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Firefox Deer Park Alpha Available

Posted by Zonk on Wed Jun 01, 2005 07:14 AM
from the break-out-the-salt-licks dept.
Mozilla The Internet IT
The Mozilla folks have made available the newest release of the Firefox web browser. This release is for testers and developers only, and should not be used if you have no interest in trying out the latest build. The release notes cover the recent changes. From the what's new document: "Fast back (and forward) - This very experimental feature allows much faster session history navigation. The feature is off by default but can be enabled for testing purposes by setting the browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers preference to a nonzero number."
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  • burning edge says: (Score:5, Informative)

    by professorhojo (686761) * on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:15AM (#12692748)
    According to Burning Edge, there are numerous usability regressions since 1.0 on the trunk builds.

    I think they need a lot of time to iron things out and this is one of those things they've decided to prolong the process!

    Since Fx is a hugely successful project that is still unusual in its open-source nature, the fact that more alphas and betas and in-betweens are being released may be a good thing.

  • Changes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hank Chinaski (257573) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:16AM (#12692751) Homepage
    Notable bug fixes

    * Web page rendering and interaction
    o 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.
    o 238493 - Ads on Gamespot flicker into other parts of the page during page load.
    o 95227 - Make it possible to set different default font type (serif vs sans serif) for different languages.
    o 47350 - Current scroll position not retained, reloading or going back to multipart/x-mixed-replace (e.g. Bugzilla bug lists).
    o 56314 - Reverse selection colors when page background is similar to default selection background.
    o 274553 - Blocking iframes either via an extension or userchrome.css breaks find toolbar search.
    o 103638 - Targets with same name in different windows open in wrong window with javascript.
    o 62384 - Text Zoom doesn't change dropdown height (without reload).
    o 97283 - Mouse wheel scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
    o 251986 - Keyboard scrolling does not work for elements such as div using overflow - auto or scroll.
    o 209020 - Meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" broken if midas was ever used in that browser window.
    o 198155 - Midas html editing mode persists after leaving the page that enabled it.
    o 21616 - Space after ::first-letter pseudo-element line is larger than between other lines (improvement in first-letter drop-caps appearance?).
    o 273785 - Plugins not scanned/detected on startup (empty plug-ins dialog in downloads, open-with dialog for PDFs).
    o 76197 - Scrollbars should look disabled when there's nowhere to scroll (not yet fixed on Mac).
    o 151375 - Focus outline should be drawn outside of element.
    o 133165 - Focus outline should include larger descendants of inline elements.
    o 65917 - :active neither hierarchical nor picky about what can be activated.
    o 20022 - :hover state not set until mouse move.
    o 278531 - Generic request prioritization (loadgroup prioritization) (e.g. for each HTTP host, load images with lower priority than pages).
    * Improved error pages. To enable error pages, go to about:config and set browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true.
    o 157004 - Error pages should be stored in history and show the original URL in the address bar.
    o 237244 - "Try Again" on XUL error pages does not repost form data.
    * Downloads
    o 239006 - Download manager doesn't account for filesize when presenting combined percentages.
    o 245829 - Download manager progress and title do not update correctly, wrong number of files and percentage after finishing or cancelling a download.
    o 249677 - Cancel does not delete temporary file in helper app dialog, if default action is save.
    * Accessibility
    o 175893 - Make XUL 's focusable.
    o 162081 - Wrong letter is underlined as accesskey / mnemonic when widget direction is RTL.
    o Many keyboard accessibility fixes.
    o Many screen-reader accessibility fixes.
    * Speed and memory-use improvements
    o 227361 - Don't reflow documents in background tabs until window resizing is complete.
    o 131456 - Memory use does not go down after closing tabs.
    o Many other speed and memory-use improvements.
    * Windows-specific bugs
    o 16940 - [Windows] IME is now disabled for password fields.
    o 255123 - [Windows] Opening URL from another app focuses an existing window before opening a new window.
    o 171349 - [Win98] Firefox icon is Win98's standard icon (taskbar & upper lefthand corner of app).
    o 284716 - [Win2k/WinXP] Create DDBs in nsImageWin::Optimize. (Fixes several performance bugs with large images, such as slow scrolli

      • Re:Changes (Score:5, Informative)

        by Issue9mm (97360) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:39AM (#12692911) Homepage
        That's not necessarily something that should be fixed at the browser level. From a coding perspective, I've gotten into the habit of specifying horizontal margins and padding in ems, which is a relative unit of measure (horizontal) based on font size. Because of that, a simple document can scale perfectly regardless of text size.

        If I specify a column's boundary at 150px, it isn't the browser's job to correct for it, other than to wrap the text when it gets too big.

        Long story short, your complaint is with web designers, not with Firefox.

        -9mm-

          • Re:Changes (Score:5, Informative)

            by n0-0p (325773) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:57AM (#12693018)
            Opera style "page zoom" should be possible in 1.5, so you may eventually get your wish anyway. It's just not really practical with the current rendering engine.
  • For the record, Deer Park is not the next minor point release (1.05 is guess), but the line that will be officially released as Firefox 1.1

    • Deer Park is not the next minor point release (1.05 is guess), but the line that will be officially released as Firefox 1.1

      Does this then mean that Deer Park should also have the binary diff update feature? (Though presumably not supported with actual updates.)

      • Not sure that is fully implemented yet (as there's no easy way to test) but this feature will be in for 1.1 so making updates a lot smaller and easier (not that the full download updates were that big anyway)
      • I was thinking how they would implement such a feature, considering theres numerious "optimised" compiled binaries, so each firefox binary will be different (apart from the official mozilla.org release).. how would you make a binary diff against the unofficial packages? is it possible?
    • Was 1.1 going to fix the Mac version so it actually looks and behaves like a Mac application, or is that going to have to wait until 2.0?

  • Extensions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by johansalk (818687) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:21AM (#12692780)
    I'm often late on adopting firefox new releases and the reason is simply that extensions often need time to be updated by their authors. I wish the Mozilla foundation would somehow remedy this problem in the future, so updating the browser need not break extensions.
    • this is a alpha released. it is targeted at extension and theme developers so that end users have all their favorites available ones the final product is published.

    • Many work (Score:4, Informative)

      by glrotate (300695) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:30AM (#12692842) Homepage
      Working:

      Adblock
      Launchy
      Bugmenot
      Spellbound
      Stumbleu pon

      Broke:

      Forecastfox
      Dictionarysearch

    • Re:Extensions (Score:5, Funny)

      by MynockGuano (164259) <{hyperactiveChip ... {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:35AM (#12692879)
      Perhaps they should put out a sort of "alpha release". This release would be basically a semi-official in-development build for "testing purposes only" on which extension authors and developers can "test" their code to see if there are any problems. This way, they will have time to prepare their extensions before the next release. Furthermore, to avoid confusion and prevent everyone from jumping on an unstable product and generating negative publicity, it would probably be best not to brand it with the Firefox name; maybe they could just use whatever the current code-name happens to be (like, for example, "Deer Park", a random name that I just happened to come up with).
      • Mock away but a lot of people find it more that a little stupid that just about every new Firefox release, however minor breaks existing extensions. Its really not a very clever way to treat an extension interface.

        • a lot of people find it more that a little stupid that just about every new Firefox release, however minor breaks existing extensions

          I've not really noticed this since the change to (I think) 1.0. Same with themes (thank $DEITY). Which extensions have you had problems with?

    • Not bad. 3 out of 6 new features are copied from Opera. "Sanitize" vs. "Delete private data" "Fast back (and Forward)" vs. "Rewind" and "Fast Forward" "Report a broken website wizard" vs. "Help -> Report a site problem"
      • Not bad. 3 out of 6 new features are copied from Opera

        So what? Some people prefer the Opera UI and will use that as their default browser, others prefer the way Firefox is designed. What's wrong with copying the best features off other browsers? There's not one browser fits all.

        I think Firefox is better designed for users that want a relatively simple interface whereas Opera comes packed with just about everything but the kitchen sink (it'll be in version 9.0).

        So to me Firefox and Opera appeal to diffe
      • Unregrettably, Opera's ad-spam feature wasn't quite able to make it for this release.

      • Re:New browser features (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Lussarn (105276) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @08:28AM (#12693321)
        It's a god damn mystery why opera has close to zero marketshare and Firefox has 5% when according to some opera fanbois all features of every browser is copied from opera. So where is opera lacking? Why isn't marketshare larger? Maybe you should ask yourself that question instead of picking on successfull browsers such as Firefox.

  • Graphical History (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:24AM (#12692804)
    When will Firefox implement a graphical representation of the history for the user?

    Thumbnails of where the user has been, linked in an easy to follow graphical manner. It would make finding sites of interest (where one has forgotten where they found them) so much easier.

  • Two things to look out for (Score:4, Informative)

    by linuxci (3530) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:24AM (#12692807)
    1. Talkback [mozilla.org] (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.
  • It's not like all these changes just spring up overnight. Use nightly (or hourly) trunk builds and you'll be up to date long before these releases or preview releases. I fully understand there's a reason for these sorts of dev previews, but the real testers and developers have been using these features and fixes for quite a long time now.

    Trunk builds are quite nice for even the regular user, so long as you're willing to put up with a few issues from time to time. The tradeoff for bug fixes and new fea
    • 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 [mozillazine.org]

      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 c
  • Finally an imitation of Safari's SnapBack!

    I love that thing, I've been missing it when using Firefox.
    It lets you go back to the last adress you specified to the browser (by typing it in or using a bookmark), quite usefull when you let yourself wander semi-randomly through clicking links.
    • Darned, I was hoping they were implementing the Opera back/forward action, where the page is simply redrawn, for lack of the proper term, as the page you saw, rather than re-executed or re-downloaded. In Opera, the page redraws were so fast as to be unnoticable, and there were no data-post limitations. It was a snapshot rather than a reload. Of course, if you wanted to, you could just reload the page manually to re-invoke the post (or whatever actually happened on the page)

      • Re:Fast back (Score:4, Informative)

        by linuxci (3530) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:42AM (#12692925)
        They are, it's the parent post that got it wrong.

        Feature off by default as it's got some bugs at the moment, see my earlier comments [slashdot.org] on how to enable it.

        Not sure if they plan to implement the feature the parent mentioned in safari

  • 1.1 Extensions (Score:3, Informative)

    by mdew (651926) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:35AM (#12692882) Homepage
    http://www.projects1.com/firefox/exthacks/FFnightl yextensions.html [projects1.com]

    something to help with the coversion to 1.0->1.1, also best to try a new profile too.
    • Thanks for the info. Got my adblock and ForecastFox working again. :) Now the only thing missing is Linkification and gcache, and I can easily live without those. (And if I REALLY wanted them, I could just modify the extensions myself)
  • But I thought they outlawed internet hunting?
  • Does anybody know the status of keychain integration on Mac OS X?

    I know that Camino exists, but I really like the nifty Firefox extensions. Unfortunately, keychain integration is really a killer feature for me.

    Anyone else wish there were keychain integration? Maybe somebody has already started working on this?

    -Peter
  • I'm still looking forward to the day when you can ctrl-click a link and have the tab open immediately to the right of the currently active one and not at the far end of a line of tabs.

    So far, the only way I've found of solving this is to download the miniT extension and then modify a text file. This is 2005, not 1995.

  • So did Deer Park water pay them for the naming rights to this release or what? Or is it just a coincidence? That could actually be pretty funny, if there was product placement in open source release names.
  • Something I haven't seen mentioned that has quietly slipped in is the new extension-installation support. You can place .xpi files directly in the 'extensions' directory of either the program or your profile, and the next time you start it, Deer Park will automatically recognize and install the new one. This would seem especially noteworthy at this point in time, since many "broken" extensions can be hand-updated by bumping the version numbers in the extension's install.rdf and re-zipping the .xpi. You c
  • Is there anything else in end-user land worth checking out?
  • Pro:

    * An old xml text webpage of mine, first I clicked on, showed an xlink image. Inline images were the one thing I knew of preventing 100% XML webpages.

    * SVG. When I finally converted from seamonkey for all the gorgeous features I didn't realize firefox had, the lack of SVG hurt, hurt badly.

    Con:

    * Alot of extensions seem to be broken. Waiting for updates will be hard.

    * Greasemonkey. Yes, I know it's just another extension, but at work, this one is a lifesaver. Going without it means using IE for our stupid webapps.

    * The GrayModern theme is broken. The realization that this theme existed convinced me to switch from seamonkey. God I hate the default theme. (Are there any compatible themes at this point? I'd take anything other than the default!)

    Strange:

    * Even though it disabled the FavIcon Picker extension, alot of my links still have the icons I set for them. Wondering if a single click on them will undo the handywork.

  • CSS 3 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Epeeist (2682) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @08:52AM (#12693560) Homepage
    Interesting that they have already started to implement some of the proposed CSS 3 features and are fixing some CSS2 breakages.

    That other browser can't even get CSS 1 right, and won't be implementing CSS 2 features in the edition that is supposed to be out this summer.

    Speaking as somebody who has come close to throwing his PC out of the window this morning because IE doesn't do z-indexes properly, which means that I have to look for a yet another workaround to cope with its breakages.
    • Bug Fixes
      ...
      o 217527 - Left column on Slashdot is sometimes too narrow or too wide for its contents.

      I thought this wasn't considered to be a bug, and that the problem was with Slashcode's HTML?

      • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)

        by linuxci (3530) on Wednesday June 01 2005, @07:27AM (#12692828)
        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.
        • I haven't yet tried it-- is the fix just a reload/re-layout after the page is done loading? Or is it more of an actual fix?

          I noticed that phpBB forum sites often have the same issue for their right column. A real fix should notice the problem during layout and rework the layout assumptions that are proven false as it goes.

          • I think the fix addresses the root of the problem, check with these forum sites and see if they now display correctly too. If they don't then it's a good opportunity to try out the new reporter tool in Firefox.

            It's in the Help menu under Report Broken Website
      • whilst slashcodes html is pretty damn horrid this was definately a bug in firefox.

        iirc firefox could render the page fine if it did so all at once but sometimes fucked it up when rendering incrementally.
    • It's actually memory leaks; there's a whole bunch of the buggers. Lots of leaks have been found and fixed, so I'm betting it won't be as bad as it used to be, but I doubt they've got them all, alas.
    • cant even find "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" on about:config

      I found it by right-clicking, selecting "New->Integer" and typing in "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" in about:config.

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