Firefox 18 Launches With Faster IonMonkey-Enabled JavaScript, Built-In PDF Viewe 220
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 18 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The improvements include a new JavaScript compiler, a built-in PDF viewer, as well as Retina and touch support. The release notes are available, as is a list of changes for devs."
Lawlz (Score:3, Funny)
Psh, I just upgraded to Firefox 22 just 5 minutes ago. Firfox 18 is so 30 minutes ago.
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Are we really going to have this kind of joke every time a firefox version is released? I'm mean, it's getting a bit repetitive. I've seen about about 10 times in the last 10 minutes!
I wonder... (Score:2)
I set it up to use Chrome as my PDF viewer. (Which wasn't easy, since the nonstandard way Chrome installs itself under Windows meant that it didn't show up on the list of programs.)
I wonder if it's going to override that setting when it updates itself. I don't really care, as long as it works. I just liked keeping my system clean and didn't want to download Adobe if I didn't have to.
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I wonder if it's going to override that setting when it updates itself.
Doesn't seem that way. I had the Foxit Reader plugin installed, and after upgrading, PDFs still opened in Foxit. Quite frankly I can't figure out where the built-in PDF reader even is; I uninstalled Foxit and if I try to load a PDF, Firefox now just prompts me to save the file.
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Wasn't this supposed to happen silently? (Score:2)
Re:Wasn't this supposed to happen silently? (Score:4, Informative)
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It already happened. Check your settings to see if it's turned on.
As suspected, my settings are correct. When I went to About Firefox I got the dialog.. downloading update 0 of 24.2MB downloaded. Seems like they still have work to do.
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Something isn't quite right there. For whatever reason you are getting a full update, when it should have tried a binary diff first (~3 to 6MB).
It's gotten much better for me over the last couple releases. I used to have to do what you do in checking manually but haven't for a while. (That's when I maintain Windows, Ubuntu's Firefox obviously updates with the system)
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The update was just released and it's entirely reasonable it could stagger you a couple days even before auto-downloading.
IonMonkey (Score:3)
Seriously, were y'all drunk when you came up with that name? It conjures up images of some kind of celestial primate flinging high energy particles about. Firefox at least sounds like something that could be found frolicing about in heavily wooded areas.
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It conjures up images of some kind of celestial primate flinging high energy particles about.
Sounds to me like something that'd be hanging out with a dragon.
'Firefox' just makes me think of that lame Eastwood film.
Re:IonMonkey (Score:5, Funny)
In Russian it is then... (Score:2)
Well damn, the Cyrillic won't post into Slashdot so go here to see Zontar's post in Russian [google.com]. ;-)
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It conjures up images of some kind of celestial primate flinging high energy particles about.
At least that's better than the stuff they usually fling around...
Yes but Nightly can drink beer now.. legally (Score:2)
There is no PDF viewer, yet (Score:2)
From another article [techcrunch.com]:
One feature that didn't make it into this release, by the way, is Mozilla's new built-in PDF reader. While the organization has been working on this for a while, it will only make it into the beta release that's expected to arrive on Thursday.
Re:There is no PDF viewer, yet (Score:5, Informative)
there sure is, although it wasn't on by default for me: enable pdfjs inside about:config and set the pdf in content to 'preview in firefox'
PDF.js (Score:5, Informative)
The PDF viewer in Firefox, PDF.js [github.com] is an amazing piece of software. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the same sandbox in which a webpage runs. So it is very safe. The layout accuracy and speed of PDF.js are simply amazing. Text selection happens just like it does in the browser. Some PDF viewers only allow you to draw a rectangle on which to do OCR. PDF.js simply lets you select the glyphs.
This viewer has been available as an add-on [mozilla.org] for a while already.
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I can not comprehend of anything worse
That's not much of an imagination. You can embed Javascript in PDF [adobe.com]...
It's turtles all the way down.
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PDF viewer written in Javascript, and it's a file format that can contain embedded Javascript...
Yo dawg.
Re:PDF.js (Score:5, Informative)
As a scripting language, Javascript is still slow compared to something like well-written C++. But Firefox 18 is pretty close to the latest version of Chrome for Javascript performance (e.g. arewefastyet.com ), so I bet the PDF viewer in Javascript works quickly enough.
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I can: Unpatched acrobat installations infecting all my family / friends' computers with malware because PDF plugins are the bane of all security.
Auto-updating flash and pdf handlers is one of the reasons ive been suggesting Chrome to everyone, and why it has reduced the number of viruses I deal with enormously. This is wonderful that firefox is jumping on the wagon. Now that both Chrome and Firefox also block vulnerable java, we just need a long-term fix to the flash question in firefox.
Re: Firefox is not sandboxed! (Score:2)
This is a major security risk if you ask me. Chrome and IE are and Mozilla is still behind. Flash luckily is now sandboxed which is a huge improvement but PDFs can contain nasty javascript exploits and without a sandbox could be a SECURITY NIGHTMARE.
I am sticking with Firefox ESR 17.01. It will be supported for a year and and want to see if my suspicions are right.
If my information is outdated feel free to correct as I am in the process of not recommending Firefox anymore unless the corporate system is stil
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Unless Im mistaken, as pdf.js is written in JS, it IS sandboxed, and in a way that Acrobat is not / cannot be. Remember that Firefox's JS implementation has to be secure enough to interpret code from all over the internet, and has had a LOT more "battle-hardening" as well as a better security record than Acrobat.
I imagine the only downside is rendering speed, but it seems pretty quick.
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Firefox patches exploits fast. IE sandboxing mitigates damage post-exploit when they have a slow security response: browser data is still at risk.
Fast-patching is the better bet for me, but I'd like both.
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The Firefox developers are aware that they're behind Chrome and IE on this, and they're definitely working on it. Starting at some point last year, Firefox automatically warns
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Relying on a third-party for security in what is seen as "standard functionality" seems like a really bad idea, especially given Acrobat's (and even Foxit's) security record.
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What I like most about it : no more PDFs cluttering my "Downloads" folder. And if I really want to save the PDF, it is only one click away.
Great job, guys.
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speed of PDF.js are simply amazing.
With the handicap of being an interpreter for a layout-oriented scripting language written in an interpreted scripting language, I suppose one might choose to call the performance amazing.
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Have you looked at recent benchmarks?
I posted a story last July and Firefox handled the most amount of tabs with the least ram. IE 9 surprising wins too if you have just 1 - 2 tabs. Chrome now is the new pig. My, have things changed in just 1 year.
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Correcting link: it is case sensitive...
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Show_PDF_inline [mozilla.org]
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No, I'm not being paid. I work on a similar project: WebODF [webodf.org]. I wrote the post so someone (thank you) would ask me what is in it for me and I could plug this project.
Seriously: my experience is that PDF.js works acceptably for most PDFs I threw at it. That included large PDFs with designer layout and scientific papers. Granted, poppler (okular, evince) is still way faster in rendering, but I enjoy PDF.js because it is good enough and I know the work it took to make it and can see the improvements they are ma
Bug Fix/New Feature 12 years in the making (Score:2, Offtopic)
They've landed the solution to this [mozilla.org] issue, first submitted in 2000. Clinton was still president.
I personally welcome any attempt... (Score:2)
...to bring about the demise of the dud that is called Evince;
they finally broke its last functionality under Linux Mint.
Just switched to v18 (Score:2)
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Sounds like a corrupt profile or installation. See if moving your firefox profile elsewhere for testing fixes the issue-- ive run into that a few times over the years.
gave up on Firefox a year ago (Score:2)
Just switched to Firefox 17 ESR (Score:2)
I just switched to Firefox 17 ESR [mozilla.org].
CacheViewer got broken by the upgrade from 17 to 18, and I don't want any more automatic updates that will break extensions, so I'll just stop automatic updates, and keep a browser that works, and will get updates only for security fixes.
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08 January 2013: This addon is not compatible with Firefox 18 (yet). Mozilla removed a key method in their API that this addon was using to retrieve entries from the cache. Implementing the new method for getting cache entries will not be a trivial matter. I will release an update as soon as I can, but it could be a while.
This road seems familiar. (Score:2)
Element & Style Editing, PDF rendering, scripting, embeddable animation, sound, video, client side storage, 3rd party plugins...
Am I talking about Flash? Java? A web browser? MS Word? A bloated do-everything "Kitchen Sink" Business Solution? WHO CAN TELL?
Fuck that. I already know the best way to engineer things: Each thing does one thing and does it well, and provides an interface so it can be used in conjunction with other things to perform a task. Some call this "The Unix Way", but really
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YOU DON'T PUT EVERYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF IN THE PLATFORM. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first web browser. Mozilla Firefox will be that web browser. We can make it better than it was before. Better...stronger...faster.
We will, simply because we can ...
Re:Honestly? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html [mozilla.org]
ESR versions are yearly if you care so much about fast releases.
Really looking forward to ESR 17 version! (Score:2)
At $DAYJOB, the IT department policy used to be "IE6 Only", which everybody ignored and installed Firefox. Eventually they finally decided to support IE7 (and now support IE8, at least on Win7), and they installed Firefox on our machines the middle of this year. Unfortunately, it's the FF10 ESR, which broke my working environment (FF13 really did do a much better job of memory management, and since IT only supports 32-bit Win7, I can't just fix the problem by installing more RAM.) So I'm hoping they'll
Re:Really looking forward to ESR 17 version! (Score:4, Funny)
One of my coworkers installed native Linux on his laptop with a VMware Windows machine on top that's running the IT department official versions, which let him max out the hardware RAM and lets him do most of his work from Linux, which was at least somewhat helpful.
I used to do the same in 2002. Funnily enough, IT support guys would come to my desk to install stuff and I had win NT running in a VM fullscreen and the IT guys never realized I was running linux as the native host.
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IE8 will be supported by MS until 2020. Don't hold your breath
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And still a tired old monolithic app. I switched to Chrome eight months ago, and although it uses a lot of memory it does give me the ability to properly manage its memory and CPU usage: it's so much easier to identify pages to kill when they're running in their own process space. Not only does this allow me to selectively reduce the app's memory footprint, but I can conserve battery life on my laptop by easily culling busy pages.
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I've been using Chrome for well over a year, and have had this discussion many times. Yes, Chrome uses more ram. But I can close a bunch of tabs, and it frees it up. Firefox, every time I try it and despite that it's memory management is "getting better", still eventually uses several GB of ram and requires that I completely exit and restart before it's freed.
My browser is one of the first things I start up when I turn on my PC, and generally stays open until my PC has to reboot for some reason (which may b
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My solution to the "restart firefox" - use the Aurora build: There is a new build every day, so you're suggested to restart daily :) ..and yes - my mac becomes noticable faster every time I restart FF.
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You can enable the "save tab prompt" when quitting. I saves all open tabs and you get re-logged automatically into the sites you were logged in when FF restarts. I close random tabs to leave only the tabs I need to work open when I restart because FF takes to much memory. about:config, preference browser.tabs.warnOnClose, browser.warnOnQuit, browser.warnOnRestart
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/796107 [mozilla.org]
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/935532 [mozilla.org]
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-rest [mozilla.org]
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My browser is one of the first things I start up when I turn on my PC, and generally stays open until my PC has to reboot for some reason (which may be anywhere from a week to a month). This is really only possible now because I use Chrome.
I call shenanigans. "[rebooting monthly] is ... only possible now [because of Chrome]" is just not true.
I'm running Win7-64bit on a laptop with 6G ram and I use Firefox. FF is always running and I very very seldom kill the process. Like almost never. I reboot about once a month and usually because of something non-related to Windows or FF crashing/hanging. Usually just a Win security update.
I run some heavy memory usage video editing apps and usually have a LOT of terminal windows open, along with mul
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Firefox, every time I try it and despite that it's memory management is "getting better", still eventually uses several GB of ram and requires that I completely exit and restart before it's freed.
This was a big problem for me as well, but around version 15 or so, it looks like Mozilla finally fixed it.
I can now do my normal browsing and after a week, Firefox is using about 500-700MB and works fine. Before, it would be up to 1GB in a day or so, and would become sluggish and even completely non-responsive at times. I do run with NoScript and AdBlock Plus, so Flash doesn't start unless I explicitly click on the object, so YMMV if you have different browsing habits.
Last crash: 1 hour ago. (Score:2, Informative)
I use it only because it has add-ons I need.
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no shit the browsers are not rock solid. They are ungodly complicated, probably 2nd only to games (which crash orders of magnitude more often) and they have to deal with copious amount of shoddy html and javascript all day long.
Wow, more excuses. (Score:2)
Here is a Slashdot comment from 7 years ago: There is a HUGE, well-known bug in Firefox 1.5, the CPU and Memory Hogging bug. [slashdot.org]
I hope so. (Score:2)
The crashes occur when I am doing a lot of research, and have many windows and tabs open, and then go in an out of hibernation or sleep mode.
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Would you rather use Adobe software to read PDFs?
Re:Honestly? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'd rather use zathura. Windows users can use SumatraPDF.
Why do people keep assuming that Adobe is the only PDF reader there is, there's dozens out there.
I prefer firefox not to have a PDF reader, so when I click on a link to a PDF I'm prompted to download it, instead of having to wait for it to load and be rendered with JS before downloading it.
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I don't, I use foxit. Most people use Adobe, because they're told to download Acrobat reader if they're unable to view the document.
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Standalone PDF readers with plugins tend to try and support as much of the latest PDF features as possible. I'd rather my browser PDF viewer didn't have the capability to run embedded PDF scripts and load additional content.
Re:Honestly? (Score:4, Informative)
Quit whining (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, your whining is counterproductive.
Firefox is following a standard open-source style policy of release early, release often [wikipedia.org] and as a vendor following this exact mantra, I see that although I do hear a lot of whining from some of our (typically more backward) customers, we are able to evolve to meet new needs better than our competitors which has allowed us to grow at a sustained rate better than 50% per year for years on end.
Many of our meetings with clients start with whines about how they have trouble keeping up with all the changes, followed up by hours of specifying new changes and additions that they'd like, closing with my pointing out that all the changes that they requested will be released as developed and them having to keep up with them as they are made available.
Perhaps it's necessary for some people to see improvements in a bad light, but if you really don't like it... leave! Go use some product that doesn't update at all if you want. I hear you can still find Firefox 3.6 binaries if you look hard enough. Even Chrome updates constantly.
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Its more an Agile or Lean approach than an Open Source one; its development methodology, not licensing structure, that is involved.
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I know it's just a preference thing and we've all gotten used to it - but I much prefer to see subminor version increments for bug fi
Re:Quit whining (Score:5, Insightful)
And your complaining about the mainstream version of Firefox while ignoring the existence of the enterprise version of Firefox makes your argument disingenuous.
Here let me get you started: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ [mozilla.org]
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And your complaining about the mainstream version of Firefox while ignoring the existence of the enterprise version of Firefox makes your argument disingenuous.
I'm well aware of it. It has support for all of... 1 year [mozilla.org]. Also, to quote directly from the same page: "Backports of any functional enhancements and/or stability fixes are not in scope."
So, who's being more disingenuous here... the person who makes the argument that "release early, release often" may not be suitable for all applications, or the guy that handwaves the argument, claims a lie of omission, and then makes a lie of omission of his own? Stupid facts, getting in the way of a good internet roasting.
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Firefox has admitted basically forever that "Corporate is not our target". If it were, we would have all sorts of things: ADM templates / GPO support, MSI installers, longer support terms, support for the OS certificate store (AKA an easy way to seed trusted root certs), support for smartcard readers, etc.
Incidentally, Chrome has all of that, and I believe you can even pin a certain version if you need to.
If both of those are unacceptable, use IE. Your environment is not one that Firefox has ever stated
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Except that the ESR was the consumer version at some point of its lifetime. If the consumer version had the issue that you described it would have been fixed at the next point release. Basically the ESR just extends the major version lifetime, it is not a separate product.
When the next major version of firefox is released, only the browsers on the consumer release channel will get the update. The ESR versions will not see the update. Later on if a major security vulnerability is discovered in the ESR branc
Re:Quit whining (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox has a version that releases less often for corporate users. Also, Chrome does the exact same thing, sans the alternate version.
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Chrome has full blown official MSIs, ADM templates, and full GPO support. It supports pulling in the system proxy and certificate store. It supports smart-card readers.
It is, aside from IE, the most corporate friendly browser out there. That you think otherwise makes me think you havent done much research on the matter; certainly its lightyears ahead of firefox in a corporate environment. Its only big failing is that it utterly dies when used in a TS scenario, and I have a feeling it is an architectural
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postMessage working across tabs / child windows would have been nice for IE10. IE 8+ supports just iframe communication and only strings can be passed, (W3C spec says *anything* can be passed) and IE9 silently fails if you try to polyfill it to support simple objects.
Firefox first supported it - fully - in 3.6...
Re:Quit whining (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the reality of the web. People want to use css3, html5, svg, faster javascript and what not now, not in 1 year, maybe.
I don't really pay too much attention to what companies want, if they had their way we'd be still using IE6.0
Re:Quit whining (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know why Microsoft only releases patches once a month for its operating systems? Because corporate environments can become violently ill when something is updated without it being tested first.
We even offered to have a "stable" release version with updates only every 1 to 6 months, and have every released version have a 30 day trial period so that they could preview changes. We asked a 5% premium for this service. We thought as much as half of our client base would go for it based on the loud verbal feedback. But as soon as our clients found that they were choosing between having last year's product, totally stable with no updates or getting the new one with all the latest new features, bells, and whistles, guess how popular this option was? How many clients do you think signed that contract?
Not one.
My "narrow-mindedness" comes from my past experience... so now we listen to the whining carefully, and try to identify ways to better disseminate our change logs.
And for the record, a product that doesn't need to be updated is something some programmers strive for: It means they've made something that does its job so well there's no need to change it.
It's also a sign of a stagnant industry/marketplace. Needs change as circumstances change, and if the software doesn't change with the customer, it tends to disappear.
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Needs change as circumstances change, and if the software doesn't change with the customer, it tends to disappear.
Or become entrenched, irreplaceable, and utterly loathed by all of its users.
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It's also a sign of a stagnant industry/marketplace. Needs change as circumstances change, and if the software doesn't change with the customer, it tends to disappear.
IBM is still selling mainframes. Your argument is invalid.
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Do you know why Microsoft only releases patches once a month for its operating systems? Because corporate environments can become violently ill when something is updated without it being tested first.
I don't use Firefox, and I know it's popular to bash its rapid release schedule for some reason, but...
Firefox 14.0: June 26, 2012
Firefox 15.0: August 28, 2012
Firefox 16.0: October 9, 2012
Firefox 17.0: November 20, 2012
Firefox 18.0: January 8, 2013
Firefox 19.0: February 19, 2013
Firefox 20.0: March 26, 2013
Average is well over a month for each major version number. Granted, 13.0 came out less than a month before 14.0, but that was several versions ago, and is the only version in 2012 that had such a short l
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You may not have noticed, but they *are* the most-used browsers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers [wikipedia.org]
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Plugins become outdated with every new release because they changed something in the API, or the way this feature works, or what that variable contains.
I keep reading that over and over, but I also keep NOT seeing it happen when I update Firefox.
You must either have a metric assload of plugins installed, or you use a very poorly written one that keeps breaking.
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Nothing is as advanced as Windows Server 2008. NOTHING!
Everything else might as well just give up... or append the current year to their program's name before everyone else does.
Hey, it's still early in the year... there's still time!
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Python 3.0 (a.k.a. "Python 3000" or "Py3k") is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases....
http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0/ [python.org]
Is Phyton a fork of php? it seems like it has some similarities anyway...
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....You mean Server 2012, right?
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Well, if there is one. I don't exactly use it myself or keep up-to-date on the latest news.
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Hyper-V metro app, whats not to love, amirite
OTOH (Score:5, Insightful)
Went to Chrome for a while to see what the buzz was about. Supposedly faster, cleaner, etc.
Got po'd when I couldn't configure it to operate the way I wanted it to. Just personal taste and not a criticism; to each their own, as they say. However, I did not see any improvement in responsiveness and, for me there was a genuine loss of functionality. Went back to Firefox and have been very happy. Sure it would be nice to have some process options but Mozilla seems to be doing a bang up job of dealing with the various issues that caused process hangs and memory leaks. I can't remember the last time I had to kill an unresponding FF process. Used to happen weekly, even daily. Kudos to the FF team.
For the most part the Firefox version changes have been transparent to me (well, except for tabs - grrrr - but I have been able to customize them to work the way I want). The update cycle is more or less the same with Chrome and IE. If they changed the numbering scheme so it went from, say, 10.17 to 10.18 instead of 17 to 18, there would be less reaction. Or maybe not. Anyways, it is not a huge issue.
Firefox is easily competitive with any other popular browser and is well supported. Don't think I will bother trying a change again for a while unless something truly game changing comes along.
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Once youve used chrome in a corporate environment, you never go back. Supports a lot of corporate control-- awesome GPOs, pulls proxy in from IE, MSI installers, and no admin-for-update required. Plus it tends to "just work" in a way firefox doesnt-- all of our corporate apps work flawlessly in chrome, including those which require a smartcard login (which Firefox doesnt know how to deal with).
And the "web application" feature is really cool-- works great with OWA and whatever other apps you have.
Firefox
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I think 'vastly better security' is being able to run noscript + adblock + requestpolicy, I don't think you can do that in chrome, can you?
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I have "NotScripts", Adblock, and use Chrome's "click-to-play" functionality for plugins. I imagine theres something for requestpolicy.
Generally extensions ARE better on firefox than chrome, but I dont use many of them, and Chrome is better at what it does support-- being able to dynamically load, unload, install, and remove extensions is REALLY nice.
Security-wise, their implementation of "private browsing" is also the best-- other browsers tend to hit the disk cache at least temporarily, and can be sniffe
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Once youve used chrome in a corporate environment, you never go back.
Your experience, obviously, but not mine.
My company supports only IE for corp. apps/sites/etc. Frankly, it works just fine for the corp stuff and there is no compelling need to go to Chrome. Again, I have compared user experience and although Chrome did not give me any problems, it did not do anything for me either so why bother?
For anything else, I use FF. Not hard to have multiple browsers available.
Chrome is OK; I just find it to be a bit of a PITA with things that I want to configure that I can't.
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Not any more. My Firefox just updated itself to ESR 10.0.12 while reading your post!
Re:Too many revisions chased me away (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty sure that doesn't happen any more with the new way they write extensions.
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a plugin full or security issue (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly, and they are not embedding a C based PDF library like Chrome, this is a new implementation (that needs a lot of testing, printing is still awful) made in Javascript, sandboxed by default
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Nope, plugins are in a separate process. Have been for quite a while now....
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Theyre only getting publicity because slashdot bothers posting the update stories, which honestly is the only way Id know there was an update.
They switched models because its a BETTER MODEL. They can actually get useful features out more quickly than the old 1-year dev time. I dont know if anyone remembers, but the upgrade from 1.5 to 2.0 took like a year, and came with like 4 features-- a new-tab button, a completely messed up (still bitter) options GUI, and tab-close-undo.
Now we get about that many feat