Firefox 9.0 Beta Available 291
An anonymous reader tips news that, right on schedule after Tuesday's Firefox 8.0 launch, Mozilla has rolled out the beta of Firefox 9.0. This update brings a significant boost to JavaScript performance, UI improvements for the OS X Lion version, and Do Not Track opt-out detection for developers. 9.0 beta also "supports chunking for XHR requests so websites can receive data that’s part of a large XHR download in progress. This helps developers make websites and Web apps faster, especially those that download large sets of data or via AJAX."
Re:One question. (Score:3, Informative)
How many times can you "boost" Javascript performance?
Infinite times. See: Zeno's paradoxes.
Re:The IE team has stopped sending cakes (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-breaks-with-tradition-no-cake-for-firefox-8/ [winrumors.com]
"We didn’t do it since we thought it was getting to be overkill,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “Every six weeks is a lot of cupcakes”
Re:Please stop.... (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop releasing new versions of firefox and fix the version you have
You do understand that the new releases have bug fixes, right? Probably the majority of patches going into any given release are bugfixes.
The main cause of random freezes should be fixed in the latest release, Firefox 8. If you're still seeing freezes, please file a bug and cc me (jlebar) and I'll follow up.
http://blog.bonardo.net/2011/09/30/is-your-firefor-freezing-at-regular-intervals [bonardo.net]
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ [mozilla.org]
Re:Another JavaScript boost (Score:4, Informative)
that being said its now fast enough to have webgls game in browser.. to have gpg in browser.. to have linux boot in browser, etc hehe
Re:Do Not Track = dumbest delusion since DRM (Score:5, Informative)
1. Why the hell would that not be hard-coded to "Hell no, do not ever track me!".
See http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/2011/11/09/dnt-cannot-be-default/ [mozilla.com]
Re:8 now 9....tomorrow will be 15 (Score:5, Informative)
8.0 is release. 9.0 is beta. 10.0 is alpha. When a new version goes gold, as happened with 8.0 a short time ago, the beta and alpha versions bump up. It's standard practice for software but for some reason pisses everyone on Slashdot off with Firefox.
Version changes are the most visible evidence. (Score:3, Informative)
Mozilla Foundation is a rich, rich corporation. No one should make the mistake of thinking that work on Firefox is done mostly by volunteers.
Did you see $78.6 million worth of improvements in 2008? [zdnet.com]
Did you see improvements suggesting that Mozilla Foundation had $168 million in assets in 2010? [mozilla.com] (Official PDF file, see page 2. Numbers are in thousands, as it says at the top of the page.)
Firefox is a world-class asset. Firefox is extremely important partly because those who need to do a lot of research online depend on Firefox and Firefox add-ons such as Session Manager, Session Manager Export Tool, Mozilla Archive Format, Flashblock, Multi Links, and Tab Mix Plus. There is no substitute for the capabilities of Firefox together with Firefox Add-ons. (Add-ons are also known as extensions and plug-ins.) For those who do research, Firefox is simply the best browser. Firefox is literally a world-class asset.
Biggest flaw: Firefox is unstable. The first step in good management would be to fix the instability of Firefox. There would be a huge additional advantage in doing that, as someone else mentioned. Investigating how Firefox can be so unstable under Microsoft Windows might reveal flaws in Microsoft Windows that make the OS so unstable when using Firefox.
Firefox instabilities are experienced most frequently by those who open many Firefox windows and tabs and leave them open while putting the computer into standby or hibernation several times. That is the pattern of use of those who do a lot of online research.
An example of research: For example, in researching HDMI cables there are numerous manufacturers, distributors, online sellers, explanations of HDMI standards, explanations of the U.S. National Electrical Code, and online reviews. The research is made far more complicated by the many companies that try to take advantage of the ignorance of the average person about cables. Good research is important because HDMI cables are often embedded in the infrastructure of buildings. Poor cables may need to be replaced when video equipment is upgraded, sometimes requiring the tearing apart of walls. Equipment upgrades may be years away, but are almost certain to happen.
One condition of instability: Windows XP 32-bit with Service Pack 3, for example, becomes unstable when Firefox has taken all the available memory, and is beginning to require the OS to use virtual memory. It seems a reasonable guess that Microsoft will be slow to fix Windows instabilities since poor experiences encourage people to buy new versions. Microsoft requires payment of the full price for each new version of Windows. Microsoft does not allow upgrade pricing even when a previous version has had many flaws, as with Microsoft Windows Vista. The laws against unfair business practices of those who have virtual monopolies have had no effect on Microsoft, apparently.
Firefox crash info: Here are some links for those who want to discover more about the instabilities in Firefox.
about:crashes
Put about:crashes into your URL bar and press ENTER. Firefox will then show a list of crashes of the copy of Firefox on that computer.
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, last week's version
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/products/Fir [mozilla.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:9.0? (Score:4, Informative)
The versioning setup is that N.0.0 is the next scheduled release. N.0.x is a critical security update that does not break compatibility with add-ons. N.x.0 is for critical security updates that DO break compatibility with add-ons.
Now obviously these last are avoided at all costs, which is why there haven't been any yet. But the option needs to be there... The other possibility would be bumping the major version number for that critical security update, which would be pretty odd...