Speaking of fastback, that is a feature that makes back/forward a lot faster, similar to the performance of Opera.
This feature is switched off by default at the moment until the known regressions are ironed out, but I've enabled it and it works well for me. So if you want to give it a go the instructions are here
In brief: Type about:config in the URL bar Right click and select "New > Integer" Enter pref name (w/o quotes) "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" and click ok Enter a value (number of pages to cache, the post I linked to suggests 5, if you've got a lot of memory maybe try 15 or 20) and click OK Restart Firefox
Remember if reporting bugs on it please check that they're not already known about, the reason this is not enabled by default yet is there's a lot of regressions already known and they don't want bugzilla filled with dupes.
I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?
Although Slashdot's HTML is old and bloated by modern standards this was actually a bug in the Firefox renderer. Although I'd like to see Slashdot clean up their HTML in the future this time it wasn't their fault.
This bug was actually fixed before Firefox 1.0 was relased but they pulled the fix from 1.0 as it caused some regressions, lucky that they got ironed out.
1. Talkback (aka Quality Feedback Agent) in Windows builds is only enabled by default for a random selection of users on the Windows platform. This feature was built into the installer so that the talkback server on Firefox release builds wouldn't get bogged down.
As this is an alpha release and is a good idea to send in as much crash data as possible you may want to do a custom install on Windows and make sure it's selected.
2. This release comes with a tool you can use to report broken websites. This can be found in the help menu.
This data is stored in a serpate database to bugzilla so that you can report any broken sites without having to worry about clogging up bugzilla with duplicates.
They're trialling this scheme at London Heathrow airport for a while now. They still have the standard metal detectors, but they pick people at 'random' for the body scanner.
I usually avoid Heathrow like the plauge because of the long queues and usually use London City Airport as you can check in there 20 mins before take off. However, one day I had to fly from terminal 4 at Heathrow and while waiting in a 40 minute queue to get through security I noticed that they always seemed to pick the slim and reasonably attractive types for the body scan. So either that was coincidence or there was a few pervs there.
MoFo has become the defacto abbreviation for the Mozilla Foundation.
The first time I seen it used was in a blog post that was critical of the running of the Foundation (non 404'd), but it was linked to in Asa's blog and the name just stuck.
BTW for the Mozilla(TM) Trademark Policy I'd just like to say I'm just giving my views on why the trademark policy is the way it is and based on the blog post I linked to previously I do think that Netscape is violating them if they've not got permission.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree on the policy, a lot of things I think are a bit too restrictive IMO, but it doesn't bother me because the underlying software is free even if the branding isn't.
Fixing the bugs within a day is not good when the bugs had already been fixed in Firefox and were known about for a while.
The responsible thing would have been to delay the release by one day. This would also have meant that they didn't force all their early adopters to update so soon.
Yes, it would have been good to see something patched that quickly if the defects had been found after the release, however when the holes are known about then it makes sense to delay the release particularly if it's only by a day.
As for the Firefox trademark issues, the reason was to stop a poor quality derivative from giving Firefox a bad name.
Very strictly speaking Firefox(TM) is not open source, everything is open source except the branding though.
See for yourself, if you check out the firefox source code from the CVS and build it you'll get an app that is firefox in every way but the branding (the icon doesn't have the fox). You can add a flag to configure to enable the official branding, but you should not call modified versions firefox. But you're free to release it under your own name
But that's the beauty of weblogs of open source developers, they can say what they feel, unlike the IE blog where everything appears to have been vetted by marketing first.
He was totally justified with what he said. Netscape released their version based on a release of Firefox with security holes when a patched version of Firefox already existed.
It can create a bad impression on Mozilla applications if other apps that proudly boast that they're based on such apps don't release updates in a timely manner.
On another note, it's quite possible that Netscape are breaking the Mozilla trademark guidelines. The application should have said something like based on Gecko rather than based on Firefox because after all the Netscape bloat adding it looks nothing like Firefox.
Actually, unless you actually buy something, I don't think that/. gets any cash from them.
I'd like to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Most of the things that Microsoft ads link to are to download free whitepapers to explain how much cheaper Windows is. I think advertising is still based on click through but they probably use a number of methods to detect people repeatedly clicking on an ad.
It's good to see Microsoft are worried on all fronts at the moment, they must be spending more than they ever have on improving products and advertising. You can't visit a tech site (even slashdot) without seeing ads that are saying that Windows is cheaper than Linux (unless you block ads*). Now they're doing an Apple style campaign to respond to people switching to Mac or maybe Linux on the desktop. They've revived the IE team and spending a fortune trying to patch the security holes in their swiss chesse products.
*I'd never block Microsoft's ads, sometimes I even click them in order to give the site some free money from Microsoft.
Perhaps people could bombard Microsoft with stories of how windows has made their life easier and then end it with something like "oh wait, I was using (a Mac|Linux|Specturum 48k|...)".
It'd keep a few people in a job having to go through all those;)
That article you link to is from 2003, things in the UK government in regards to IT spend have got even worse since then, with a few really embarassing incidents in 2004.
And I've never understood you anti-convergence guys. Think about it - if you happened to want to listen to the radio, you'd now be carrying three gadgets instead of just the one. Throw in an organiser too, and you're really starting to take the piss.
I'm not anti-convergence as long as the device can do the job well or not add anything to the cost. My experience with FM reception on small devices is the quality is not worth it. I actually listen to the radio a lot in the car because the quality is fine but I've never wanted to listen to it through my phone.
If they can say the radio doesn't add anything to the cost and doesn't make the device more complicated to use then fine - add it. Otherwise why bother to add something that hardly anyone would use?
Never understood why all these rival players seem to include FM radios, if I wanted an FM radio I could use the one built in my phone (not sure what FM is doing in a phone either) but I never do because the quality on the move has never been that brilliant.
If they want to include a radio at least include a DAB one (the digital radio service in the UK).
Get your facts right, all the BBC's UK content is paid for by the licence fee which includes all the digital channels they produce, the radio stations, local content and the online content.
I think just over 100 pounds a year is good value compared to the high monthly fees of Sky (100's of channels of which only a couple are any good).
The BBC is in a unique position, we've got a public broadcaster which means we're not bombarded with ads and they have an excellent (also ad free) website.
With Sky you pay per month and are still bombarded with ads.
e.g. when BBC2 used to have the Simpsons it was 20 minutes because they don't have the ads, with Sky it's 30 minutes.
It's also a small price to pay for having an organisation that has no commercial bias and as we've seen they're willing to criticise the government. I'd certainly rather trust the BBC rather than a commercial entity like Sky who is owned by News corp just like Fox.
10% still looks to small to some narrow minded web designers that think that people who don't use IE are idiots or a geek.
25% market share is where everyone who counts will start taking Firefox seriously, I think a time will come in the near future when that will happen. It's having a knock on effect at work here, I installed 1.0 on all the machines here and simply said "use Firefox as your web browser as it will lower the number of virus problems that we have", most people are now using it and some people have even installed it in their homes (most people here are not technical).
People need to spread the word, alternatives are good if Firefox gets at least 25% and the others also have sizable market shares (e.g. Opera above 5%) then this will be good for us all.
If by cathedral they mean one person (or a small tightly controlled group) making the decisions to what goes in and bazaar as in the community making the decisions then I'd say nothing is quite as clear cut.
For a project to be successful you need tight leadership and the ability to say no, but still to have a sense of community and take the best of the feedback from them. The intention of Firefox was to follow the tight leadership route while still building a community which seems to have worked well. They've got an app that's not as cluttered as the Mozilla suite, Opera or all those awful IE shells like Maxthon while still having a community to listen to.
The site is linked to in Firefox! Check out Help > Promote Firefox so it definitely is official. The donation link goes to the official Mozilla store. The spreadfirefox site is owned by Blake Ross one of the key Mozilla developers.
What is suspicious about this? The spread firefox website is linked to in recent builds of Firefox (Help > Promote Firefox), Blake Ross is one of the original Firefox developers and has written the Firefox guidebook. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organisation and therefore all money made has to go to furthering the foundation
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of fastback, that is a feature that makes back/forward a lot faster, similar to the performance of Opera.
This feature is switched off by default at the moment until the known regressions are ironed out, but I've enabled it and it works well for me. So if you want to give it a go the instructions are here
In brief:
Type about:config in the URL bar
Right click and select "New > Integer"
Enter pref name (w/o quotes) "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" and click ok
Enter a value (number of pages to cache, the post I linked to suggests 5, if you've got a lot of memory maybe try 15 or 20) and click OK
Restart Firefox
Remember if reporting bugs on it please check that they're not already known about, the reason this is not enabled by default yet is there's a lot of regressions already known and they don't want bugzilla filled with dupes.
I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?
Although Slashdot's HTML is old and bloated by modern standards this was actually a bug in the Firefox renderer. Although I'd like to see Slashdot clean up their HTML in the future this time it wasn't their fault.
This bug was actually fixed before Firefox 1.0 was relased but they pulled the fix from 1.0 as it caused some regressions, lucky that they got ironed out.
1. Talkback (aka Quality Feedback Agent) in Windows builds is only enabled by default for a random selection of users on the Windows platform. This feature was built into the installer so that the talkback server on Firefox release builds wouldn't get bogged down.
As this is an alpha release and is a good idea to send in as much crash data as possible you may want to do a custom install on Windows and make sure it's selected.
2. This release comes with a tool you can use to report broken websites. This can be found in the help menu.
This data is stored in a serpate database to bugzilla so that you can report any broken sites without having to worry about clogging up bugzilla with duplicates.
They're trialling this scheme at London Heathrow airport for a while now. They still have the standard metal detectors, but they pick people at 'random' for the body scanner.
I usually avoid Heathrow like the plauge because of the long queues and usually use London City Airport as you can check in there 20 mins before take off. However, one day I had to fly from terminal 4 at Heathrow and while waiting in a 40 minute queue to get through security I noticed that they always seemed to pick the slim and reasonably attractive types for the body scan. So either that was coincidence or there was a few pervs there.
MoFo has become the defacto abbreviation for the Mozilla Foundation.
The first time I seen it used was in a blog post that was critical of the running of the Foundation (non 404'd), but it was linked to in Asa's blog and the name just stuck.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree on the policy, a lot of things I think are a bit too restrictive IMO, but it doesn't bother me because the underlying software is free even if the branding isn't.
Fixing the bugs within a day is not good when the bugs had already been fixed in Firefox and were known about for a while.
The responsible thing would have been to delay the release by one day. This would also have meant that they didn't force all their early adopters to update so soon.
Yes, it would have been good to see something patched that quickly if the defects had been found after the release, however when the holes are known about then it makes sense to delay the release particularly if it's only by a day.
As for the Firefox trademark issues, the reason was to stop a poor quality derivative from giving Firefox a bad name.
Very strictly speaking Firefox(TM) is not open source, everything is open source except the branding though.
See for yourself, if you check out the firefox source code from the CVS and build it you'll get an app that is firefox in every way but the branding (the icon doesn't have the fox). You can add a flag to configure to enable the official branding, but you should not call modified versions firefox. But you're free to release it under your own name
But that's the beauty of weblogs of open source developers, they can say what they feel, unlike the IE blog where everything appears to have been vetted by marketing first.
He was totally justified with what he said. Netscape released their version based on a release of Firefox with security holes when a patched version of Firefox already existed.
;)
It can create a bad impression on Mozilla applications if other apps that proudly boast that they're based on such apps don't release updates in a timely manner.
On another note, it's quite possible that Netscape are breaking the Mozilla trademark guidelines. The application should have said something like based on Gecko rather than based on Firefox because after all the Netscape bloat adding it looks nothing like Firefox.
Still nothing is as innovative as IE
Well for those people that believe MS propaganda then blocking their ads means they don't see Microsoft's lie^H^H^Hdistorted version of the truth.
Actually, unless you actually buy something, I don't think that /. gets any cash from them.
I'd like to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
Most of the things that Microsoft ads link to are to download free whitepapers to explain how much cheaper Windows is. I think advertising is still based on click through but they probably use a number of methods to detect people repeatedly clicking on an ad.
*I'd never block Microsoft's ads, sometimes I even click them in order to give the site some free money from Microsoft.
Perhaps people could bombard Microsoft with stories of how windows has made their life easier and then end it with something like "oh wait, I was using (a Mac|Linux|Specturum 48k|...)".
;)
It'd keep a few people in a job having to go through all those
erm... you could always buy tickets with the route as 'any permitted' then you can travel on any train company that serves that destination.
Just most companies also have their own fares that are cheaper but restrict you to their service.
That article you link to is from 2003, things in the UK government in regards to IT spend have got even worse since then, with a few really embarassing incidents in 2004.
I'm not anti-convergence as long as the device can do the job well or not add anything to the cost. My experience with FM reception on small devices is the quality is not worth it. I actually listen to the radio a lot in the car because the quality is fine but I've never wanted to listen to it through my phone.
If they can say the radio doesn't add anything to the cost and doesn't make the device more complicated to use then fine - add it. Otherwise why bother to add something that hardly anyone would use?
Never understood why all these rival players seem to include FM radios, if I wanted an FM radio I could use the one built in my phone (not sure what FM is doing in a phone either) but I never do because the quality on the move has never been that brilliant.
If they want to include a radio at least include a DAB one (the digital radio service in the UK).
Get your facts right, all the BBC's UK content is paid for by the licence fee which includes all the digital channels they produce, the radio stations, local content and the online content.
I think just over 100 pounds a year is good value compared to the high monthly fees of Sky (100's of channels of which only a couple are any good).
The BBC is in a unique position, we've got a public broadcaster which means we're not bombarded with ads and they have an excellent (also ad free) website.
With Sky you pay per month and are still bombarded with ads.
e.g. when BBC2 used to have the Simpsons it was 20 minutes because they don't have the ads, with Sky it's 30 minutes.
It's also a small price to pay for having an organisation that has no commercial bias and as we've seen they're willing to criticise the government. I'd certainly rather trust the BBC rather than a commercial entity like Sky who is owned by News corp just like Fox.
10% still looks to small to some narrow minded web designers that think that people who don't use IE are idiots or a geek.
25% market share is where everyone who counts will start taking Firefox seriously, I think a time will come in the near future when that will happen. It's having a knock on effect at work here, I installed 1.0 on all the machines here and simply said "use Firefox as your web browser as it will lower the number of virus problems that we have", most people are now using it and some people have even installed it in their homes (most people here are not technical).
People need to spread the word, alternatives are good if Firefox gets at least 25% and the others also have sizable market shares (e.g. Opera above 5%) then this will be good for us all.
If by cathedral they mean one person (or a small tightly controlled group) making the decisions to what goes in and bazaar as in the community making the decisions then I'd say nothing is quite as clear cut.
For a project to be successful you need tight leadership and the ability to say no, but still to have a sense of community and take the best of the feedback from them. The intention of Firefox was to follow the tight leadership route while still building a community which seems to have worked well. They've got an app that's not as cluttered as the Mozilla suite, Opera or all those awful IE shells like Maxthon while still having a community to listen to.
Come on... that'd make the article slightly useful to the readers and therefore might risk an increase in useful and informative comments.
He's talking about the itunes software, not the music store that it's linked to!
The site is linked to in Firefox! Check out Help > Promote Firefox so it definitely is official. The donation link goes to the official Mozilla store. The spreadfirefox site is owned by Blake Ross one of the key Mozilla developers.
Donation link
What is suspicious about this? The spread firefox website is linked to in recent builds of Firefox (Help > Promote Firefox), Blake Ross is one of the original Firefox developers and has written the Firefox guidebook. The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organisation and therefore all money made has to go to furthering the foundation