Firefox 16 Released: More HTML5 Support

Today Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 16, which includes a number of new tools for developers. "A number of HTML5 code has been 'unprefixed,' which means that Mozilla has decided it has matured enough to run in the browser without causing instability. The newly unshackled HTML5 includes CSS3 Animations, Transforms, Transitions, Image Values, Values and Units, and IndexedDB. Two Web APIs that Mozilla helped to create, Battery API and Vibration API, are also now unprefixed. These changes help keep Firefox competitive, but it also sends a signal to developers that Mozilla thinks these are good enough to begin baking into their sites. It's a strong endorsement of the 'future-Web' tech." Here's the complete change list and the download page.

Comments

Why CNET?

[Anonymous Coward]

What information does the CNET article contribute on this matter, exactly? Why not at least link to Google News? Why contribute to the Web becoming a pile of ads and sharing buttons? Why, Slashdot, why?

Re:Why CNET?

[BenJury]

So we have something else to write about, otherwise the whole thread would be complaning about the version numbers,,,

Bloated or obsolte? Make up your mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue the whine brigade complaining that firefox is "Bloated". These are the same people that complain that firefox is behind the curve for not adding new features all the time.

Whatever your complaints, I still find myself coming back to firefox because of the addons. Chrome is getting better and many of the most popular ones are there - But it's still not there. Some addons have reduced functionality because of the more restrictive API, or they're not well developed enough yet for Chrome. The more obscure, but damn useful ones are pretty much firefox only.

Re:Bloated or obsolte? Make up your mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're whining too. The people who think firefox is not bloat whine about the whiners. It's irritating both ways. One side won't admit there were problems and the other side won't admit progress has been made. I think anyone who actually looks at the source code for firefox will admit there is bloat and it's nasty. It's also not friendly for porting to new operating systems.

Firefox is lacking many features that other browsers have. Developer tools come to mind. Everyone else ships them. With firefox, I have to get firebug which is buggy on new versions and causes frequent pain. The UI of firebug could be better and it's bad in part because it's a plugin. It's also ten times slower loading a page with firebug on. I don't see that problem in Chrome.

You can't argue against team plugin. Plugin people, that is people who believe everything should be a plugin, are a huge liability and they negatively affect many open source projects including Eclipse, Firefox, and Gnome. It looks good on paper.. modular, independent development cycles, etc. There's two huge fails.. first the plugin API has to be very good and very open for everything to work which can introduce security problems. Second, many popular combinations are never tested. The firefox memory bloat problem is almost nonexistent on a spartan (no plugin) firefox install, but it balloons when people actually install crap to make it usable. Those combinations are never tested together and plugins fighting with each other is the reason people have to install ten versions of eclipse. No one wants to admit there are problems making everything a plugin and they've solved it this time. No, they haven't. It can't be done. Firefox devs should instead figure out what would make most people happy and build that stuff into firefox and test it like crazy. I think it's safe to say firebug and adblock are necessary because most people use at least one of those that talk about plugins or still care about firefox.

Comparing memory footprints of a fantasy firefox install with no plugins is useless. You must look at what people really use and tune that. Then the complaints can slow down or go away. Chrome is fast as hell and it still comes with developer tools. How did they do that i wonder... I bet mozilla has download stats for some plugins or at least what is popular to search for on their addon site. Put those in firefox base already and improve them. Seriously, it's not that complicated and it gives you a nice roadmap for the next 17 releases. Catch up guys.

Re:Bloated or obsolte? Make up your mind.

[Vaphell]

Last time i checked it eats less memory than chrome and i haven't seen anybody complaining about chrome being a hog

Firefox calculates the size of cache for back button and shit based on the amount of RAM available. Go to about:config and change it if you don't like it
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

Modern websites are running ridiculous amounts of javascript, huge flash objects and what not. about:memory claims that the single tab with main page of fb (no content on the wall/newsfeed, not subscribed to anybody) sits at 40M (no idea what it contains). Some pages are bundled with so much crap that NoScript showing the list of 3rd party jscript sources doesn't fit in 1200px high monitor. NoScript is a must.

Re:I think there's something wrong

[denis-The-menace]

And that's what flashblock is for.

PS: I'm still waiting for HTML5-Block.
You just know the HTML5 ads will be horribly intrusive.

Re:Now that summary is BS - at least in part.

[Sarten-X]

Not all instability leads to crashes. If something is unstable, it means it isn't stable. "Stable" means it's not changing. A feature whose exact implementation is expected to change in the near future. This might mean that a few edge cases are known that will render funny, or maybe the code just isn't clean enough for the devs' preference (as though that would ever stop a release...).

Prefixed features are a warning to developers. They say "This is coming, but it might still be screwy". Someone using the prefixed feature shouldn't complain when their masterpiece website suddenly looks different in the next release of the browser because they were abusing a flaw in the implementation.

As a concrete (hypothetical) example, consider animating the rotation effect on a square image. If the browser is built to compute the layout before applying rotation, nothing else on the page will move. If the layout comes after the rotation, blocks could move around as the rectangular dimensions of the image's block change. Regardless of what behavior is standard, a developer could rely on the other. Having a prefix warns him that it's not quite finished.

Re:Final Version?

[doom]

I've been wondering how the iceweasel fork is doing in Debian. It could be the thing that makes me switch back from Ubuntu.

Debian actually distinguishes between security fixes and UI changes. That's sounding better to me all the time.

Re:Inflation LOL

[jellomizer]

I think it is time for Slashdot to limit all these Firefox "major" release articles. Because the team just be decided to be stupid with their number scheme, it doesn't mean every new number is really newsworthy.