Firefox 6 Ships Next Week, 8 Blocks Sneaky Add-Ons 247
CWmike writes "Mozilla is on track to release Firefox 6 next week, according to notes posted on the company's website. 'On track with a few bugs still remaining. No concerns for Tuesday,' the notes stated. Firefox 6 includes several noticeable changes, including highlighting domain names in the address bar — both Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 do something similar by boldfacing domain names — and reducing startup time when users rely on Panorama, the browser's multi-tab organizer. Meanwhile, Mozilla said this week that starting with Firefox 8, Mozilla will automatically block browser add-ons until users approve them, which should put an end to sneaky installs."
Something to watch out for (new submenu) (Score:4, Informative)
In case you missed it, Web Console in FF5+ is like the console in Firebug when you have it set to enter JS commands at the bottom of the pane. But the difference is, Web Console is always available. It's not a plug-in like Firebug. So it's something you can count on, even if you upgrade and Firebug breaks in the new version.
Re:Ability to install out-of-date addons (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'll rather wait for FF7 (Score:3, Informative)
Well, shit, because I still have a PowerPC Mac on my desk. It's stuck with Firefox 3.6 because they dropped PowerPC support in Firefox 4.
Firefox is being kept alive on PowerPC:
http://code.google.com/p/tenfourfox/ [google.com]
http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
unHappy FF user here (Score:5, Informative)
The only downside is extensions
I've been loving Firefox for years, but this fast release schedule is driving me nuts. Every time a new "major" version comes out now, at least one or two of my extensions break. The first one to go (on FF4) was Ubiquity, which still isn't fixed, and the stupid thing about that is Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs extension. It's pretty sad when their own damn extensions can't even keep up, let alone 3rd party stuff.
So, back to your point about extensions being the only downside, honestly, do we use Firefox for any other reason? I could have ditched FF for Chrome or even IE9 (shudder) but it's the extensions that make Firefox so awesome, and that's what's suffering the most with this bullshit release schedule.
Re:Another upgrade? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Happy FF8 user here (Score:4, Informative)
Haha, so it seems like they decided to get rid of the initial "http://" in displayed urls as well as the trailing / on root urls. That is, if you're on the regular Slashdot home page, the full string displayed in the url bar is just slashdot.org. Copy-and-paste it somewhere and you still get http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org], though. Other protocols (including https) still include the protocol part.
Here's the associated ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665580 [mozilla.org]
There will be many flame wars over this when Firefox 8 is more widely distributed.