Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Mozilla The Internet News

Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life 138

Posted by Soulskill from the out-with-the-old dept.
vm writes "According to Mozilla and other sources, Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 will soon be left behind some time in mid-December. The end result: no future security or stability updates. This will affect Thunderbird 2, SeaMonkey 1.1, Camino 1.5, and any other projects based on Gecko 1.8. So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life More

Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life

Comments Filter:

  • How will this afect all the software that have forked from these versions?

  • FF 3 in portage (Score:2, Funny)

    by Woek ( 161635 )

    Time for the Gentoo Portage people to mark Firfox 3 as stable!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lambent ( 234167 )

      too bad it's (FF3 on gentoo) the most unstable browser i've ever used, even worse than cello (anyone remember cello?)

      • The girlfriends machine had a lot of random crashes with all versions of Firefox up until 3.0.4 came out. (Yes, on Gentoo)

        Since then not a single problem. At all. And she's been using it since day of release.

        A simple 'emerge --sync --quiet && emerge -u =mozilla-firefox-3.0.4' (assuming you have it unmasked) will solve that issue.

        • Bah. Why did I type that '-u'? Ignore the '-u'. :-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ATMD ( 986401 )

          A simple 'emerge --sync --quiet && emerge -u =mozilla-firefox-3.0.4'

          I'm a Gentooer myself, but I don't go round claiming things like that are simple. That road leads to madness. Specifically, the person whose box I've just installed Linux on gets mad at me.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Flentil ( 765056 )
          "A simple 'emerge --sync --quiet && emerge -u =mozilla-firefox-3.0.4' (assuming you have it unmasked) will solve that issue." Simple? This is why linux will never catch on with most people. Simple is to download and install and it works automatically. The above is about as far from simple as an old-school modem initialization string from the 90's.

          • [successful_troll.jpg]
            can't stop from replying...

            open terminal
            "aptitude install firefox"

            or

            open gui package manager
            search firefox
            select firefox
            click install

            done

            Much better than:

            open web browser
            search firefox
            go to web site
            click download link
            wait for download to finish
            run exe
            click through installer

            done

            gentoo was never meant to be simple

          • While that is the case for Gentoo, it is intended to be for hardcore Linux geeks. Apt or RPM based distros such as Redhat, Mandriva, or Ubuntu make it nice and easy to install - go to your package manager, search for "firefox", select "Firefox 3", and click "Install" (or "Apply") and when it's finished, the software has been installed.

            That's nicer and more consistent (only one place to look) compared to finding and installing some Windows software. I'm not going to try to pretend that everything is easier

          • oh sure windowsXP SP2 is much easier.
            1. click the download button,
            2. click save to desktop,
            3. right click file, and select all,
            4. control c to copy to the clipboard
            5. open shared folder
            6. control v to paste the file
            7. right click, run as admin
            8. enter password
            9. click ok on installer a gazillion times
            10. enjoy the program

            Of course windows Vista is a lot easier because they finally fixed the broken run as command but nobody runs vista.

          • windows "a simple 'google firefox, go to firefox downloads page, click on the download link, run the download link, accept UAC, accept EULA, click next a few time"
            ubuntu "a simple 'apt-get update ; apt-get install -qy firefox'

            ofc to anybody who knows what thier doing on gnetoo its just "emerge firefox-3.0.4" on ubuntu its "apt-get firefox" but on windows you still have to arse on

      • Oh really? I'm using FF3 on Gentoo x64 right now, I and haven't seen it crash in months. Hell, since a week or two ago I'm even running 3.1beta2, also without crashes so far.

        So, anything more than personal anecdotes on your side?

        • So, anything more than personal anecdotes on your side?

          That would be a fair comment if you hadn't countered with nothing more than your own personal anecdote.

          • Naw. Burden of proof is on the person making the initial claim.

            • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Naw. Burden of proof is on the person making the initial claim.

              Prove it.

          • I was expecting this kind of response, and it would only seem fair...if I was the one making some out-of-the-blue claim that a certain piece of software is totally unstable on a platform I happen to use. I do not recall any outcry on the Gentoo forums regarding stability of FF3.

            So really, it's not up to me to prove that FF3 works on Gentoo, it's the OP's task to show me that there actually IS a problem.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by maxume ( 22995 )

              I think the better response might be "I see your anecdote and raise you a blatant lie!".

        • So, anything more than personal anecdotes on your side?

          Has this bug (453964) [mozilla.org] been fixed yet ? According to the bug tracker, no one has even bothered looking at it, since it's still "unconfirmed".

          Oh well. I guess I'll stay on Firefox 2, then. Or see if I can get IE running under Wine...

          • The bug won't be fixed until it is confirmed. It isn't confirmed until it is reproducible on more than one machine. It works fine on the two machines sitting in front of me. Don't get me wrong, it pegged my 3Ghz processor at 100% for about 30 seconds, which would normally be unacceptable, but the page isn't exactly a common format (5400 lines of different font'ed links). So I can't see why they would consider it top priority.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by flex941 ( 521675 )
              Is it a) 3GHz Pentium 4? or b) 3GHz Core2? If (a) then it's really not serious bug because that's a really crap processor (do not argue with me - i'm really stubborn, I have decided long time ago don't give a f*** about what you think you have to say). Was when introduced and most certainly is now. But when (b) then that's pretty serious regression on firefox part. 5400 lines of <a> and <font> doesn't sound like impossible to handle in meaningful time. Like in couple of seconds or so.

            • The bug won't be fixed until it is confirmed. It isn't confirmed until it is reproducible on more than one machine. It works fine on the two machines sitting in front of me.

              It doesn't work fine on the two machines I tested it on.

              Don't get me wrong, it pegged my 3Ghz processor at 100% for about 30 seconds, which would normally be unacceptable,

              So it doesn't work fine on your machine either./p>

              That's three machines this bug has now been reproduced in; four, if your other machine also exhibits this behav

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Raenex ( 947668 )

                The more cynical part of me wonders if the reason to terminate support for Firefox 2 is to simply force everyone to upgrade.

                Of course it is. You don't even need to be cynical. What other reason makes sense? From their point of view supporting two versions takes more resources.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by kv9 ( 697238 )

                The question is: I ditched Netscape for IE, and IE for Mozilla, and Mozilla for Firefox; but what will I ditch Firefox for ?

                Opera. it's fast, never crashes, easy on the memory and the mail client is awesome. you might have a problem with it for not being open source, but I don't. as long as it runs on my desktop and phone, I'm happy.

                I ran Firefox since it was a window with 3 buttons on it (Phoenix) and Mozilla proper before that and I converted lots of people to it. the resource usage and overall sluggishness finally put me off and I switched about 1.5 years ago. yes, I know things got better with version 3, but it still isn't

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by coolsnowmen ( 695297 )

                The more cynical part of me wonders if the reason to terminate support for Firefox 2 is to simply force everyone to upgrade. It's a bit too close to The Microsoft Way for comfort...

                As Raenex said, they want to stop supporting FF2, because it is almost twice as much work when fix needs to be merged. This required developers to stay familiar with twice as much code. They don't get any money from 'forcing' you to upgrade to get the newer fixes. You don't fail a registration.

                I agree, regressions should be fixed. My point was that this bug is an inefficiency in rendering a HORRIBLY designed web page. It is this that causes it to be a low priority; nothing to do with glitz/bling/&

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by BZ ( 40346 )

                  Actually, in a lot of cases it's more than twice as much work (when the Fx 3 fix depends on a whole bunch of changes so that lots of stuff has to be backported or a more complicated fix has to be done on the Fx 2 branch).

          • So that's got what to do with Gentoo exactly? And some obscure bug with a webpage noone really needs that uses a shitty layout really causing your browser to hang for a few seconds really doesn't make FF3 "the most unstable browser".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by duguk ( 589689 )
      Agreed. I'll probably get lynched from other Gentoo users for this, but I've not had much trouble with firefox-bin.

      I think 3.0.1-r1 is current for the binary (please correct me if I'm wrong! Haven't synced my desktop Gentoo install in a while...).

      Not great for everyone I know, but it's probably better than using Firefox 2.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by emj ( 15659 )

        How do they manage to get FF3 to be unstable? It crashes very seldom for me on Ubuntu, Debian and Mac OS X. Sure the history browsing is a lot slower now days, but still fairly usable on older computers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by duguk ( 589689 )
          I don't know. I've had a look on the Gentoo Bug Reports, have run www-client/mozilla-firefox-3.0.3 and the binary version all day, it's not masked and I've not had any problems. Not sure what the OP is having problems with.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by tibman ( 623933 )

          I think he meant putting FF3 in the stable branch. I haven't synced for a while but if you did a normal "emerge mozilla-firefox" you'd get FF2. You have to explicitly say you want FF3 to get it. Then if you did an "emerge -vu world" it would of course, replace FF3 with FF2.

          BTW, that's a shit tonne of compiling : /

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Brian Gordon ( 987471 )
      I'm perfectly happy with Firefox 2. I dislike many things about FF3, like the new Bookmarks/History window, "Show in Sidebar" not being on the history menu, the ugly preferences and addons panels, the horrifyingly intuition-defying "awesome bar" that ALWAYS gets what I'm trying to type completely wrong, and the horribly ugly theme.

      Anyway I don't want to upgrade so I shouldn't have to. How hard is it to backport security updates? It's not like gecko itself has security vulnerabilities.

      I don't care if th

      • Anyway I don't want to upgrade so I shouldn't have to. How hard is it to backport security updates?

        I guess this could be regarded as a downside of free software: why should they care when you didn't even pay for the product? I know, I know, MS drops support for it's older products, too, but their user base has a little bit more influence because they are paying customers whom MS wants to keep. On the plus side, it's open source, so you could always take it upon yourself to backport the patches.

  • damn, i was really looking to downgrade my software, too.

  • Thunderbird (Score:5, Interesting)

    by baadger ( 764884 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @09:52AM (#25777291)

    Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.

    Is this is a death sentence for the project?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jpt9 ( 590767 )
      I agree... I love Thunderbird, and would hate to see the project be ignored. -- J.P.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by msclrhd ( 1211086 )

        There is a Thunderbird 3 in the works (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page [mozilla.org]).

        They are currently headed for Beta 1 (see the latest status meeting notes at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/StatusMeetings/2008-11-11 [mozilla.org]); the nightlies can be downloaded from the usual place (http://www.mozilla.org/developer/#builds) if you want to take a look.

      • I use Thunderbird a lot, but I can't say I really like it. I, too, hope it doesn't get ignored though. Goodness knows it needs a lot of work. It's the only real open source competitor to Outlook, barring Evolution perhaps (unless someone here can recommend me to a good open source POP client?), but Mozilla has a tremendous amount of goodwill from people from its Firefox endeavours, so it's better-poised to dethrone Outlook.

        But in all honesty, Thunderbird is one of those pieces of software that makes me brea

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by lukas84 ( 912874 )

          Well, Outlook is IMHO a very good Groupware client, and it works okay for general e-mail, but it's a complete PITA when it comes to "older" usages of e-mail, like mailing lists.

          Quoting in Outlook sucks (it's nonexistent), there are plugins but they don't really work right.

          Of course, most of these things do not matter to the average user - i'm using Outlook for all my corporate Groupware & Mail needs, and use Google Apps Premier for my private Mail (earlier, i used mutt).

          We have a one or two clients with

    • Re:Thunderbird (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ambiguous Puzuma ( 1134017 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @10:06AM (#25777405)

      Thunderbird 3 is under development [mozillamessaging.com]. An alpha version is available.

      • Re:Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Web-o-matic ( 246295 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @02:03PM (#25779015) Homepage

        This seems very odd.

        I can't see Thunderbird 3 coming out before next year, so how can Mozilla put the current official product (TB 2) 'out of support' before release of the next version? Not to mention that customers will need a reasonable transition time to test 3.x in their own environments, before they migrate from 2.x to 3.0, which would call for TB 2 'support' for several months after the launch of TB 3.

        Just like with Firefox, for example.

        Or is the TB team going to maintain gecko 1.8 solely to support TB 2.0.x until 3.0 is out (and, hopefully, somewhat beyond that)?

        That would make sense, but is a big drain on TB resources.

        Or is this tantamount to saying that TB is a dead-end product, not worth Mozilla's time and effort??

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Clazzy ( 958719 )

      Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.

      Is this is a death sentence for the project?

      http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/#tb3 [mozillamessaging.com]

      Looks like you're in luck.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Quartz25 ( 1195075 )

      Thunderbird 2 is affected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.

      There, fixed your grammar for you.

  • linux ff3 stability? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by uncleFester ( 29998 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @09:57AM (#25777327) Homepage Journal

    alas, the first time i tried cutting to ff3 on the linux side of my home pc (dual-booter) it was a nightmare.. constantly crashing/hanging, etc. it's wasn't the prereleases either.. it was 3.0 or 3.0.1. bad enough i actually reverted back to 2. i was just thinking of taking another stab at movin' on up.. just hope it's more solid and not as painful.

    -r

    • I only had a few problems with Firefox Beta 5 under Fedora Linux. And absolutely no problems with the first proper release. Guess you were unlucky mate.

    • self-replying... just dropped 3.0.4 back on my box (fwiw, i'm slackware) and so far so good. i wish i could specifically remember what finally drove me to downgrade... just remember it being a piling-on of things (like mplayerplugin was unstable + freezing + occasional spontaneous app-close and the like) and i just quit fighting it...

      we'll see how it goes..

      -r

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by imbaczek ( 690596 )
        99% of those symptoms were flash-related. installing adblock and noscript/flashblock also helped these crashes, at least for me on debian and ubuntu.
      • As far as instability, etc. I still get more problems with FF3 (on Vista) than I did with two, but overall it's still a better experience for me and I've been using it since launch. In general, I find it to be better with resources and faster, but like you, I also had (and still have) occasional instability (including random CTDs) and crazy memory spikes for no good reason (or so it seems). They still have some issues, for sure - but overall none of it's a dealbreaker for me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rnturn ( 11092 )

        ``i wish i could specifically remember what finally drove me to downgrade...''

        I know exactly what's kept me on FF2: It wasn't that it crashed. It wasn't that it locked up X. It's that nobody at home has been able to print anything using FF3. Unless you count extremely poorly bitmapped text (imagine, say, 4pt fonts enlarged using pixel replication) and, in some cases, greeked text when printing a web page as something that's acceptable. I need to print stuff that I receive from vendors, the missus needs to

  • It won't actually affect SM, TB, e.a. that much (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16, 2008 @09:57AM (#25777337)
    See the mozilla.dev.planning [google.com] thread in which the Firefox 2 EOL was first discussed. Yes, just dropping support altogether would cause problems for products like SeaMonkey, Thunderbird e.a. (which haven't yet shipped a version based on 1.9), and that's why that won't happen. Firefox 2 might be unsupported, but necessary security fixes will continue to be identified and backported to the Mozilla 1.8.1 branch, so that those products can continue to release security updates for a while until after their next versions have shipped (hopefully by the end of Q1 2009).

  • Panther Users (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @09:59AM (#25777349) Journal

    This is kind of a concern, Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there. Somewhere along the line they cut 10.3.9 from the supported OSes for FF3, so now its 10.4 and up only. Now while I don't expect the 2.x branch to have any security compromising problems, the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing. And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.

    • Re:Panther Users (Score:4, Informative)

      by McDutchie ( 151611 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @10:02AM (#25777373) Homepage

      This is kind of a concern, Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there.
      [...]
      And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.

      Actually, iCab [www.icab.de] and Opera [opera.com] are still supporting 10.3.9.

    • the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing.

      They haven't been grousing about the fact that Apple hasn't released security updates for 10.3 in months? About the fact that the latest(and almost certainly last) version of Quicktime for 10.3.9 has numerous security holes?

    • Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there.

      Can't find it on Apple's site, but I'm pretty sure 10.3.x is unsupported and receives no security updates.

    • 10.3.9 hasn't seen any kinds of updates from Apple for months. As of Friday, the following common internet software does not have the most recent version available:

      • Safari* (1.3.2 vs 3.2)
      • QuickTime* (7.5 vs 7.5.5)
      • Firefox (2.0.0.18 vs 3.0.4)
      • Flash Player (9.0.151.0 vs 10.0.12.36)
      • Adobe Reader* (7.1.0 vs 9.0.0)
      • Java* (1.4.2 update 12 vs 1.5.0 update 16) (6 is available for Leopard but isn't compatible with Safari)

      * This item hasn't received any updates recently and is presumed to be unsupported.

      The following in

      • Which is really sad. My iBook G4 is maybe five years old, I don't remember really. It takes care of all my needs and is technically in good shape, even the battery still gives me about two hours of off-net work. Sitting on my roof terrace, for example.

        Just security updates would be fine with me - how hard can it be? Firefox3 et. al not supporting it anymore, I can live with that as FF2 does the job well, but again security updates would be nice.

        As long as software vendors come out with software that they

    • the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing. And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.

      Well, at least FireFox is opensource. Source is accessible to anyone.

      If there are enough establishment dogs, they can band together and either hire developers or even code themselves if they have enough developers among their ranks, and continue either backporting security fixes to the 2.x branch or adapt the 3.x branch to run on Mac OS X 10.3

      Nobody is going to stop them from doing that - it's the whole point of free/libre opensource software.
      Only the whineboys need to stop bitching and start to do somethin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BZ ( 40346 )

      > Now while I don't expect the 2.x branch to have any security compromising problems

      You probably should. It's shipping security fixes on a regular schedule so far, no?

  • Well I hope Thunderbird 3 comes out soon... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Yer Mum ( 570034 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @09:59AM (#25777351)
    Then. In any case it's not nice to be forced to upgrade to version 3 and have support immediately cut off for version 2. I'd like to be able to stay with the old version for half a year or so, I like my mail profile and I don't like data loss bugs.

  • Our sysadming at work refuses to install FF3, largely because of the large number of support libraries that he would also need to install/update. I guess I can understand to some extent that some things are certified for our CAD software vendors to support things, but it feels uncomfortable to move into a situation lacking security updates in any part of the system.

    • Re:too bad for my employer (Score:4, Informative)

      by pablomme ( 1270790 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @10:38AM (#25777577)

      We use Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 at work. The GTK libraries are too old to build Firefox 3, and SLES 11 is not coming out for a few months.. I guess our local admin will have to seriously consider ditching SLES, its general obsolescence is becoming a problem lately.

      But in any case, I can't understand the decision of ending support for Firefox 2 just 6 months after having released Firefox 3, this is too short for some distributions to respond.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You are running a graphical web browser on a server?, does anyone see something wrong with this picture?

        • It does seem peculiar. I don't know what lead to this decision, but we're using SLES for desktops instead of SLED. I don't think it's wrong, just a bit peculiar.

          Anyway, SLED has the same issue too.

      • Why would you want to compile a browser on your server? That is for your work stations. At least I do assume you're not running SLES on work stations. One way or another there seems to be something terribly wrong in your set-up.

        • As I said in another reply, yes, we do use SLES on the workstations, there's nothing even slightly wrong with that, and SLED has the same problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BZ ( 40346 )

        Actually, that's the general policy at this point for support from the Mozilla Corporation. They will support product X until 6 months after product X + 1 ships.

        This is not to say that other providers of Firefox can't do longer-term support. Just that the Mozilla Corporation will not be doing the QA+triage+release work on fixes past that point. The bug database is open; various distros have write access to the revision control system Firefox uses, and they have in fact been maintaining older Firefox rele

    • Re:too bad for my employer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:30PM (#25778355) Homepage

      That is the issue with Firefox/Mozilla. They seem to ignore the enterprise requirements, how companies do things etc. As result, IE enjoys its kingdom on Windows desktop.

      For example, while entire thing is documented, even open source package makers exist, they refuse to ship MSI packages. MSI is the Windows Native installer. It is not so different from shipping tar.gz to Redhat Enterprise and expect those sysadmins sit and convert them to RPM. It is same deal on OS X too while OS X doesn't have that many enterprise users. Normally, a .pkg should be provided.

      Here is the entirely open source maker for MSI files coming from MS employee directly. (No moonlight/mono deal)
      http://wix.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

      No, Windows admins won't monkey around 2000 terminals to run "setup.exe" files. Some guys spare significant amount of time building their own MSI files just to satisfy Firefox fans.

      If you can't run FF3, you better convert to Konqueror or Opera if they really stop security updates. Firefox is really popular and lots of 2.x users still exist. Black hats will sure use that advantage.

  • As a Mac user (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I currently own an iBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.3.9 and using Firefox 2 to browse the web. Since Firefox 3 recquires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, either I have to buy a newer verson of Mac OS X, use an "unsecured" version of Firefox or use another browser.

    Life sucks :/

    • Or install Linux for free.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BZ ( 40346 )

      Note that part of the problem here is that as far as anyone can tell OS X 10.3.x is no longer supported by Apple in terms of security fixes.... so the unsecured browser might be the least of your problems. :(

  • "So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."

    That's why one should upgrade to [insert commercial software here] version before it's too late.

  • phew!
    thank god i'm safe, my 1.8 install isn't being chopped.

  • Golly, maybe we should release Thunderbird 3 *before* discontinuing support for 2.
    You know. Just a thought.

  • Seamonkey 2.0 is not yet even in beta (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bcwright ( 871193 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @03:40PM (#25779599)

    Seamonkey 2.0 is not yet even in beta (there are alpha releases available). The previous versions of Seamonkey (1.1.*) are based on Gecko 1.8. There are plans to get Seamonkey 2.0 into beta "Real Soon Now" but that probably won't be until Firefox 3.1 goes gold.

    A bit of a shame since Seamonkey is the logical inheritor of the the old Netscape feature set and look-and-feel, but done right (and with far fewer bugs). It even has a WYSIWYG HTML editor that works much like the old Netscape editor, except that it very rarely (if ever) crashes - Unlike Netscape, in which it was always a gamble whether you'd be able to get anything done in the composer before Netscape crashed and you'd lose all your work.

    Yeah, it's open to the criticism of being a prime example of the Swiss Army knife approach to software design - but in fact it does many of these things quite well, often better than specialized applications. For example, although there are a few other open source WYSIWYG HTML editors out there, virtually all of the others have died on the vine at this point.

    • It even has a WYSIWYG HTML editor that works much like the old Netscape editor, .....although there are a few other open source WYSIWYG HTML editors out there, virtually all of the others have died on the vine at this point.

      My first exposure to Linux was on the Playstation 2. I remember one time of needing to edit some HTML for some reason, which I normally don't need to do that often, I'm not a coder of any kind. So I was wondering how to easily do it and was resigned to doing it in vim and testing the H

  • Does anyone know of FF3 extensions that... - let me zoom in/out of text only, like in FF2? - prevents the url bar from showing everyone standing behind me what sites I've been visiting?

    • I'm using FF 3.0.3 right now. On the view menu, there is a "Zoom" sub-menu. When I zoom in, the web page gets zoomed, but not the UI. The URL bar doesn't change size at all. If you want a literal "zoom text only" where graphics don't get zoomed with the text, that too is an option on the "Zoom" sub-menu.

      I have to ask, have you even tried FF3 before concluding that there was no zoom feature?

  • nooooo! I'm still hooked on 2.0 for Google Browser Sync (only supports 2.0, development has stopped.) Why can't another browser incorporate such a feature?!

  • The last firefox 'security update' I installed completely wrecked it, making it crash on startup. Now it only runs in safe mode. I hope they never realise any more of these 'improvements'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CSMatt ( 1175471 )

      If it runs in safe mode, then chances are that an extension is causing the problem and not Firefox itself.

  • A good chunk of my Selenium tests don't work with FF3, as of a couple of revisions ago. (I understand that this is due to security being tightened, so I doubt that it's going to work now unless a bug has crept back in.)

    So at least one of my machines is going to have to stay FF2 for some time yet.

  • I tried 3.0 when it first came out and uninstalled it in 2 days because I couldn't switch tabs. The tabs switched, but the window content didn't repaint, to be exact - so you could switch tabs, and not know you did it. the only way to repaint it was to scroll the window down and back up. A similar thing happened if you loaded a page as it reflowed - the old screen elements didn't erase, and you ended up with the reflowed elements overdrawing each other, leading to a huge drawing mess...

    It's probably fixed..

  • The Linux versions of the ASUS eee are still stuck on Firefox 2. It's a pain to upgrade to FF 3 as you have to put in a newer GTK 2+ and all. Silly Asus.

Slashdot Top Deals

Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Close