorg doesn't actually use that much RAM, but it simply appears to.
I remember reading somewhere that top "bills" your video card's RAM to the X server.
The more type safety you can put into a system, the more the system will find your mistakes for you at compile time. For example, if multiplying two 32-bit numbers produces a 32-bit number, then 1,000,000 * 1,000,000 / 1,000,000 won't equal 1,000,000. It will if multiplying two 32-bit numbers produces a 64-bit number. The upgrade from Firefox 10.0.1 to Firefox 10.0.2 was precisely to fix a bug in libpng that relied on 1,000,000 * 1,000,000 / 1,000,000 = 1,000,000. That's why Mozilla is working on Rust, a language in which pointer variables can't hold null pointers unless the programmer explicitly specifies (via an "option type") that they can.
Not necissarially, IE major releases REALLY HAVE been major releases. They have been around for, what, 18 years now? IE 4 was significantly better than 3, IE5 significantly better than 4, IE6 significantly better than 5, and so forth and so on. Firefox had their first major public release in, what, 2004ish (I know betas and builds had been around for years before then, but I am thinking 2004 was the first major release). So, yeah, truthfully, I haven't understand Firefox's milestone releases since Firefox 2, other than some tweaks to the rendering engine, and adding support for HTML5.
It was really Google Chrome that changed the way browser version numbers were done. That being said, Google Chrome is a GREAT browser. They may be "lying about how advanced they were", but its a great browser
Rendering changes don't usually happen during point releases.
Except where the rendering change is to fix a security problem, such as the privacy-related neutering of CSS :visited .
IE 9/10 have smart filtering. It is very good at blocking bad malware domains in all but 0 day exploits. You can also add additional protection lists to get rid of ads as well if you go to IE Gallary which is pretty cool and nice to use if you are stuck using it at work.
Since XSS protection is in every browser now I no longer need NoScript. I used it mainly to disable global cross site scripting as I find the bar allowing each site to execute code infuriatingly annoying.
My issue is it only runs on FF and NOTscript in Chrome is not the same. FF is not sandboxed by default so it defeats the purpose. Although, Avast 7 now adds sandboxing to it and it just came out.
IE 10 has a spelling and grammar checker that was lacking. At least website designers and grandmas can relax with IE as it behaves like a normal browser. IE 9 with full ASLR, DEP, sand-boxing and other enhancements. The malware writers tend to target flash and java now.
http://saveie6.com/
I do.
Gmail, calendar, and Google docs are at least three tabs off the top.
I admin systems for my company, so that adds Nagios, New Relic, AWS, and RightScale tabs.
Might be interested in a few different views of both.
I'm hitting docs on various issues I'm investigating. So that's a search tab and multiple sub-tabs of results or vendor docs.
There's our internal Wiki and task management systems. Multiple other online tools.
Add in a few news/info sites and sub-tabs, and we're talking not 20 tabs but easily upwards of 50-100. Yes, seriously.
The box is also running a ton of terminal windows (local and remote systems), and possible a VirtualBox session or two. Jconsole. Other fun stuff.
8 GB suddenly doesn't seem like a lot of RAM any more.
As far as tabs go, the best thing about them is that they contextually manage my browsing. I use tree-mode tabs which helps a lot. The real issue is that history sucks so badly -- what I really need is a state-management tool. Tabs are a horrible way to go about it, but there's little else that's better.
Gripes about Firefox/Iceweasel updates? Mostly that upgrades tend to break plug-in compatibility. I use different tree-mode tab plug-ins for 3.6.x and 8.x. And Chrome doesn't have tree-mode tabs at all (there are some very weak approximations).
One of the things that computers manage poorly in general is saving user state in a useful, meaningful way. There are lots of tools which have tried to address this, but it's still an unsatisfactory area, especially where multi-tasking is a key use mode.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix. I remember using a compact theme back then that really maximized my screen space. It was nice, and Phoenix was so customizable, it was unlike anything before (and perhaps since).
When Chrome came out, the lack of status bar was great--more screen space on these widescreen screens.
Then Ff copied Chrome, and then the Barlesque extension came out, and I kept getting more screen space! Awesome! Not to mention the global menu in KDE 4 and Kubuntu. No more menu bar (with the context menu, why do I need the menus? not enough to have them taking up space all the time, that's for sure).
Then I gave Pentadactyl another shot, and wow, no more toolbar/address bar, either.
The Firefox chrome (not Chrome) keeps getting smaller, but under the hood it keeps getting bigger. Now if they'd just get rid of the long UI freezes...how many years have we been waiting for that...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Ok, so is it a slow news day, or what?
v3.6 is old, there is now v4.0, etc. The old version isn't supported anymore, so you will have to upgrade it eventually, or the pages you want to use will stop working. That's the way it is, get over it. Are you really worried about stability? I use the Chrome DEVELOPER channel and it's perfectly stable on my machine. Safari works pretty well also. Even if they crash, both will restart and re-open all of the pages you were using.
Rather than saying "I want to use FireFox 3.6!", perhaps you should think about *why* you want to use FF3.6, and work on solving those issues with another newer browser.
And, in general, get out more.
It doesn't matter as long a ProxySel works.
palemoon 3.6.30 manually edit the extensions.ini to install proxysel.
palemoon 4x+ or firefox v11x, install Nightly Tester Tools, install proxysel, edit extensions.ini, yes proxysel runs on firefox v11.
Hope pimpzilla can keep up, the themes suck on 11, except for Walnut .
If firefox finally breaks proxysel, then we rollback and run a vulnerable browser in a VM.
The instant you offer software for download you're soliciting users. A newspaper ad makes no difference except you'll reach a different demographic.
Blank until
No; version numbers have nothing to do with how "advanced" something is.
So, basically, people are stupid, and Firefox was getting bad press due to said stupidity.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Some ppl really have life threatening issues.
What about applying constructive criticism where it's of actual use?
I could make a full-time job out of whining about shitty products on /., that doesn't mean I should do it nor that anyone would enjoy it.
The problem is that even what is meant as constructive criticism, in a relevant forum, is often meet with knee jerk reaction rather than a calm discussion of why it might be a good idea and is it worth trying?
The real challenge for OSS is that it is often the results of individuals scratching their own itches, which is fine and it's great they share the scratching stick with others, but it but that fails to provide an overall direction that makes the software useful and valuable to a broader range of users; limiting its acceptance. Depending on your viewpoint, that is either irrelevant or a weakness of the OSS development process.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
sometimes the old ram is still really expensive because they know that you are trying to keep something running they feel fine charging you say $100 a stick for 512 even though you could get 4GB of DDR 3 for that just because they had to keep that 512 dimm on the shelf (at least in theory) for x years before someone wanted it.
What I've noticed is that once the following generation of RAM takes over, the price of the older type does not change anymore. Probably due to no more new investments in more efficient manufacturing of the obsolete stuff.
To recycle your example, that 512MB DDR1 stick for $100 was at a similar price six years ago, when DDR2 started to take over. Also, maybe two or three years ago the same happened with DDR2 vs. DDR3. Looking at a well-known German dealer's web site right now, they charge around 26 Euros for a 4GByte stick of DDR3 (Kingston Value RAM). A 2GByte stick of DDR2, also from Kingston, costs around 36 Euros.
As a consequence, upgrading an old system can be more expensive than buying something new with equivalent performance.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I think this was a smart decision.
And as far as I'm concerned, we're now on FF 4.6.2 :)
I still run 3.6. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 3.6 runs my Google toolbar and makes my hundreds of bookmarks portable between home desktop, work and laptop. I know where to find everything without thinking about it. I guess the new version of Firefox will let you do that with bookmarks too, but you have to open a Sync account. And that means exporting the bookmarks and so forth. Firefox insists on presenting Sync instructions in a video. Dumbasses. Present it in text. It takes a fraction of the time to read it.
To the guy who says it's just a browser, get a life, etc, yup. It is. I have multiple machines, several tablets, and lots to do. I don't have the patience to relearn tools that are working just because a market-droid thinks they need new features to get into my life and pockets more deeply. But yeah, I will bite the bullet and upgrade. Not because I want to or because it will let me do my job better. It won't. But because Mozilla seems to think it necessary.
There are some Firefox plugins/add-ons out there that simply don't work on versions newer than 3.6.x, and some of those add-ons are necessary to some in order to do their jobs, or to learn at colleges and universities who can't or won't upgrade their software. For example, my university uses VMWare on its cluster in order to manage all of its VMs. In order to get to the cluster, we have to be running a browser plugin. The catch? This plugin only works with Firefox 3.6.x (or IE 7/8, in which the plugin is so buggy that it's almost unusable). Is it our fault that the university has not yet upgraded VMWare or tried to receive an updated version of the plugin? No. But it still doesn't change the fact that we have to use what works.
The continued changes have lowered the value to the user. When I upgraded to 10 from 3.6 I was shocked how bad it was. Only alternet was go back to IE 9 and its interesting interface. Sorry but Firefox really blew it
I am using XP with SP3 which says it has 3.25 GB of ram and the display adapter says it has 700 MB of ram.
I think upgrading to SP3 does not require a re-installation of other software.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
BTW, you don't need AOL to connect to the internet. we all got rid of dial-up a long time ago, and almost everyone uses broadband now. i'm assuming you're not in a 3rd world country because news of FF10 hasn't been censored for you. and because your post would have timed out long before it reached these servers. you'll miss that techy-glitchy sounding noise your old modem makes, but after a couple days you won't even notice it's gone. also, 640k is no longer enough.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
So? It is less than 4GB, isn't it?
By the way, Windows XP sees 3.25GB on my PC too.
Yes, but the box uses shared ram for the video of 700 MB. 3.25 GB + 700MB = 3.95 GB. I know that 50 MB got lost, but the box runs fine.
Do you have shared Video memory?
If you have 3.25 GB available, Firefox should not be slowing down your system. You should check the system for utilities that launch and lurk, real player has some for example. Turn them off.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
No, the video memory is separate on my system, but it still takes up the address space.
I am using Firefox with other programs, not just Firefox and nothing else.
Sorry to read about your travails, Mooga. The world moves on, you know. It's pretty inevitable. For a long time I held out with my Win 98SE. I finally had to go to XP, though. Nowadays, I'm a happy penguin (Linux user). I could never have achieved my current computing nirvana had I not embraced change and progress. Come join the rest of us while we ride the ever-changing wave of technical progress. Have FUN!
Nocturnal Slacker
It says "recommended" on the "requirements" page, so I'm not sure if the SSE2 support is actually required or just provides additional performance. If it is required, you may be able to compile it yourself with different options to support older CPUs. A few years ago, there were a number of people doing custom builds with options tailored to specific CPUs, which disabled legacy support, required higher revs of SSE, etc. Assuming that something in the code doesn't actually require SSE2 for some feature, you should be able to use it even on older systems.
That hasn't worked, because it's a flawed idea in the first place. Do you have any example where forwards-compatibility works? (Don't confuse forwards-compatibility with backwards-compatible specs, like UTF-8 vs ASCII.)
The "is about" thing is pretty hard, yeah. We're not good at time-travel.
But we are good at heuristics to make a RAM/speed tradeoff effective once potential for swap thrashing is detected. The mouse hovering over a tab means the tab is likely to be the next one activated. Even if the user is navigating tabs via the keyboard (Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab), there are still heuristics to determine which tabs are likely to be activated next: keep the previous and next tabs' images loaded.
And decompressing after the switch is _possible_ but leads to user-visible flicker
That's why you can keep a half dozen tabs' images loaded and evict the rest. Or in inactive tabs, you keep the images that are currently scrolled onto the view and purge the rest.
> The mouse hovering over a tab means the tab is
> likely to be the next one activated.
Decoding images for a tab can easily take hundreds of milliseconds. Doing that every time you hover over a tab is not really all that great either....
> Or in inactive tabs, you keep the images that are
> currently scrolled onto the view and purge the rest.
Some browsers do that; it leads to flicker when scrolling. But yes, there are all sorts of ways to try to minimize memory usage here at the cost of worse responsiveness and performance.... And of course they _can_ be applied when you think you might be swapping. If you can detect that reliably; that's _hard_ to do, actually.
The mouse hovering over a tab means the tab is likely to be the next one activated.
Decoding images for a tab can easily take hundreds of milliseconds.
And there's a way to work around that: store a screenshot of the last view for each tab, and have that screenshot fade to the actual view once the relevant images have been loaded to be rendered.
Or in inactive tabs, you keep the images that are currently scrolled onto the view and purge the rest.
Some browsers do that; it leads to flicker when scrolling.
Then decode any images that overlap the area one screen above and below the current scroll position. That'll handle most scrolling (mouse wheel and PageUp/PageDown). If the mouse pointer stops over the middle of the scroll bar, decode even more images.
at the cost of worse responsiveness and performance
Which is why a GUI program can employ tricks to fake responsiveness. I've read that a lot of iOS applications, for example, save a screenshot of the last view when they are closed and display this static screen during loading the next time they are started.
And of course they _can_ be applied when you think you might be swapping. If you can detect that reliably; that's _hard_ to do, actually.
Yes, it's a deficiency in some operating systems that they don't allow applications to mark blocks of memory as purgeable. Mac OS 1 through 9 had "purgeable handles", or memory that the operating system could deallocate at any time should the system become memory pressured. This appears to have been missing from Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.5, but Mac OS X 10.6 and later once again provide NSCache and NSPurgeableData. Decompressed images in least recently used tabs would thus be marked as purgeable.
> store a screenshot of the last view for each tab, and
> have that screenshot fade to the actual view
Leads to bizarre flicker when the "actual view" has in fact changed (e.g. any site with a ticker, which are pretty common).
> Then decode any images that overlap the area one
> screen above and below the current scroll
> position.
That's what Gecko folks are working on now; it's not quite trivial to do. Especially not if image decoding is happening on the main thread, which is a bug of its own.
> Which is why a GUI program can employ tricks to
> fake responsiveness.
Well, yes. The question is how much complexity the tricks introduce and what you have to give up as a result.
Seriously.
Upgrading an OS or browser these days is just chasing the ability to maintain the same quality we've had for ten years, for the most part. A mad rush to keep from being excluded by other upgrades elsewhere. Very little, if any, actual benefits for users. Just a whole lot of hassle to avoid exclusion.
These days, the only benefit remaining seems to be scale of economy. Force everyone else onto a newer version, and they demand faster hardware, and more faster hardware is made at a lower price point. So the way to win seems to be to stay 1 or two generations behind, and avoid the bleeding edge like the plague it is.
I can truthfully say that I cannot do a single thing of value with any of the word processing or page layout programs, that I could not do just as effectively in 1994 with MS Word and Aldus Pagemaker on a Mac Quadra. The cold hard fact is, even if you can embed an HTML link or YouTube video in a word document, unless you're living in Harry Potter's magical kingdom, you aren't going to be able to print it out.
There's only so much improving you can do to certain basic tools. When was the last time you looked for an innovation in screwdrivers, pliers, forks, spoons, or combs? Chances are, never. Sooner or later, the charade is going to end, as more and more people realize how to tell when something is actually good enough.
...for what it's worth, moving on from Firefox 3.6.x to a newer version will let you use Adblock 2 and newer, which has a much more refined control enabling you to maintain privacy from intrusive domains, without disabling those domains or disabling adblocking on those domains entirely, either. For example, you can adblock all references to Facebook, except on *.facebook.com itself, and make it more difficult to be tracked everywhere you visit that there is a "like" button, without having to whitelist facebook itself - which would cause a slew of unwanted ads to appear all over the site.
This feature alone should let your browsing experience remain faster than FF 3.6.x ever was, because blocking all that intrusive garbage really speeds the browser up, not to mention the fact that all computers wait at the same speed and network speed isn't usually a result of browser version.
Also, why would you want a cellphone with more computing power than an old desktop? That's like bragging about having the shiniest set of handcuffs. Just saying...