Firefox 3.5 Hits Release Candidate Milestone 202
macupdate writes "Firefox 3.5rc1 has started trickling to users (mirrors and appropriate pages should all be updated soon). You can read the release notes. RC1 still scores a 93/100 on the Acid3 test."
Beta "99" (Score:3, Insightful)
Beta 99 [mozilla.com]
Re:Beta "99" (Score:5, Informative)
That's the old preview build. This [mozilla.com] is the RC link.
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That still links to the beta 4 download.
Re:Beta "99" (Score:4, Informative)
This is actually the one after that - I had 3.5b4, got 3.5b99 last week and "3.5" today. The user agent string is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090615 Firefox/3.5
(yes, this is the NT laptop - haven't checked Karmic yet)
93/100... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:93/100... (Score:4, Funny)
No. You're wrong and an ignoramus. I only visit websites which use those obscure areas of compliance, and I visit them ALL THE TIME, and the more I visit them, the more I can brag about how much better MY browser is than YOURS. Do you see how useful this is now?
Re:93/100... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't I have mod points today?
The parent is so right. The video tag means that youtube and all the web streaming websites can work without Flash. And since Firefox users update quickly, this means 20% of Internet users will be able to do that within 6 months. That's pretty big when you think some people try to make us believe that HTML5 is 10 years away...
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What makes you think Youtube will move to video tag? Youtube's main reason for success was relying on Flash, a plugin which everyone has and trusts to.
Do you really think Youtube would lose that convenience? Do they really care if H264 is patented? I don't really. All I see is a platform neutral, documented standard which was designed with media professionals. I don't see some "evil monster" when I look to Flash or h264. I know what would happen if Flash and h264 didn't exist. We would be arguing about WMV
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Talk about focusing on the negatives...
It's open source. If it doesn't conquer the world, massage your back and bake you cookies all at the same time, it was a failure. Don't you know how these things work?
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Yes! It will! [opensourcecook.com] You have to supply the butter, though. (Unless you're running body-levels/cholesterol >=200.0, then you'll need to downgrade to margarine, which will satisfy the =body-sense/taste-5.0" to prevent your flavor from being upgraded in the future).
Just sayin'...
Re:93/100... (Score:5, Interesting)
Acid tests are designed to highlight rendering bugs in current browsers, giving browser developers a chance to easily see where something is going wrong. All major browsers currently pass Acid2, which means if you create a web page that only uses the kind of code that Acid2 tests for, you can be sure it will render precisely the same way in current versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc. This is a huge step forward; ten years ago, it wasn't uncommon for a page to work correctly in one browser but be completely unusable in another.
Now that all the major browsers pass Acid2, we need to find other ways in which web pages can display differently between different browsers. Since there is an official standard that defines what the correct behavior should be, we have something to test against; this is what Acid3 does. You're absolutely correct that passing Acid3 should not be the top priority, and failure to pass Acid3 is not a good reason for a user not to choose Firefox. However, the remaining things that prevent Firefox from passing Acid3 are indeed bugs, and eventually, they do need to be fixed. There are also other bugs in Firefox, that also need to be fixed, and many of these are more important than the bugs that cause Acid3 to fail.
I agree that HTML5 and CSS3 are awesome, but if browsers can't render them correctly, they're not much good. Acid tests are an incredibly useful tool for browser developers to ensure that this happens. Acid4 is already being planned, and will help to find bugs in the way browsers handle HTML5 and CSS3 and SVG and other stuff, taking into account some of the lessons learned from problems with the Acid3 test (for example, Acid3 tests rendering speed; Acid4 will not).
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Since the test is for standards compliance, I'm more than happy that products are developed with the ACID tests in mind. Encourage away!!
Prior to ACID, the only reliable cross platform HTML was a, br, b and i tags. Heck, even the img tag in IE6 is broken because it doesn't do PNG transparency.
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And what is? Even if it only covers x% of the overall specs it is good to have an open set of tests that all browser makers can work with to get some common ground in how their browsers behave.. Without a common set of tests two browser makers might both manage to cover 90% of the specs right but the 10% they get wrong might not be the same, ie there could be a 20% difference in browser beha
Re:93/100... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about Acid tests is that specs are ambiguous: there are often multiple possible meanings to a given section, and inevitable different people will implement them in different ways. Some of those will be incompatible, yet both can claim compliance, so this helps no one. Tests, on the other hand, are unambiguous: either you pass or you do not.
This is why Web platforms of the future will not be based on specifications, but on the test suites. Acid tests are not perfect at this, but they are light-years better than previous practice. If Mozilla wants to be seen as taking standards seriously again, they are going to have to start taking these tests seriously, and that means 100% as soon as possible.
They've improved over Acid2, at least, when even iCab -a browser developed by one person- beat them to full compliance by months. But they still have a long way to go. When major tests like this are developed, 100% needs to be a dealbreaker goal for the next major release, not something put off until 2-3 big releases in the future. Opera gets this, and the WebKit folks get this. Mozilla used to, back in the days of the first CSS Acid Test. But somewhere along the way, they lost sight of it, and they need to be reminded.
Re:93/100... (Score:4, Informative)
> This is why Web platforms of the future will not be based on specifications, but
> on the test suites.
Actually, no. This is why people are much more careful about not writing ambiguous specifications now.
You can't "test suite" your way to full coverage of something like CSS 2.1: too many features, too many combinations, too many things to test.
> If Mozilla wants to be seen as taking standards seriously again
Which standards? Some standards are more important than others. It might just be that stuff the acid test is not testing is more important than stuff it should be... (and is in fact the case with parts of acid3).
It might also be that supporting the standard and not supporting it at all are both better options than supporting just the part that the test tests.
So no, 100% test-compliance should never be the primary goal. Support for the standards that are useful to support should be.
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And I don't understand people who don't understand that it is a quick visualization of how well the browser is doing css standards wise.
It is a quick benchmark, wtf is not to understand about that?
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There are some people remembering the Firefox/Mozilla original mission. It is all about standards. Earliest Mozillas worked like junk but they have always beaten the rest of the market regarding standards support.
They could be reminding their mission. A standard, open web with all standards. Not thousands of hacks to show google something .com fine, to perfect the standards support first and hack later.
BTW, does "So what?" asking Firefox community also say "So what?" to Microsoft/IE regarding standards comp
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I hereby proclaim that ACID tests should no longer be the gold standard for obscure CSS edge cases, and instead we should wait for the next generation of browsers that can render slashdot correctly - since over the last few months I've not used any browser that's rendered a page the same way in any other browser ;)
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Bad measurables are worse than no measurables. Counting enemy combatants killed didn't get McNamara or the army results in Vietnam.
ACID 3 sure came along at a convenient time for Google's browser marketing strategy. And it was designed so every browser would start from around the same score, not to test the most useful standards or the real-world web, so it wasn't very hard for Google and Apple to get to 100 when they focused on it.
The author of the test works for Google, of course...clearly it's a conspir
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Bad measurables are worse than no measurables.
A lot of people would disagree with you that Acid3 is in fact a bad measurable.
And it was designed so every browser would start from around the same score, not to test the most useful standards
A lot of people would disagree with you that the parts of the DOM that Acid3 tests are not useful.
or the real-world web
When Gecko-based browsers first came out, the real-world web still included ActiveX, which was already recognized as a security hazard.
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And so what does Acid3 measure? Obscure things that don't matter because unless IE gets better than a 20 on it, I can't see it being used for actual pages.
For one thing, it appears to be designed to shame Microsoft into improving Windows Internet Explorer. Had there been no Acid2, there might not have been an IE 8.
Useful for what? For measuring standards that aren't really used?
Just because a standard isn't used on June 17, 2009, doesn't mean it won't be used on June 18, 2009. Be it your intent or not, you are giving off an impression that bug-for-bug compatibility with a non-free program called Windows Internet Explorer is more important than following published standards.
When Gecko-based browsers first came out, the real-world web still included ActiveX, which was already recognized as a security hazard.
There isn't that much difference in time periods though. Gecko was developed in 1997 while ActiveX was developed in 1996.
By "came out", I meant as general releases, not as
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For one thing, it appears to be designed to shame Microsoft into improving Windows Internet Explorer. Had there been no Acid2, there might not have been an IE 8.
Actually I think that there would have needed to be an IE 8 otherwise with the OEMs in Europe being allowed to bundle browsers of their choosing and wanting to have sites that look like they should in 2009, not in 2001, would bundle Firefox, Chrome or Safari leading to dwindling marketshare for MS and ultimately leading them to abandon their browser market or release a better browser.
Just because a standard isn't used on June 17, 2009, doesn't mean it won't be used on June 18, 2009. Be it your intent or not, you are giving off an impression that bug-for-bug compatibility with a non-free program called Windows Internet Explorer is more important than following published standards.
Ok, but IE still has the majority of marketshare and there are still legacy sites out there. The fact that it is non-free
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Actually I think that there would have needed to be an IE 8 otherwise with the OEMs in Europe being allowed to bundle browsers of their choosing and wanting to have sites that look like they should in 2009, not in 2001, would bundle Firefox, Chrome or Safari leading to dwindling marketshare for MS and ultimately leading them to abandon their browser market or release a better browser.
And the point of the Acid tests is to demonstrate whether a given web browser acts like a 2009 browser or a 2001 browser.
The fact that it is non-free should only add to the fact that a free browser that is widely used should work with all sites, even those not coded up to specifications
No web browser can Do What I Mean in all cases.
otherwise if there was an IE only site that you had to access you would either be hand-parsing the HTML files, would have to emulate IE if you were using a different platform other than Windows, or run Windows in a VM.
Or d) finding a way not to have to access the site, such as by going to a competitor's site. On the whole, Mac owners tend to spend more online than owners of PCs that run Windows. Since Microsoft stopped making Internet Explorer for Mac, it didn't make sense to turn away potential customers who use Safari, whose WebKit acts more like Gecko t
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True, however anything better than an 80 should be deemed "acceptable" in acting like a 2009 browser. A 94 isn't much different than a 100 when it comes to web standards whenever there are competitors who score a 20.
Agreed. I was under the impression that at least someone in this thread thought a 20 was as good as a 94.
What happens if you go to a site for a small bit of information but the site hasn't been updated in a while
If it's info I'm after, and my web browser is making a mess of the layout, I'll shut off its style sheet to read the info.
There is no reason to simply drop compatibility modes for the sake of enforcing standards
Unless the compatibility modes increase the complexity of testing the application. Having the equivalent of six rendering engines (one for today's code and one to match the defects in five previous browsers) makes testing take several times longer and allows more of a chance for crash
Still the slowest browser. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, even slower than IE8. From start up times to rendering pages firefox is by far the slowest. If you don't believe me download IE8, use it for a week, and you'll see for yourself. IE8 sucks for other reasons (crashes more, no plugins, forgets log-ins), and firefox is my main browser, but it is seriously falling behind. It's speed, private browsing, and I would argue even security (no sandbox/protected mode) are subpar compared to the competition. And they really need to fix private browsing, it's pretty sad when an IE feature works better than the open source alternative. As repeated ad-nauseum here firefox is still my main browser due to plugins, but everytime the browser freezes because one tab decides it wants to do something I re-evaluate this decision.
Re:Still the slowest browser. (Score:5, Informative)
What is decent? (Score:2)
I don't think anyone with a decent PC is going to be frustrated by the performance on 3.5
I don't understand what you mean by "decent". Low-cost subnotebook PCs optimized for size and battery life over CPU speed have become popular over the past year; are those "indecent"?
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Does 3.5 actually *have* private browsing? The equivalent of IE8's InPrivate mode, or Chrome's Incognito? If so, good for them - Google and Microsoft released those features near-simultaneously, and it's about time they made it into the world's second-most-popular browser (ignoring version numbers).
Firefox 3.0 takes bloody AGES to start up on the Linux boxes at my school (GNOME, Fedora 9). It's probably a misconfiguration thing - it's faster on my KDE4 system (although still slower than Konqueror) - but eve
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preload and readahead speedup firefox startup times significantly, 3.5 is pretty quick here but i have taken care with the extensions i use (no tmp,fasterfox,etc)
Re:Still the slowest browser. (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, performance is the top priority for Firefox.next (presumably Fx3.6 although you never know). Codenamed 'Namoroka [mozilla.org],' the developers have selected several common tasks which they want to perceptibly increase the speed of, including:
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Maybe you need to steak your "about:config"?
v3.5 and still no MSI package for Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish Mozilla would make up their minds: are they going to target the Corps or not?
Even if you can get an MSI from Frontmotion (http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/download_firefox.htm), the corps will never go for it unless it comes off the Mozilla servers and is on the same web page as the current XPI installers. It's a "warm and fuzzy" thing that they need.
If Mozilla could somehow sanction those MSIs from Frontmotion then the corps would be more comfortable with it. Even a link from here (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html) would give FrontMotion's MSI package credibility.
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Re:v3.5 and still no MSI package for Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Pardon my ignorance, but this is a serious question; what would be the difference in downloading an MSI package versus an .exe if they both achieve the same thing?
Because they don't in fact achieve the same thing. Deployment of software across hundreds of machines in an Active Directory environment relies on Group Policy objects that reference .msi packages.
Similar issues on OS X, no .PKG (Score:2)
In fact, even home users using OS X lives problem with "Drag Drop" installs if they aren't admin (super user) and the poor Finder's architecture of "if not owned by user, prompt" functionality is being relied on.
OS X is generally clever on that area but just moments ago, it stopped at half eventually giving up replacing the .app directory (which we see as Firefox.app) breaking the working executable.
If it was a .pkg, OS X would launch its Installer.app, it would nicely ask for admin credentials, store the a
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Mozilla may not make MSI's, but you can
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I think that Google Chrome will get corporate friendly before Firefox.
Firefox doesn't really have a plan for targeting business users - it's as if they don't understand corporate needs!
* Redirect update server to internal corporate network so they can test new releases before updating the corporate desktops.
* Fine-grained control at the policy level over installable extensions, themes, plugins. I.e., stop users installing their own, define a set of standard corporate extensions, and so on.
* Can run those in
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I think you're right.
By that time though, it will be too late for Firefox to get corporate mindshare.
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open a bug report?
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There is one but I don't know if it's still open.
It was promised for version 3.0 but it never happened.
93/100 (Score:3, Insightful)
RC1 still scores a 93/100 on the Acid3 test.
Minefield has scored 94/100 for quite some time now, so I doubt Shiretoko will score any better at release.
Have they improved the memory leaks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Have they improved the memory leaks? (Score:4, Interesting)
yes, as with 3 the memory footprint is significantly reduced, its still a bit on the high side here 128mb (the most any one program uses) but i have plenty of ram (~1.5Gb) so much of that may be features instead of leaks.
Not quite RC yet (Score:4, Informative)
This is actually a pre-RC build, the actual RC should be coming in the next week.
See this site for more details.
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2009/06/17/firefox-35-beta-users-will-receive-update-to-early-release-candidate/ [mozilla.com]
Turn off Geolocation! (Score:2)
This isn't really the kind of information I would like to share, and I imagine other people might not like it either, so to just disable it so you won't even be asked, do the following:
Figures. (Score:2)
I just installed beta4 late last night/early this morning. Hadn't even had a chance to fire it up yet.
I'll go update it to RC1 straightaway, so we can move on with RC2 tomorrow.
(You're welcome.)
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And both the latest Opera and Safari 4 already score 100/100...
Re:A little anti clamantic... (Score:5, Insightful)
yet don't work 100% in real world webpages. Standards compliant be damned if you can't render real pages.
Re:A little anti clamantic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Such as...? I use Safari (at home) and Konqueror (at work) nearly exclusively and haven't had problems with these mythical IE-and-Firefox-only pages.
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That's interesting. Which version of Konq? On 3.5.10, the Slashdot discussion system is FUBAR for a few weeks now. It was working fine, in-place replies, dynamic comment loading and all, but it stopped at some point.
Re:A little anti clamantic... (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh, well. They must've fixed something important in 4.x. Well, good to know. Even though I'm not switching to KDE4, still no OS X xtyle menus there...
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Oh, well. They must've fixed something important in 4.x. Well, good to know. Even though I'm not switching to KDE4, still no OS X xtyle menus there...
It's called merging parts of WebKit into Kdelibs.
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The amusing part is that, on my screen, your post looks exactly as you describe.
I've found the problem goes away if I increase the window width sufficiently.
I'm running Firefox 3.0.11 on Windows XP, but I see the same problem on Firefox 3.0.? on MacOS Leopard at home.
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Heh, the same for me. His post was squished up against the right.
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They have
ul#commentlisting.d2 div.full div.commentBody {
clear:none;
}
in their CSS, it should be clear: both; which I tried in FireBug and can confirm works.
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Konqueror 4.2.4 seems to work well enough with Slashdot. It's actually a fairly decent browser, although I use Iceweasel out of habit (and ABP+ and NoScript). The only site I have found it doesn't work properly with is Gmail. It scores better than Firefox and Iceweasel on Futuremark's Peacekeeper benchmark, but feels a bit slower in reality.
I'm posting from it now, mostly to test it with Slashdot, and everything from logging in to using the slider thingy, previewing, continuing editing and posting (hopefull
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and Konqueror (at work)
You are the first person I have ever heard say "I use Konqueror", I didn't think anyone used it. I figured it was some throw back browser that was still included in Linux distros for nostalgic reasons. What does it do for you that Safari or FF wouldn't/doesn't do?
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Don't hog all my memory. Konqueror 4.x broke Slashdot and digg so I had to stop using it and use firefox instad. But now Slashdot works properly again. I can use dig but I get a regexp exhaust error if I try to login in digg. I still have to use firefox for gmail and facebook though.
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It "feels" faster on my machine. It's better integrated with my KDE desktop. It uses KWallet to store passwords. It uses a lot less memory. It loads instantly. I have nothing against Firefox and use it for web development because of the nice plugins, but I slightly prefer Konqueror for daily browsing.
Re:A little Opera Music with a bad note (Score:2)
Like my private links page.
It's a simple little page with about two layers of tables, and one of the recent Opera builds pounds it. (I think the one before last week's release.)
So now I don't know if it's because my page isn't Standard Compliant or if Opera is just throwing a snit.
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W3's HTML validator [w3.org] is a good place to start researching.
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Standards compliant be damned if you can't render real pages.
I think that's the crux of the problem. If both the pages and browser were standards compliant this wouldn't be an issue, but alas, neither truly are. Especially the pages.
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The few times I've encountered this problem in the last year or so, it has been in Firefox, and Safari has worked fine.
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yet don't work 100% in real world webpages. Standards compliant be damned if you can't render real pages.
What?
If the browser follows web standards 100% and yet some webpages render incorrectly - doesn't this mean the issue is with the web page and not with the browser?
Web standards exist so that we shouldn't have to answer the question of whether the web browser is designed for the web pages or whether the web pages are designed for the browser.
Re:A little anti clamantic... (Score:4, Funny)
To be fair, Chrome is from Google. It's going to be beta for another three years.
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To be fair, Chrome is from Google. It's going to be beta for another three years.
What are you talking about? Google Chrome has been stable since December 2008, and Chrome 2 has been stable since mid-May (and scores 100/100 on Acid3).
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Gmail is stable too, and STILL has the little "BETA" tag on it.
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And Chrome doesn't.
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Just like Firefox is "back in beta". Come on, that's a ridiculous thing to say.
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That's for windows. The linux version is in the "developer" stage (it's like alpha, but it has some marketing twist to suggest that you're part of some clique of "developers" allowed to see this early version).
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Every WebKit browser should be getting 100/100.
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And for those who still don't get it, the correct spelling is "anticlimactic".
It's from "anticlimax".
You know what a climax is, right? This is slashdot; you've surely read about them, even experienced them by yourself.
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First they ignore you...
Then they ridicule you...
Then they fight you...
Then you win.
Enjoy [youtube.com]
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Opera and Safari have rather low adoption rates. Acid3 compliance is purely a marketing gimmick until people actually implementing those features in real webpages. Opera and Apple decided that such a gimmick was a relatively fast and cheap way to get publicity, but we don't know what damage was incurred in the codebase(s) to make it happen.
Few websites will use the final 7 tests until Mozilla or MS get around to it. Mozilla can afford to take it slow and implement the features properly, rather than tacking
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Technically you have one non-beta closed source; Safari gets its 100% from Webkit, which is open source.
Fed troll is fed.
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Another failure for Open Source. There are now TWO non-beta 100% fully ACID compliant CLOSED SOURCE browsers available (Opera and Safari). Why can't the "Open Source" community come up with something competitive?
WebKit and Opera had 100/100 on the same day (March 26, 2008). WebKit is, of course, open-source. It's used by more than one open-source browser, including Chromium. WebKit and Chromium aren't developed solely by the stereotypical basement-dwelling hackers who communicate only over the Internet, but corporate-funded open source is still open source.
By the way, "Acid" is not capitalized. Perhaps you're confusing it with the database concept of ACID compliance (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durabilit
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You mean the Safari that uses the open source WebKit for rendering?
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Safari's renderer is WebKit, which is open source and based on KHTML.
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Adblock Plus & NoScript work fine in Minefield, so they almost certainly will work in the RC. I don't know about other plugins, though.
All of my plugins work now (though they still have to be enabled [brightrev.com]). Tab Mix Plus was screwy in the 3.1/3.5 nightlies and betas, but works fine now as well.
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dunno about xmarks, but I've been using http://www.andyhalford.com/syncplaces/index.html [andyhalford.com] with minefield after fedora11betas had issues with firefox3.5.
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Currently using all three on FF 3.5b99, so they should work fine on the RC as well.
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xmarks, adblock plus, ietab, flashblock, kallour and stylish are all working. Don't know about firebug.
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Faux does not rhyme with fox. You are not clever.
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Please explain how calling it Firefaux is clever or funny.
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if your so happy about dillo and lynx why did you give enough of a shit about an alternative post?
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And your point is...? good that you use Dillo, hopefully you'll contribute, I've heard they're kinda short on devs. Ohh, and if you want a more modern browser that's still fast, you should try Midori.
There are options for every performance/features ratio you may prefer, its just that Firefox ain't on your particular favorite. The sky isn't falling.
Re:H.264 or Theora? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:H.264 or Theora? (Score:5, Interesting)
H264 is industry standard since the day it was proposed/accepted. Industry standards aren't defined by nerds, they are defined by industry, huge boards of professionals and several computing specialists. There are billions (if not trillion) worth of broadcasting equipment, workflows, applications trusting to MPEG standards. Near all HD broadcasts are h264 and you should be thankful that TV industry didn't buy Microsoft's "but VC1 is documented too!" tricks.
They sit, argue, propose and after years, MPEG standards appear. H264, being part of MPEG 4 is more standard than anything you can imagine. It is result of 300 Experts discussions, several universities, companies and even governments.
Of course, it would be wise to wonder around saying "evil patents and mpeg la" but reality is a bit different. Even the reasons of patents are different than you may think.