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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Indeed, but not all webkit browsers are equal -- not by a long shot.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Speaking of HTML5test, I just ran a before and after test with firefox 15 and firefox 16:
Firefox 15: 346 out of 500
Firefox 16: 363 out of 500
Chrome 22: 437 out of 500
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
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.
Followed by Firefox 64, which won't be quite as powerful as you hope :)
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun