Firefox 8.0 Released 383
Today Mozilla announced the launch of Firefox 8.0. The headline features this time around include adding Twitter as a search bar option, tab loading tweaks, and the default disabling of addons installed by third-parties. "Sometimes you download third-party software and are surprised to discover that an add-on has also installed itself in your browser without asking permission. At Mozilla, we think you should be in control, so we are disabling add-ons installed by third parties without your permission and letting you pick the ones you want to keep." Here are the release notes and download links.
You mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox 4.04
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At this point I don't really see the version of numbering it anymore. It's a stable product (...line) that isn't going to be replaced by a better, newer technology in the next few years. I hate to make a car analogy but you might as well call it firefox 11. as in, the 2011 model of firefox. just keep releasing small updates throughout the year and when you're ready to introduce some major plugin breaking features, then go ahead and announce firefox 12. I'm a windows user and can't be arsed to figure out wha
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But at least that would make sense. You get an idea on how current or out of date your browser is.
Firefox 8 does that mean your firefox 5 is 3 years old or dangerously out of date?
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I don't care what it's called in version number. But for the love of god would they build in SOME form of enterprise level control options?
When your internal training websites break on this crap, but you can't lock out the updates and you have some ditz PHB in a corner office who insists "durr I gotta use Firefox 4 eberything bcuz my 18 year old son sez its tha best", you've got issues. And yes, I know the PHB is the issue, but HIM we can't fix. Firefox could easily allow for some simple group policy-level
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When your internal training websites break on this crap,
Ahh theres the flaw in your logic. IF your internal training websites break because twitter is now a drop down search option, you've got big problems.
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The way Chrome updates makes sense for Chrome because Chrome isn't really identified with its version number. It's silently kept up to date when a new version comes out. It's pretty easy to forget what version you're even using. Chrome has pretty much set standards on how the browser works in the front end and changes to the browser do not generally effect these things. Addons developed for Chrome back to extremely early versions of Chrome still almost always work fine.
The opposite is true for Firefox. The
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Exactly.
With Chrome, the updates happen silently whenever you close and reopen it. With Firefox, the updates nag you to install them, and break stuff. Even worse is when UI behaviours change so now all of a sudden, muscle memory is broken. You then have to spend the next hour googling for a way to revert the behaviour.
I suppose the reason in Firefox it's hated so much is the releases keep breaking stuff, while in Chrome things just seem to continue - if you like the UI, it won't change on you suddenly. User
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FF continues to have major GUI changes like the removal of the status bar, the forced minifying of toolbar icons, the moving of tabs into the titlebar by default, and the uglification of the theme, on a regular basis. They're also planning on inflicting a 'Home tab' on users in the near future, because the UX team want to turn Firefox into a 'platform' or something to distinguish it... from a web browser, presumably.
Re:You mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea why Mozilla thought doing the Chrome name scheme was a good idea. I have no idea why Chrome thinks it is a good idea.
Chrome doesn't think it's a good idea, which is why Chrome doesn't do it. Try this: find a bunch of Chrome users, and ask them which version of Chrome they're using. Most of them probably won't know. That's because Chrome doesn't advertise its release numbers, they just push everyone to use the latest. It's only Firefox that's running around screaming about their version numbers.
All it does is make every release irrelevant and makes it so you can't hype new tech in the browser because to every user it is just "oh, another version".
Releases should be irrelevant for a stable product; users should just be downloading the updates and using them when offered so they have all the latest security fixes, but there's nothing to get excited about. I don't see Google screaming about every new Chrome release that comes out. If there's a big change in the tech somewhere, they might trumpet that, but they don't make a new version that's not obviously different from the previous version, then make some giant new press event out of it.
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Nor does Mozilla. They made a blog post. I just saw (seconds ago) the notice that FF8 was released. And this article, full of people bitching about it.
Re:You mean... (Score:5, Informative)
> It's only Firefox that's running around screaming
> about their version numbers.
Screaming where? http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/ [mozilla.org] doesn't say what version you're downloading. Updating from Firefox 7.0.1 to Firefox 8 never says anything about Firefox 8; the experience is exactly the same as the update from 7.0.0 to 7.0.1.
> I don't see Google screaming about every new
> Chrome release that comes out.
It does it just as much as Mozilla does. Compare http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/10/chrome-stable-release.html [blogspot.com] and http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/11/08/mozilla-firefox-adds-twitter-search-and-new-features-that-make-web-browsing-easier/ [mozilla.com] which are both the official announcements for Chrome 15 and Firefox 8 as far as I can tell.
What exactly makes the latter "screaming" while the former is not?
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I was going to post the same thing! Only I would have said 3.8. Close enough: They need to stop this before we get to Firefox 27, sometime in mid December.
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Why don't they just call it "office 2013"? It has a better ring to it. Google also seems less buggy these days but not immune. I would be better of course that a native application would have less of these things going on than one that has merely been ported from a Linux build hence the sole remaining purpose for IE (internet banking).
FireFox has become fat to say the least and using 8 for a version number sure wont help their cause.
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What is the main result?
Broken plugins and add-ons, for the couple of weeks it takes to realize the version changes nothing, and the dev swaps a string in his XUL.
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The Addons website already automatically updates the string in all addons which don't use binary components and pass an automated compatibility test.
Re:Heck, I'll one up that (Score:5, Funny)
Hey that's good to hear. Do you also have a plugin for plugging your plugin? And if you used the plugin-plugging plugin to plug your plugin-plugger, would the internet stack overflow? :)
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use (Score:3)
about:crashes
Put into your URL bar and press ENTER. Shows a list of crashes of your copy of Firefox.
Crash Info for all users and all versions
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox [mozilla.com]
Crashes per 100 Active Daily Users, version 7.0.1
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Firefox/versions/7.0.1 [mozilla.com]
Top Crashers, version 7.0.1
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/7.0.1/14 [mozilla.com]
Notes:
1) The lists of crashes are ONLY the ones that Firefox caught. The
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Sleeping w/ 109 tabs open.
That's how I roll. It really indicates the failure of 'bookmarks" or any other reasonable way to keep information at hand.
I run Linux - and it was browsing that drove me to 64-bit. :-)
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The difference with Google seems to be that they never trumpet their version numbers at all. Users just know they're using Chrome, and that's it. Heck, I'm typing this on Chromium on Kubuntu right now, and I can't tell you offhand which version this is; I'd have to look it up in the "About" selection. FF, OTOH, constantly makes a big deal every time they make a new release with a new, bigger number.
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slow down cowboy! (Score:2)
Re:slow down cowboy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Try it anyways.
I just upgraded and all of my plugins are working just fine.
Firefox's biggest problem isn't anything technical - it's that once they DO fix an outstanding issue, no one seems to recognize it. And IMO it would be a crying shame to kill a competent browser because of bad PR.
Now with 50% more bugs FREE!! (Score:2)
Don't bother (Score:5, Funny)
Firefox 9.0 will be out next week.
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Exactly how much "Firefox is running but not responding" are you expecting when you're not running the browser?
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I expect Firefox 9 to come out when clicking the submit button for this comment.../quote
Actually I thought Slashdot was a little slow with this story. I was prompted about the update earlier today and installed it w/o restarting Firefox. After installing a program that needed the computer to be restarted, I finally shutdown Firefox. Then some time later This story came up on Slashdot. Perhaps they should change the tag line from "News for nerds..." to "History for nerds..."
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When their update frequency breaks 2.6ghz, it's time to get a new pc, so my cpu can keep up with the counting.
To bad it isn't 3.x (Score:2)
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Is Firefox 3.6 the new IE6 that people refuse to upgrade from?
Re:To bad it isn't 3.x (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
The tendency of the developers to mess with the UI means that I expect to weigh the value-add of the new features against learning whatever has changed in the new release. If nothing is bothering me now about the previous release, then I don't want to bother with this calculation. I have more important things to do with my life, like post on /. on threads bitching about web browsers.
I skipped Vista and had no problems with Win7. Back in the day, I wish I had skipped ME. I also skip non-LTS Ubuntu releases. Frankly, I hate OS upgrades on my personal machines.
You're painting with broad, inaccurate, and needlessly offensive brush strokes there, buddy. Software exists to Get Shit Done, so change is not intrinsically good. If a new version of my web browser helps me to Get More Shit Done Faster, then I'll download it immediately. If a new version of my web browser instead destabilizes a tiny part of my life without improving my Get Shit Done Benchmark, then why should I adopt it at all?
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Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.23) Gecko/20110920 Firefox/3.6.23 - Enough said.
It could be that enough has been said, but it's unclear what you're saying. The latest version of Firefox runs faster and is more capable than Firefox 3.6. There's no downside. You really should try Firefox 8. If you're still too fearful of Firefox 8, then wait until Firefox 9 is released and try it. Firefox 9 brings big improvements to the JavaScript engine.
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Firefox 9 brings big improvements to the JavaScript engine.
Yeah! It'll run that synthetic benchmark 5 nanoseconds faster! Rock on!
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Yeah! It'll run that synthetic benchmark 5 nanoseconds faster! Rock on!
No. Comparing Firefox 9 to Firefox 7.0.1 on my system the SunSpider benchmark isn't much changed but Firefox 9 runs the V8 benchmark about 40% faster and the Kraken benchmark about 100% faster. Very much more than 5 nanoseconds. Broadway.js [github.com] (an H.264 video decoder implemented in JavaScript) runs about 130% faster on my system in Firefox 9. Try the Broadway.js demo [github.com]. It's interesting to consider that implementing video codecs in JavaScript may be practical sooner rather than later.
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I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the GP's post. Those sound like impressive improvements for synthetic benchmarks, but unless they translate into similarly impressive improvements for UI responsiveness for real sites, it doesn't matter to the average user.
True, but that's not an argument for updating your web browser today.
Re:To bad it isn't 3.x (Score:4, Interesting)
Call me a troll, but I was a loyal Firefox user since late 2003 (it was called "Firebird" then)... until they started to push versions upon me, destroying binary plugins and losing their identity as a stable browser in the process. Now I'm a Firefox hater.
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Does it show the URL in the status bar when you hover over a link to make sure it's not Goatse? (Oh, wait, the Fx UX team doesn't think I need a status bar.)
While the status bar has gone the main information that used to be displayed there (hovering over links, page load progress etc) now pops up in one of the bottom corners of the window (usually the bottom left but if you move your mouse to the bottom left the notification moves to the bottom right. So it's not really that big a change for normal web browsing.
Negative comments (Score:2, Insightful)
My initial impression seems to be, this is very fast as compared to 7.0.1. Good work Firefox team, some of us still appreciate your hard work.
Now only if my company would switch from the horrible HP Quality Center to Jira, I would be set.
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Easy, we are tired of our add-ons being disabled with every new "major" release even though they work just fine, thanks. Also, FF is so needy with all it's "update me, update me" nonsense. Leave me alone and let me do something other than attend to you.
I switched to Chrome with NotScript and haven't looked back.
Re:Negative comments (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Negative comments (Score:5, Insightful)
The sanity of the Firefox team is under question as of late. From what I can remember:
* Incrementing the major version number with every slight tweak is annoying.
* Worse yet, the reasoning behind it is stupid. They just want their version number to be big, like IE.
* Major feature creep: they keep talking about the browser as an OS, and 3D acceleration, and stuff that has no purpose in a browser.
* The long-standing issues about Firefox are being ignored: primarily memory and performance.
Re:Negative comments (Score:5, Informative)
The sanity of the Firefox team is under question as of late. From what I can remember:
* Incrementing the major version number with every slight tweak is annoying.
I understand that this annoys some people. But both Chrome and Firefox do it now, and benefits and detriments are well known. It's not a perfect approach, but it does have its advantages. I don't think both Google and Mozilla are 'insane' ;)
* Worse yet, the reasoning behind it is stupid. They just want their version number to be big, like IE.
The main reason for Chrome and Firefox doing this is to get improvements faster to users. Rapid releases allow that.
Mozilla also has the reason that it is following Google's lead. Google started with this version numbering scheme, and not inventing a new one is better for everyone - less confusion.
* Major feature creep: they keep talking about the browser as an OS, and 3D acceleration, and stuff that has no purpose in a browser.
That is a long discussion, for sure! But this is nothing to do with Firefox. All browsers are including 3D acceleration (well, except for IE) and other OS-like features. Google is even pushing native code in the browser (which I think is taking things too far).
* The long-standing issues about Firefox are being ignored: primarily memory and performance.
We are working very hard on those issues. If you try this release, I think you'll see significant improvements on both issues, and there are even more in the pipeline for the versions coming up afterwards.
Plugins are tied to version in FF, but not Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I can tell, your plugin interface is still using version number to determine plugin compatibility, causing plugin authors to do a lot of extra work. The plugin interface should be frozen and versioned and changed infrequently, so plugins could go more than a month without updates. Yes, Chrome updates frequently, but it never disables half of my plugins on update every month and declares that they don't work like firefox did before I ditched it.
Why not stabilize the plugin interface for some long time period (more than a month) and version it?
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I understand that this annoys some people. But both Chrome and Firefox do it now, and benefits and detriments are well known. It's not a perfect approach, but it does have its advantages. I don't think both Google and Mozilla are 'insane' ;)
If I wanted Firefox to be like Chrome, I would use Chrome.
If you try to get 100% of users you will end up getting nobody. In other words: Do things differently than Chrome when it is about things that "are not perfect, but have some advantages".
The main reason for Chrome and Firefox doing this is to get improvements faster to users. Rapid releases allow that.
Breaking extensions is not an improvement. I understand that they have to be broken sometime, but that should be maybe very 5 years or so, not 5 times a year.
We are working very hard on those issues. If you try this release, I think you'll see significant improvements on both issues, and there are even more in the pipeline for the versions coming up afterwards.
I will wait for a LTS-version.
Re:Negative comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla also has the reason that it is following Google's lead. Google started with this version numbering scheme, and not inventing a new one is better for everyone - less confusion.
What was wrong with the old one? You know, major and minor numbers, increase the major number only on significant, major changes? Add a third number for bugfixes and cosmetic updates?
They've thrown out a perfectly good numbering scheme because some dofus in marketing has read a psychology book too many and convinced himself that "bigger == better" will convince the minds of more consumers.
I understand that this annoys some people.
No, you don't. This doesn't annoy people, it actively pushes them to change the default browser that they've been using for a decade. You are losing your most loyal users. I hope you remembered to list that under "detriments", and you have something more valuable under "benefits", though I can't imagine what that would be.
As little as a year ago, I'd be telling anyone who uses anything else that I'd recommend Firefox. Today, I shut up unless they use IE, in which case I tell them to use any other browser of their choice.
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There is no advantage. Your version number is suppose to communicate something to the user. A major version change means you have something new and significant. A minor version means you are making a small tweak or minor refinement.
A major version number often signifies potentially incompatible changes, while minor version numbers keep stable APIs and functionality. In that context, Firefox and Chrome bumping the major version number is correct: These 6-week updates are quick, but they do change functionality in ways that break stuff (that is, websites render differently, potentially wrongly).
I do agree there are downsides to this numbering! But I am just saying it has a certain logic, and advantage.
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Breaking stuff often isn't something to be proud of. It's something to be ashamed of. That's why Firefox is losing ground again now.
Firefox isn't losing market share - it's been flat for a while. (So, growing in absolute numbers, but not in percent of the market as it grows.)
Chrome is also doing these fast updates that break websites, but is growing in market share. So the issues are more complicated here I think. I do agree though that breaking stuff is bad! Both Firefox and Chrome are doing their best to avoid that, but with rapid updates, it's impossible to avoid entirely.
Re:Negative comments (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh I don't know, how about ignoring the need for MSI installers [mozilla.org] and Group Policy support [mozilla.org] for seven fucking years?
Every time there's an article in Slashdot about Firefox, there's at least one highly voted comment from someone complaining about Firefox being basically unmanageable on a corporate network.
I'm not talking about some massive effort to resolve complex issues like performance or memory, which have hundreds of subtle causes that have to be chased down and individually fixed. Creating an MSI requires simply an open source toolkit and a configuration file for the build process. For Active Directory Group Policy support, only a text file is needed and some minor tweaks to configuration parameter loading. The main installer doesn't even have to change! Just have an "enterprise downloads" section on the webpage.
The solution is simple and quick, it would massively increase the potential market for Firefox, but these feature requests will not be implemented. Not now, not ever, just no. The Firefox team doesn't do icky and boring technical stuff. Instead, they spend their valuable time on important things that clearly a lot of people need, like 3D graphics in the web browser.
new firefox release schedule moved me to Chrome (Score:2, Insightful)
I use Greasemonkey every day. Greasemonkey is built into chrome. Not firefox. And when they auto-upgrade-without-permission to a new version that doesn't sup
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Yes, switch from Firefox because of the 6 week release schedule, and go to Chrome ... who started the 6 week release schedule. Only they rarely ship new features, unlike Firefox, that the user can actually see.
Chrome now uses *substantially* more memory than Firefox, as of FF 7.
I would say you most likely have some bad FF extensions and/or a corrupted profile.
FF8 was the smoothest upgrade for me yet. Lazy tab loading is a godsend.
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What version of FF are you using? FF7's memory use is outstanding - WAY better than Chrome. I use the latest version of all the browsers and check these things out with every new release. Chrome uses 2-3x more memory on my work and home machines than FF does (as of FF7). Neither browser crashes for me on either machine I use. My work and home machines use 1920x1200 monitors (work machine has a secondary 1680x1050), and I have no weird problems about displaying large jpegs.
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I never got to use FF7 long enough to notice. Too little, too late. Not crashing is way more important to me than memory use. Memory use was just an example of memory leaks and such. Anytime I had my browser open (no porn!) for 2 days it would be 1.5G, at any point in my 5 yrs or so of using Firefox. That they fixed it around the time that I finally switched is just a case of too little too late.
Hey, if you're happy with what you have, and you use a browser that supports modern standards and doesn't force web developers like myself to have to use obsolete standards, then more power to you. Use what works. I vaguely recall I had some crashing issues with 7.0 that were fixed quickly by 7.0.1, but YMMV.
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Only they rarely ship new features, unlike Firefox, that the user can actually see.
So what? Featureitis is not a good thing. Secondly, mozilla is only adding all those new features in a desperate attempt to look relevant whilst they lose marketshare continually to chrome.
"Featureitis" implies useless features, which is not what Firefox is doing. Lazy tab loading is a brilliant thing, and makes the browser 10x more usable and responsive for me. Chrome, as of v17, doesn't even have the same feature set as a new install of Firefox, sans any plugins.
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I pruned most of my extensions when using FF6. I now use:
Adblock Plus
Add-on Compatibility Reporter
DownloadHelper
FireFTP
Flashblock
Live HTTP headers
Memory Fox
QuickJava
SearchStatus
Session Manager
Tax Mix Plus
Web Developer
And life is good. I see memory use generally around 400-550MB, but I also tend to run with dozens of tabs, so that's not unreasonable. It's using 443MB on my machine this instant with 27 tabs open and Flash currently disabled. Chrome is taking up around three times that with half the number of
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You do realize that Mozilla hasn't dropped support for 3.6 yet, right?
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Crashes every 10 minutes huh... You've got to be doing something wrong. I leave a firefox browser open for weeks on end. Occasionally, when I reboot for a software update, firefox gets shut down. I don't remember rebooting last week, and I only shut down firefox today because of the update.
How much porn does it take to crash firefox in 10 minutes?
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Remember: A bug not manifesting in your instance of a program is not the same as the program being bug free. Firefox craps out at 1920x1080, failing to display JPGs at a JPG-ending URL if the system is distressed certain ways. Ways that don't affect the other 4 browsers I tested it on. But
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I use Greasemonkey every day. Greasemonkey is built into chrome. Not firefox.
Not to worry. Greasemonkey might not be built-in, but at least you can search Twitter without the hassle of installing an extension or actually going to Twitter.
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But it was the crashing every 10 minutes that finally did me in.
Yeah. I haven't seen Firefox crash in years, until v7.0.1 that is. Now it's crashing regularly... so I'm in IE right now. Well, I'm going to give v.8 a try at least.
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Odd, isn't it? Some software works for some people, while the same software does anything but for others. Take Firefox as an example. I generally run the Minefield version, and it generally works fine. It hardly every crashes anymore - a marked change from a few years ago when running Mozilla betas was tiring at best.
Now take Chromium. It just does not work around here, on several computers by several manufactureres with several different distributions (Debian and some Ubuntu). Chromium will start renderin
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Firefox works great for me. It runs for days with dozens of tabs, no crashes; efficient memory use. You report problems on your computer with,
- 1920x2100 resolution
- crashing every 10 minutes
- Flash causing spontaneous reboots
- Huge memory problems
It's a little hard to believe the problem isn't the rest of your computer. Certainly not every, or even many Firefox users have these incredible problems.
Yes! even number (Score:3)
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WRONG!
The even numbered firefoxes are good.
The irrationally numbered firefoxes are the best.
I'm going to wait (Score:2)
64-bit? (Score:2)
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The biggest problem with 64-bit IE is that is has no JS JIT. So you get pretty bad JS performance. Of course that might not matter for your use patterns.
best FF upgrade yet (Score:5, Informative)
Completely smooth upgrade, no incompatible plugins, and lazy tab loading is the best feature ever for tab-crazy people like myself. Since they got the memory use under control in v7, life is good. With Chrome taking up 2-3x more memory than FF, I just can't deal with that anymore. Plus lazy tab loading is now my killer browser feature. Gotta have it. I think FF9 (Dec 20) or FF10 is supposed to have even more substantial memory reduction applied.
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Yet another version, still no MSIs or GPOs (Score:4, Informative)
I know FF is multi-platform but you cannot even make GPOs an add-on. (It kinda defeats the purpose if the user can uninstall the add-on!)
Meanwhile in bug 267888 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=267888 [mozilla.org]) there are still talking about creating ADM files.
ADM files are for Windows XP, when this bug was created 7 years ago!!!)
Windows 7 uses ADMX files.
But it doesn't matter now.
The people that need MSI/GPO cannot handle Full versions of FF coming out every 2 months.
They have enough trouble keeping up with "patch Tuesday" from MS.
...huh? (Score:2)
I can only imagine how pissed off add-on developers are with this batshit insane update schedule.
Two different platforms... (Score:2)
I very happily run FF 7.01 on Ubuntu (11.04). It's snappy, fairly light - well, in comparison with previous releases.
On W7, however, it's dog slow, eventually becoming unresponsive enough that I have to open task manager and kill it. I've eased the problem lately by running Chrome. It runs much faster than FF (on W7, not on Ubuntu, curiously), but I sure would like to be able to have the same responsiveness of FF on both platforms.
A good release: Much faster (Score:3)
How do I adapt to this?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Both Firefox and Chrome have big problems (Score:2)
When I use Firefox, memory usage is still a big problem. After running it for days on end, with lots and lots of tabs open, it eventually starts using 2 gigs of RAM.
Then there's problems where Flash Player just stops working after an upgrade. That stopped me from using Aurora and Nightly, because Flash will work for a while, then it breaks after a new Aurora/Nightly version. Whenever there's Flash problems, YouTube often crashes at the end of a video.
I really don't mind the "Extension upgrading situation
Amazingly fast (Score:2)
Since I have a lot of tabs loaded, being able to have tabs load only when I select them after (re)start is great. A browser restart now takes only a few seconds, which mitigates the need to do this for addons.
For extra points, get the Restartless Restart addon (no restarts to install, oh the irony) to quickly restart Firefox.
Firefox also feels really fast now - apparently Firefox 8 is as fast as Chrome, it certainly feels like it. And it runs all the addons I like too...
Can't use FF in Ubuntu (Score:2)
how will they disable 3rd-party add-ons? (Score:2)
> we are disabling add-ons installed by third parties without your permission
how will they do this, technically? from what I understand, on windows, as long as the program installer can write to your firefox directory (unfortunately this is highly probable), it can put what it wants there, even modify the firefox binary. The only solution I can think of is some kind of hash-based solution where modified files are detected, but that stinks of a flawed DRM-style approach. How will they mitigate ill-beha
Latest press release from Mozilla (Score:2)
Firefox 9 will be released this Friday for both of you not playing Skyrim on that day.
I've been hanging out on YouTube too much... (Score:3)
... watching old music videos.
Thumbs up if you're still running Firefox 3.6 in 2011!
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Chrome-ium?
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Safari?
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So you want Chromium, then.
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But without rapid release, apparently.
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Iron?
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Knock Knock,
Who's There,
The Next Version of Firefox
The Next Version of Firefox who? Hello- where did you go?
Knock Knock,
Who's There,
The Next Version of Firefox
The Next Version of Firefox who? Hello- where did you go?
?
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The problem is that that number is depended on by most plugins to remain stable. As such, every time they change the number, most plugins stop working as they haven't been "updated" for the new version. When you release a new major version, the expectation is that you changed a lot of stuff, and as such, the plugins should test on your new version and make sure everything still works properly. In fact though these major versions are very minor changes, and the plugins you had before would probably work just