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Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:29 PM
from the kick-the-tires dept.
from the kick-the-tires dept.
elfguygmail.com writes "Firefox 1.5 beta1 is out! It includes many new features including a new automatic update system, reworked options dialogs, faster browsing, new error pages, memory and stability updates. Get your beta at Mozilla.org."
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Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released
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Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
I would suspect they've introduced new errors, entirely! Maybe some 700s, 800s.. maybe even some googols!
Since I'm not going to install it on my mac, someone want to post screenshots of the new screens? Please tell me they're more informative (for unsophisticated users) but not mimics of MSIE.
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday May 27 2005, @08:11AM)
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Have a look at this error screen [gjcp.net] for an example. I'm on XP at work, but I would think that other platforms would be similar.
Deer Park !!!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Deer Park !!!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Back (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice. Too bad its taken over 11 years for someone to optimize this in a relevant browser.
I'm not a browser developer so I've always wondered why browsers do not simply re-render what has already been cached when 'back' is used. I hit 'back' and I observe network activity even when the page is entirely 100% cacheable content. The browser is probably playing with If-Modified-Since... I'd rather it just render what's cached especially when, between the time the page was first rendered and the time I hit 'back' the network flakes out and, rather than simply rendering what is already faithfully stored on my local disk, the browser hangs!
It's not just inconvenient. It's wrong in principle; 'back' should be 'back to precisely what I received previously', not 'attempt to re-get whatever now appears at the previous URL.' If I want the page refreshed, I will use the provided 'refresh' button, mkay? Thanks.
There's probably some profoundly crucial and subtle reason for all this and I've foolishly revealed my ignorance. Apply the necessary flames, but only if you have credible answers.
Re:Back (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
I think Firefox 1.5 is basically as fast as Opera on this now, so it's nice to see one of Opera's killer features in Firefox.
State. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the big deal here is maintaining consensual state. I'm sure you know the basics here. Best practice is to POST when changing state on the server, and GET when reading. But, not everone does that. And it also took a long time to come up with that simple rule. The upshot is that when using browser based C/S apps, there is no good way to tell if the last action changed the state of whatever it is you're looking at. (For a simple example, think of confirming a bank transfer, and hitting back from the "it worked" page.) And even the POST means change rule doesn't always work or apply. Good app design has to play a role, but a browser has no idea if what is going on with the server.
There are other reasons why back can't always be exactly "what you got a page ago", but the above is the main killer (from the perspective of what I do, at least). Developers can make this better by playing tricks with the last-modified header and whatnot, but you're either going to sometimes get broken info or at least do a HEAD when going back, take your pick.
It is notable that the whole AJAX obsession usually completely kills the back button, and many web developers are very hot on the idea. If global state, session, and sometimes transaction can be bound that much more tightly, it does make life easier for a coder, at the expense of some great client side functionality. (Again, depending on how you think of it.)
Doesn't mean I'm not using XMLRPC - I don't mind bragging that we were doing some of this a few years ago. Having a community to trade ideas with kicks ass, and I've learned a lot from other's experimentation. But we shouldn't lose track of basics, like "the browser is not just a window frame; inbuilt functionality is important and if you make your own back buttons, you're missing the point."
Re:State. (Score:5, Funny)
Developers: Do you want to use approach A or B?
Sales: Both! And make it configurable!
Heh. (Score:5, Funny)
Consultant: No, what I'm asking is, do you want us to build the method that works, which you hired us to discover and spec out for you, or the broken one, for which you're now asking?
Client: The broken one!
Consultant: You're sure.
Client: Are you billing me for this conversation?
Re:Back (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Firefox, by the way, will fall back on the cache if it's unable to get the HEAD request. I'm not sure if it will correctly fall back if the HEAD succeeds but the actual request does not. IE will crap out, though.
Precisely what the "correct" behavior is, by which I mean "what the user expects" will vary from case to case, so it's hard to have a case that everyone agrees with. Netscape and IE both implemented what they thought was right, and have retained that behavior for consistencies sake even though some of the purists in the standards bodies have changed it.
Re:Deer Park !!!!!!!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that Firefox have finally caught up I might just switch back, though. It was the feature that converted me to Opera in the first place.
Fp (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/~anaesthetica/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 30, @01:22PM)
Re:Fp (Score:5, Interesting)
So what, if the vast majority of websites don't bother styling them? Form controls can default to Aqua without compromising the spec. In other words, there's no need for controls to be ugly if ugliness isn't specified in the HTML, and even then, you can handle it the elegant and tasteful way:
Naturally, that's how WebKit behaves [opendarwin.org]. Ugliness has no place on the Mac desktop, even on the web.
Re:I hate to be the one to bring up adblock but... (Score:4, Informative)
Woohoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://tidalflame.net/)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://krenzel.info/)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bugs is bugs!
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Informative)
The best feature for me is the new automatic nightly version system using Firefox's update system. No more manually downloading, unraring, and changing folder names... just a few clicks and I'm done. A very big plus, for nightly users.
And since 1.5a may break a whole lot of extensions, I recommend Nightly Tester Tools [blueprintit.co.uk], which can force an extention to work. You may also try going into about:config (type that in the URL bar) and manually making the entery:
app.extensions.version
Then setting this to a value of 1.0+. Can cause other problems though, so I'd go with Nightly Tester Tools first. Lastly, you could simply open the extension with an unzip util and modify the install.rdf, perhaps the most time consuming but failsafe method.
Re:Woohoo! - Not a troll (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there goes my karma, I WILL be modded as troll for this, but had to get it out
Classic windows (Score:4, Informative)
I'll update if... (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://yavin4.anshul.info/)
Watch Out Extensions Break (Score:5, Informative)
I hope it will turn out more stable... (Score:5, Interesting)
If it were my choice at work, I'd use Opera.
Deer Park Alpha 2 is great (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.josephguhlin.com/blog/)
I hope SVG integrates with XUL ok. Gotta test out my XUL apps I have in the field for compatability too.
There's some changes Extension Authors need to check out too. Mozilla Developer News has the info [mozilla.org] and the big thing is XPCNative Wrappers [mozilla.org] will be on by default. (Yet more info on XPCNative Wrappers is available too [mozilla.org]).
Incompatible, duplicate extensions (Score:3, Informative)
Take the GoogleBar for example. When I first installed Firefox it didn't come with a usable search tool, so I had to find GoogleBar which approximated the functionality of Google's IE GoogleBar. Now, Google comes along and releases their GoogleBar for Firefox and I'm left having to uninstall the old toolbar and install the new one. I'd rather the two projects just work closely together so that it could be updated seamlessly in one fell swoop.
Things like these occasionally mar my Firefox experience which is otherwise very smooth.
Speaking of smooth, does anyone else get a brief (1 second) pause when loading large pages in Slashdot? It seems to load part of the page, then it freezes for a second, then renders the rest of the page. It also happens on Photo.net, but there the whole discussion page reloads itself after loading once. Just a strange thing I noticed about Firefox.
Re:Incompatible, duplicate extensions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a mozilla dictionaries problem, I think - the dictionaries (which spellbound doesn't provide itself) install into the Firefox application folder, rather than into your profile folder - so when you overwrite that folder, you've just nuked your dictionaries.
If this annoys you, you could always ask the spellbound devs to provide dictionaries that install into your profile
Now with native SVG support! (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 12, @12:30PM)
Extensions (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://i.love.spam.mail.com/)
I smell a need for backward compatibility
Re:Extensions (Score:5, Informative)
(http://mozilla.org/)
No. Developers will only have to test their extensions to make sure they're not broken by the latest Firefox release. All they have to do if their extension still works is tweak a version field at addons.mozilla.org (or wherever their extension checks for updates) and Firefox will allow the extension to run.
We're still at beta and that gives developers quite a bit of time to get their extensions certified against the upcoming Firefox 1.5 release.
If the extension author was relying on Firefox application code that changed, and broke the extension, then the extension will have to be updated.
I'm hopeful that most of the popular extensions will have certified against 1.5 or made updates available by the time 1.5 final ships.
- A
Re:Extensions (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday June 04 2004, @09:36PM)
Firefox 1.5 installation directions (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/)
(1) Backup your old Firefox 1.0 profile
(2) Start with a clean profile, its best to use a clean profile
(3) Update your extensions [projects1.com]
(4) If the extensions still complain, try this following the directions from this link [mozillazine.org]
Re:Firefox 1.5 installation directions (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.draconpern.com/)
New Firefox...same goofy theme (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.section6.net/)
I'm also hoping that my memory leakage problems on linux are solved. We'll see! Now back to searching for the safarifox theme to see if it'll work...
Based on 30 seconds of usage (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.ocelotbob.org/)
svg release schedule? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~sinclair)
But I'm a little dissapointed it looks like the built-in SVG support isn't in there. Guess it's still alpha? (Haven't been following the Deer Park releases)
I'm really looking forward to the day where I can actually do a site in SVG and be able to expect more than 2 or 3 people to be able to see it...
And wow am I ever tired of struggling with the Flash IDE.
Re:svg release schedule? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.alteringtime.com/)
See: Mozilla SVG Update [mozillazine.org] and Mozilla SVG Status [mozilla.org] for some more info.
Re:my big hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree 100%. There are often pages that I visit which take a while to load. I load them in the background in tabs, but the whole browser grinds nearly to a halt while they load. In fact, if a flash animation takes up lots of CPU in one tab, then all the other tabs, and every other part of the user interface sometimes locks up for a minute at a time. This is just sad.
My second big gripe is just general bugginess. Yes, it takes time to iron out bugs, but Firefox has had some time. Right now, we're on 1.0.6, and honestly I'd rather see them just spend 100% of their effort on a 1.0.7 that is as close to bug free as humanly possible rather than adding more features. I'm sure the features they're adding right now are worthwile overall, but I'd much rather stay with the feature set I have now and see all the bugs disappear. The worst one is something that seems to relate to perhaps an event queue. Every now and then, something will happen that seems to cause Firefox to just stop processing events. I can press buttons and hit Command-W (I'm on a Mac), and nothing will happen. But if I hold down the mouse button inside a window, somehow this rejuvenates the event queue and these events get processed eventually. Totally, totally weird.
The worst part is that it seems that flash animations use the same thread as the user interface. So if you have a flash animation that takes a LOT of CPU, which lots of them do, then the user interface becomes unresponsive. This is just silly. You're taking untrusted code (flash from whatever web site) and letting it take CPU time away from critical stuff like being able to close the window that contains the CPU-hogging flash code!
I'll Crush Those Fuckers! (Score:4, Funny)
Funny... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.geocities...andon/cac/index.html)
This was a comment in the code:
Note to Editors of this Document!
I have meticulously repaired the indentation here. DO NOT OPEN THIS
DOCUMENT IN A WYSIWYG EDITOR OR (in the words of Robert DeNiro) I
WILL BRING YOU DOWN! I WILL BRING YOU DOWN TO CHINATOWN!
-Ben
nice.
-Vinod
Re:Funny... (Score:4, Informative)
fix the operating systems (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sick and tired of every application including its own update system. They all have different user interfaces, they don't handle dependencies correctly (e.g., Firefox may upgrade its own extensions, but not the download manager that they depend on), and they make random connections all over the Internet.
When will Windows and Macintosh get decent package and dependency management so that developers don't have to put this functionality into applications anymore, and that we don't have to put up with the security risks of many different update systems anymore?
GCC 4.01 (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://chrestomathy.org/)
inline-block? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:inline-block? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.mikegoodspeed.com/)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458 [mozilla.org]
This is one of those golden-oldy bugs with a 4-digit bug number, so chances are it's really hard to implement.
Opened: 1999-07-08 15:25 PDT
Last modified: 2005-09-06 12:46 PDT
It looks like you might be able to get away with using both of the following rules:
display:-moz-inline-box;
display:inline-block;
Mozilla? (Score:3, Interesting)
FireFox web page in IE (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://brandonbloom.name/)
Blame Microsoft all you want, but this is inexcusable. If you want people to switch to FireFox, they need to believe FireFox is better. Seeing as most web sites are built for IE, users coming to FireFox's web site see a page that doesn't render correctly and they assume the makers of the page are to blame. Why would they blame IE? Every other page they go to renders just fine in IE.
Since the same organization that made the page makes the software, it is conceivable that people would be turned away from FireFox on the assumption that people who produce broken web pages also produce broken programs.
Whether the FireFox web site doesn't properly support IE out of laziness, or out of malice. It should be fixed.
Re:Improvement? Sure, but.... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @03:55PM)
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/1.
2.) That sounds like an issue with JavaScript menus - I doubt it's the browser's fault per se; it could be an issue with the way the menu is designed.
What I want to know (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday March 02 2004, @07:07PM)
I like how it looks best in Linux, but I kinda miss the Windows version sometimes...with its speed and all. And I know its not Linux/Gnome- Epiphany flies. So does a WINEd IE. Only Firefox is slow. Will that be better?
Doesn't Fix Splitting Absolutely Positioned Frames (Score:5, Informative)
This bug prevents many web sites from printing in any useful respect from Mozilla browsers.
Its existence keeps me from rolling out Firefox as the default. It probably keeps any organization that frequently prints web pages from considering Firefox.
But what really irks me is that this bug has existed since 2002!. The bug has been duplicated in dozens and dozens of bug reports. It has at least 70 votes in Bugzilla. Yet no one has fixed it, and there is NO INDICATION that it will be fixed in the foreseeable future, yet it directly affects the user's browsing experience.
The history and severity of this bug does not reflect well on the Mozilla browser or its open source development model. NOTE: I am actually, personally, quite impressed with the Mozilla project, but someone who wants an excuse to banish free software might start with something like this.
Finally, as a Firefox user, a personal plea: Somebody, please fix this! Please?
For more information:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1548
Re:new error pages! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Flash (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.pvponline.com/)
For example:
This swf loads [honda-eu.com].
Its containing web page shows nothing. Works in 1.0.6 [honda-eu.com]
I mean, that's why this is a beta, clearly something is wrong. Shame though, I was hoping to use this on a daily basis to QA. No flash means I can't, I do too much work in flash to not have it load.
Users need it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Users need it (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://findsabrina.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday June 22 2004, @05:35AM)
You'd also have to stop and restart the browser, thus losing whatever page you were on when you decided to update. Here's hoping that the final versions will restore your browsing session after updating (similar to recent versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader). (Yes, I know about and use sessionsaver.)
Re:Users need it (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
Now, when Firefox notice there's an update available, the user gets a dialog telling there's an update, asking "do you wish to close Firefox and install it now? (otherwise it'll install next time you start Firefox)"
Re:Auto update! (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://ragnarok.dyndns.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 17 2003, @10:09PM)
Well, as one who manages the family computer, which runs WinXP, AutoUpdate is actually pretty useful. I haven't had to install an update manually for quite some time.
Seriously though, I can't wait until we get an OSX port that doesn't suck (Camino is okay, but what good is it if you can't use all the cool firefox extensions?).
Well, as a Mac OS X user, I feel your pain. But, I'm wondering which parts suck for you? I have issues with page rendering. Look at these rendering jobs from the LiveJournal [livejournal.com] home page (be kind! this is hosted on my personal server box):
- FireFox 1.0 [dyndns.org] (Sorry, but the "About" Dialogue blocks the effected text, so you'll have to trust me)
- FireFox 1.5 Deer Park Beta 1 [dyndns.org] the distributed Mac OS X binary, not compiled from soruce
- Camino 0.92 [dyndns.org] just for comparson
- Opera 8.02 [dyndns.org] for Mac OS X
- Safari 2 [dyndns.org] (And if you don't trust me, think about how many web browsers have a brushed metal GUI like that)
This occurs on several pages, but the only one I could produce on-demand was the LiveJournal page. Note that this is the LiveJournal home page, not user pages, and contains relatively simple and stable code. Note that Safari and Opera read the pages perfectly fine, but all the Mozilla-based browsers (all versions), even Camino, can't render the page properly. And these problems are not always so minor. On occasion, text can continue right outside of the view (and scroll) of the window. Text boxes will end up with text no longer inline with the cursor, making editing and correcting typos virtually impossible.Any one else have this problem? I know it's not too isolated since I've had this happen on both installations of OS X 10.4 and even 10.3. Or are there other problems that I don't know about?
Re:Auto update! (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://linux-studie.nl/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 21 2004, @01:22PM)