Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life 138
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."
What about forks? (Score:1)
How will this afect all the software that have forked from these versions?
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They will no longer receive upstream support or bug fixes.
FF 3 in portage (Score:2, Funny)
Time for the Gentoo Portage people to mark Firfox 3 as stable!
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too bad it's (FF3 on gentoo) the most unstable browser i've ever used, even worse than cello (anyone remember cello?)
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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.
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Bah. Why did I type that '-u'? Ignore the '-u'. :-)
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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.
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[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
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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
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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Naw. Burden of proof is on the person making the initial claim.
Prove it.
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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.
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I think the better response might be "I see your anecdote and raise you a blatant lie!".
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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...
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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.
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a 65kb html page is going to be a problem in any browser. I've just tried this in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari. Only the Webkit browsers seem not to hang.
Not hanging in Opera 7.62/win here, nor chrome . FF 3.0.3 confirmed hanging on inline search. The page itself doesn't seem to be a problem, but searching it does.
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It doesn't work fine on the two machines I tested it on.
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
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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.
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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
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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/&
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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).
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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 : /
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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
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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.
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SpiderMonkey.
time for a change (Score:1)
Thunderbird (Score:5, Interesting)
Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.
Is this is a death sentence for the project?
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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.
Re:Thunderbird (Score:5, Insightful)
Even so, it is poor practice to end support for one of your products when its successor hasn't even been released yet.
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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
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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)
Thunderbird 3 is under development [mozillamessaging.com]. An alpha version is available.
Re:Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
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??
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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.
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There, fixed your grammar for you.
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My affect was effected by the the affect of discontinuing progress on Firefox 2.
egads.
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No. Thunderbird 3 is under heavy development, and Thunderbird 2 will continue to receive security updates, even when Firefox 2 won't.
.. cite? admittedly, haven't dug much past TFAs mentioned in the /. story but nothing i saw in those links says 'tbird will be an exception for security fixes.' and moving to an alpha (or even beta?) version of tbird3 is not an acceptable path for a stable codebase in place today.
-r
(and yes, i would like some cheese with that..)
(and i wish i had a lawn for you damn kids to get off of..)
linux ff3 stability? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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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
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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)
Panther Users (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Actually, iCab [www.icab.de] and Opera [opera.com] are still supporting 10.3.9.
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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?
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Can't find it on Apple's site, but I'm pretty sure 10.3.x is unsupported and receives no security updates.
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While your point is well taken, QT 7.4.5 got a security update in April and it included 10.3.9.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1241 [apple.com]
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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:
* This item hasn't received any updates recently and is presumed to be unsupported.
The following in
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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
FireFox is an open-source project (Score:2)
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
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> 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)
too bad for my employer (Score:1)
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)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Besides why do you think they pay Novell for?
Re:too bad for my employer (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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 :/
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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. :(
Left Behind: An Open Source Movie. (Score:2)
"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.
thank god i'm safe (Score:1)
phew!
thank god i'm safe, my 1.8 install isn't being chopped.
Golly (Score:1)
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)
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.
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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
Extensions wanted (Score:1)
Built in (Score:2)
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?
still on 2.0 (Score:2)
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You mean like Opera Link, which is included with Opera?
Thank god (Score:2)
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'.
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If it runs in safe mode, then chances are that an extension is causing the problem and not Firefox itself.
FF3 won't run all my Selenium tests (Score:2)
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.
Does changing tabs properly update the screen? (Score:2)
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..
Asus EEE still on FF 2 (Score:2)
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.
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For more information look here [mozillazine.org] and here [cnet.com].
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Also, more info here [googlepages.com]. With instructions.
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Give it some time. Your reaction is a common one, but not everyone who starts off hating it stays that way. I should know; I went from hating it, to accepting it, to finding it really quite useful on occasion.
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Or the fact that you can't centrally manage it. There are some unsupported community builds out there, but none of them come close to what IE can do in the right hands - especially the whole Zones concept which, while not perfect, can allow very powerful policies to be set.
Add to that that a browser is highly security critical, and deploying IE updates is a breeze even in very small Windows deployments thanks to WSUS, it's not that easy with Firefox.
It clearly shows that the Mozilla Foundation, like Apple,
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FF 3 has a number of improvements over 2 for enterprise deployment, and I believe more are planned for future releases.
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Please don't be silly. It is entirely possible that this policy is reducing the numbers of enterprises that are adopting Firefox, but I know for a fact that at least one enterprise has accepted this, so your claim is trivially shown to be false and everything you say thereby becomes suspect.
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self-signed certificates
The instructions to accept the certificate are right there on the screen. You don't even have to dig through a bunch of menus, just click where it tells you to click.
Yes, you have to click several times (as opposed to once in FF2). Unfortunately a great number of embedded control devices generate a new self-signed cert. every time they boot, which makes FF3 basically unusable for operating this sort of thing.
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Unfortunately a great number of embedded control devices generate a new self-signed cert. every time they boot
I think your angst should be directed towards these lazy and inconsiderate hardware developers for violating the intended purpose of HTTPS, rather then at Firefox for doing what is essentially the right thing.
Oh, but wait, it makes your life just a little bit more difficult. I guess it must be bad.