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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.
frosty too
Yeah but why not just wait for Firefox 30 that'll come out a week from tomorrow?
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?
They're calling it quits? Or did you mean the "latest" version of Firefox?
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
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.
I think there's something wrong with this version of Firefox. I just updated, and not a single one of my plugins was disabled because of incompatibility!
Maybe someone should make a "Firefox Nostalgia" plugin. It detects when firefox is updated, and generates a random "The following plugins have been disabled..." alert window.
Dear Mozilla-
How about they stop the rapid release garbage and fix things that are broken rather than breaking things in the process. That "feature" rolled out this weekend where it warns you about out of date plugins is a joke and has been nothing but a support nightmare for people like me. How about some documentation about this "feature" and how we can disable or white list plugins? Not everyone needs Java 7.x. Some of us NEED Java 6 because our work sites aren't compatible with Java 7.
Are we going to break out the party hats and streamers when the FireFox version number hits 20 or 50? You've now had more version numbers than Yahoo and HP had CEO's in the past 10 years!!!
Helpful hint: Increasing your version number does not add inches to your...
"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." - come on, how dumb is that? If there were a vendor-sanctioned CSS attribute or "HTML5 code" (or whatever, really) that was known to cause "instability" in one of the world's most widely-deployed and -used applications, trolls and/or crackers would make ABUNDANT use of that inherent weakness, prefixed or not.
Now, I don't know for sure how HTML5 "standardization" (if you can stomach calling it that...) actually works, but what I happen to have picked up is this: In reality, that kind of "prefixing" (extending the name of a soon-to-be-"standardized" identifier with a vendor-specific keyword) takes place because the vendor probably still works out implementation details, or isn't 100% sure if he wants to really do whatever the feature/thing is doing right now the way it is doing right now forever. It's some kind of "this is just a draft"-hint, like, for example, "X-"-prefixed HTTP and SMTP header data (used to be - they're abused for other, this-aint-in-the-official-standard-but-we-need-it-anyway-things today, of course). If using any of this causes the browser that implements it to crash or be otherwise unstable (and therefore potentially exploitable), that's a _grave_ bug, and certainly not something that any of the industry heavyweights (well, except for Apple and Microsoft maybe... hehe) would tolerate to occur in the wild for more than a few hours, until an appropriate patch is released.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
How about they stop the rapid release garbage and fix things that are broken rather than breaking things in the process. That "feature" rolled out this weekend where it warns you about out of date plugins is a joke and has been nothing but a support nightmare for people like me. How about some documentation about this "feature" and how we can disable or white list plugins? Not everyone needs Java 7.x. Some of us NEED Java 6 because our work sites aren't compatible with Java 7.
Are we going to break out the party hats and streamers when the FireFox version number hits 20 or 50? You've now had more version numbers than Yahoo and HP had CEO's in the past 10 years!!!
Helpful hint: Increasing your version number does not add inches to your...
The command line feature looks very cool. It'd be even better if that could be controlled from outside Firefox, basically making Firefox scriptable -- for automated Firefox testing, Website testing, taking screenshots, etc.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I'm starting to think they'll never fix this.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=660577
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683284
I know WebSQL got scrubbed from the HTML5 spec a couple years ago, but during that time it got adopted in a usable way by webkit and opera. In the spec or not it's become the defacto standard for anyone doing HTML5 development for mobile devices, especially for use in off-line apps. Not only that, but at this point it's proven and reliable. I have a feeling it's going to be like H.264 vs WebM. The technical gurus will support one over the other due to ideological reasons, meanwhile the rest of us who are being paid to write things that work will continue going on using what works for us and our clients.
Right now WebSQL is supported on basically 99% of the mobile devices we see in our clients' hands. That includes iOS, Android, Blackberry, hell even Kindle and Nook. On the desktop it works on Safari, Chrome, and hell even FireFox with an extension.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The most important part of the summary. Discuss...
It looks like you're going to have to use another browser for your porn^H^H^H^Himages.
It seems that they're working on it, just extremely slowly. If you open all of the bugs that those two depend on, these are the deepest roots. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=742081 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784591 The latter was being worked with on Sunday, while the former is lagging with activity, last commented on 3 months ago. You should probably expect it to be fixed in about three years.
There is still no HTML5 form support worth mentioning. Even IE10 is better at that now. They've added a bit of support for validators but the rendering still sucks.
Please fix it.
has one browser supporting something ever made it an option for web developpers. As a web developper, the only time I can bake functionality in is if 95% of users can use it. The only exception is IE 5-6-7, those users deserve to be see broken webpages.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
why is it that I can't uninstall a plugin? Once installed, plugins are forever? Like diamonds?
Yes I know you can disabled it, but that's not the same thing.
Firefox 16 will be the first version to support incremental garbage collection. This is a major feature, over a year in the making, that makes Firefox smoother and less laggy. With incremental GC, Firefox responds more quickly to mouse clicks and key presses. Animations and games will also draw more smoothly.
and you'll get the new Ionmonkey engine. Or just switch to the nightly.
I've noticed Firefox having more and more problems rendering sites that Safari and Chrome have no trouble with. Version 16 has been especially bad.
Take a look at Panic's Coda site in Firefox 16. Those headers should not look like that; see Safari for proper rendering. If you look at the css for those headers:
#pitch h3 {
font-family: "Chrono Regular", sans-serif;
font-size: 34px;
color: #436fa2;
text-align: center;
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#2c5b92 50%, #0a3978 100%);
background-image: linear-gradient(#2c5b92 50%, #0a3978 100%);
}
So Firefox is not respecting the linear gradient as a background image for text. Can someone clarify whether this is part of the spec?
That is obviously a more advanced example, but I'm seeing many sites with layouts that are broken (most often navbars) in Firefox 16.
Chrome's built in flash player uses 80% cpu on a quadcore where as IE and Firefox use 30% via adobe's on plugin.
I welcome Firefox 16. I'm sorry I ever left you.
On the upside, pages with background colors will no longer flash white like they do in chrome. YAY.
Chrome is bad.
but anything older then my pc it dies ....thus you better have detects and such to give versions that aren't html5 ....
no really the embeded video crap is awful laggy on a 3ghz with 2 gb ram and 92 meg video on board....
i get it you want me to buy a graphics card to see some website?
ugh wrong direction and this will be a long time catching on
We don't worry so much about stability... not after using Firefox all these years. We worry about security. Like zero-day exploits that hackers and script kiddies can use to try rip us off, infect us, take over our computers for attacks or spam, or steal our information.
Trying to shove every new wizfangled thing-a-ma-jiggie into our browsers has also been frustrating with compatibility on many sites. These are the issues most of us care about.
Ooooh shiny, new bugs! Where do I sign up?
Unfortunately, my firefox 15 just crashed after it neared 2GB in size - after only 6 hours of use on Debian Squeeze.
Leaks still abound. And closing all tabs and windows except one does not free the memory. Any tips on figuring that out or fixing it?
The firefox version # now requires an entire page to be displayed.
Seriously the people that decided to increase the major rev every month are FUCKING idiots and they've imprinted a bad impression on software in general. Yeah - you who made this decision, I am talking to you. It was a bad decision, the only thing worse is your hubris and stubborness to admit it and STOP it. A good Engineer doesn't just know when he's correct, he also knows how to recognize when he was wrong and corrects the problem. I guess we know what kind of engineers are managing Mozilla.
WTF Mozilla? Does anyone there have a brain left? Did Firefox really add functionality that requires a major rev? Really? what was it for this rev - did you change a period to an exclamation point - what that it? JFC.
What happens when the version hits 100 or 1000 - how completely idiotic is that going to look? Maybe you're trying for the guiness world record for highest software rev? I don't know.
BTW - your android version sucks the big one... I can't even preview a link before I load - wtf is up with that? Firefox is rapidly becoming absolutely useless and irrelevant software.
Yes I'm ranting as AC, but that doesn't make the rant any less valid..
Firefox 16? Nah, I'll wait until they release the Firefox 32. I heard it has better graphics.
When it comes to web browsers, I am quite reactionary (look it up on Wikipedia) - or cautious, as I like to call it. For my part, I am not going to upgrade beyond version 3.5 until there is a plugin that allows me complete control over what animated and other intrusive crap I am willing to allow.
Experience has taught me not to trust content providers at all. Which is why I use AdBlock, NoScript, AniDisable and other plugins - I have too often come across web pages designed by idiots that feel entitled to rape my PC, more or less. Once or twice I have even come across looping Javascripts that steal 100% CPU time. I just don't want that kind of shite.
Upon seeing the article title. I immediately clicked Help -> About, and was subsequently upgraded to Firefox 16.0. No need for a download link SlashDot.
I painfully remember the time, just months ago it seems, where I'd have come here barking about my use of iCab on macintosh, aka the browser that invented adblocking (years before Mozilla just existed).
At the time being, all I am left with is this feeling that either you are on tablets, or you are dead.
And as tablets are all walled gardens for now...
(O Linux, when ô when will you come to tablets?)
Let's get back to my Blackberry Playbook now. At least I still steer outside the duopoly world. And there is one, yes one, adblocking browser there...
Herve S.
I'm still using Firefox 3.6 and I'm very happy about it!
Ah yes, it seems like it was only yesterday we were using FF3.6, they grow up so fast anymore.
Wait, it was only yesterday! Seriously, the version numbers wars get more stupid everyday. Do companies think users are that dumb?
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2012/10/10/security-vulnerability-in-firefox-16/
Great... How does that even happen?!