Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 15 Released: Silent Updates, Compressed Textures, Add-on Memory Leak Fix
Mozilla released Firefox 15 today, and it brings a number of interesting changes. First, the browser is finally switching to a "silent" update model, like Chrome. (No doubt in answer to endless complaints about their rapid release cycle.) In addition, Mozilla says they have "now plugged the main cause of memory leaks in Firefox add-ons." Add-ons commonly hold extra copies of sites in memory when they don't need to, and the browser now has a mechanism to detect this and reclaim the memory. Another significant improvement is the addition of native support for compressed textures in WebGL, which is a boost for high-res 3D gaming. Here are release notes for the desktop and mobile versions.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
You know you can disable that on Chrome, right? It's not even complicated. Here is a guide for the administrators.
I'm sure you can also disable it on Firefox as well.
There's no need to put them in the bin at all, at least not for that reason.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Flashblock fixes the problem with Flash freezing. If I could marry it, I would.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
I do. Daily. 100+ tabs open is not uncommon. Firefox hasn't crashed for years. The rest of your comment is OffTopic.
Having run into memory problems repeatedly for years, Firefox 15 is shockingly better at memory management. They completely change the model they used to help clean up after add-ons that don't clean up after themselves and very few of them have had to be fixed to work with it. Memory usage for me has been cut by more than half.
Mozilla also went out of its way to make the updater service run with as few rights as possible with code that revokes rights that it does not need. There were about three dozen permissions explicitly dropped when it was first developed around FF12. That number may have changed slightly but it's still a long list.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Crash? No. Come to a complete stop for 10 seconds while doing nothing more but scrolling? Yes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why are you using WinRar when 7zip exists?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
GP said
Every time Firefox upgrades, it wipes out my login cookies. It forces me to re-login to my sites. Is there a way to turn this dictator off?
I would be very surprised if there were not. Chrome lets you turn it off. I'm sure if you use Iceweasel (the Debian Firefox derivative), this wouldn't be a problem (updates are managed by apt). There are third-party efforts like IceWeasel for Windows and Porting Icecat on Mac Using Fink (IceCat is the GNU port of Firefox, sharing quite a bit (even the name, originally) with Iceweasel), but they're horribly out of date.
You said
I just updated Firefox between my "Flash freezing" post above and this post here, and I didn't have to log into Slashdot again.
Slashdot works because its cookies do not expire with the session. Any cookies that expire with the session will be expired by a browser upgrade. This is because "resuming" a crashed or otherwise saved session isn't actually resuming, it is reopening to the browser's best ability. This does not include session cookies for security reasons.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The biggest issue with the 64-bit versions is that they only run 64-bit plugins, unless you use something like nspluginwrapper (nspluginwrapper.org).
That is out of date information. The 64-bit builds (Waterfox & Pal Moon) are compatible with all standard 32-bit extensions.
Then, as a admin: about:config app.update.auto = false
Quack, quack.