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Firefox Mozilla Upgrades

Firefox 30 Available, Firebug 2.0 Released 270

Posted by Soulskill from the 30-is-over-the-hill dept.
Today Mozilla made Firefox 30 available, a relatively minor release after the massive redesign in version 29. According to the changelog, new features include VP9 video decoding, support for Opus in WebM, and horizontal volume control for HTML5 video and audio. Developers got support for multi-line flexboxes and hang reporting for background threads. There were also a number of security fixes. The Android version of Firefox received better support for native text selection, cutting, and copying, as well as predictive lookup for Awesomebar entries. The availability of Firefox 30 coincides with the launch of Firebug 2.0, which features an updated UI and a new debugging engine called JSD2. Significant new features include JavaScript syntax highlighting and de-minifying, improved code auto-complete, and the capability to hide or show individual Firebug panels.
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Firefox 30 Available, Firebug 2.0 Released More

Firefox 30 Available, Firebug 2.0 Released

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  • Please, please just stop... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:34PM (#47206607)
    ...with this rapid release schedule. Firefox is trying to update more often than Java nowadays.

    Run an unstable branch like everyone else, and run a testing/beta branch to become the next stable. It will make life a lot easier.

    • They call them channels, not branches.

      • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:50PM (#47207201)

        They can call it whatever they want, it is still branches and FF copying Chrome in every aspect is not what is going to keep FF alive.

        First they copied Chrome's retarded versioning, now with FF 29, the default UI looks EXACTLY like Chrome.

        Firefox is run by a pack of retards. They need to clean house, starting with that epic dumbfuck Asa Dotzler.

        • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @06:34PM (#47207491)
          More to the point, if I'm going to be stuck using a browser that looks exactly like Chrome, I may as well use Chrome.

          I'm basically using Firefox for historical reasons, ie, I'm lazy and I'm disinclined to change without a real need to do so. But I've been forced to change before, from Mosiac, from Netscape Navigator, from Netscape Communicator, and from Mozilla. What's another change?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by reub2000 ( 705806 )

          They just copied the things that work, you know like faster handling of javascript, and not taking up half the screen with useless toolbars. They took what worked and put their own spin on it, and it looks very different from chrome. It would be a fine browser if they could squash a few bugs.

          • Total bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            The "useless" toolbars are useful to people who understand toolbars. The pointless changes to the firefox UI are a big "fuck you" all the sane users.

            Go use chrome if you want chrome. Some of us don't use chrome because the chrome UI sucks.

        • Did they fix the memory-hogging bug that causes instability? No.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by rvw ( 755107 )

            Did they fix the memory-hogging bug that causes instability? No.

            See http://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/... [ghacks.net], and it seems that FF is actually better than Chrome in memory usage!

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

            Someone always mentions this mysterious, vaguely defined bug in every /. discussion of Firefox but my understanding is that all the major memory issues were fixed long ago. I certainly never have problems these days.

            Can you be more specific? A link to the Bugzilla page or a forum thread perhaps?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Then I would suggest you use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org], I do and I can assure my up to date version of FireFox looks nothing what so ever like Chrome, bit of a mix of vista (thanks to classic shell http://www.classicshell.net/ [classicshell.net]) and of course regular old FireFox thanks to the afore mentioned addon . Keep in mind it is Mozzila FireFox and it is very configurable, hell, given the desire and the skill or money and you can rebrand it after yourself and do all sorts of GUI minded things to it.

    • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:49PM (#47206733)

      ...with this rapid release schedule. Firefox is trying to update more often than Java nowadays.

      For the most part I haven't minded, and for the most part, the changes have been appreciated.

      However, version 29 revamped the entire toolbar customization scheme. Which has caused problems. Not only did it force me to move my refresh button (which for many years I kept on the left where it belongs next to the other navigation buttons), but it also eliminated the "addon bar" (which was historically the "status bar" at the bottom). That change broke the interfaces of a couple of add-ons I use.

      Also, version 29 broke a web-crawling tool I use frequently. I got that fixed, but I should not have had to.

    • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:5, Informative)

      by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:15PM (#47206895)

      If you don't like it, switch to the ESR channel.
      It's still based on Firefox 24, the next one wont be till FF 31. It's kept up to date in terms of security fixes for 9 mainstream releases.
      https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/... [mozilla.org]

      • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mister_Stoopid ( 1222674 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:45PM (#47207153)

        Ugh, my 24 ESR is going away in just one more release? I thought I solved this firefox update problem for myself by going to ESR but I guess it was just a (very) short term bandaid...

        • "Extended" means you stop having the life span of a mayfly and start having the life span of a cockroach.

      • Re:Please, please just stop... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Excelcia ( 906188 ) <slashdot@excelcia.ca> on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @06:56PM (#47207655) Homepage Journal

        Most everyone is aware of the ESR. This is just a bandaid over the real problem. Chrome was designed from the very beginning with a rapid release schedule in mind. Release numbers in Chrome are essentially meaningless. Firefox adopted the same rapid release schedule as Chrome in a project that wasn't designed for it either technically or from a project management or project cultural perspective. Firefox gave addon developers the finger as they constantly broke extensions and themes. They carelessly spent valuable resources trying to make Firefox extensions less reliant on versions numbers, which only more badly broke legacy extensions, and rather than using resources to actually help extension authors, they wasted them on semi-automatic systems to catch non-compliant extensions and disable them. Which left users high and dry when they were forced to upgrade (lest they get left behind on security fixes) and lose functionality. More and more UI changes were forced on users, despite in some cases, clear majority opposition. Mozilla has consistently adopted a "we know best" attitude when it comes to what users want. And it shows, with marketshare stagnant. Google is still a major funder of Mozilla, and it's easy to see they think it money well invested. They make Chrome and then pay Mozilla to implode trying to slavishly copy their success.

        Who wants to go to an ESR that is a bandaid on a bad system? You just place yourself in the eye of the storm for a short time.

        No project can emulate another project and outcompete it. ESR's are not the answer. I personally have moved to PaleMoon. It too is based on a Firefox ESR, but at least they are committed to sane development and user-based UI decisions.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The marketshare argument falls flat on its face when you actually break the numbers down and realize that they're not really losing users any faster than every other desktop browser is. The problem is that they they're effectively blocked from competing on iOS, and nobody using a Droid cares to install another browser (it's not like Chrome or Dolphin or Opera are doing particularly well compared to Firefox.. people just use whatever comes with their phone/tablet).

          If Firefox's "fans" were really fans they wo

          • Who will want to use a browser that the loyal fans seem to hate?

            Well, exactly. And whose fault is it that loyal fans hate it?

    • Stable exists. Run the Eric S Raymond [mozilla.org] release (ESR), which is currently pinned to v24.

  • Does it have that bullshit Firefox 29 theme? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:36PM (#47206615)

    If yes then I'm still not using it. Palemoon all the way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )
      I found a replacement to make it look like the previous iteration of Firefox. You're definitely not the only person that doesn't like what they did.
    • +10 :) I was pleased to find the Linux version of Palemoon; it's my preferred browser now.

    • LOL, everybody hates Firefox's UI now! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's totally hilarious how almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON outside of Mozilla who has had to use Firefox 29 has totally hated its UI. The most positive responses I've seen so far have been from people saying that they only kind of hate it. For each response like that, I see hundreds more from people who absolutely, indisputably, completely hate it to its very core!

      I think this is funny as funny can be. The Firefox UI designers have created something that's universally hated! It's not just a little bit of hate fr

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The Firefox UI designers have created something that's universally hated! It's not just a little bit of hate from a few people here and there. It's total, unmitigated, unrelenting hatred for the Firefox 29 UI!

        Yeah, thats the new business strategy of Mozilla corporation. Instead of relying on google money, they try to create universal pure hatred. Have you noticed the jumping bookmark star on the start page? This serves them as hatred collector. The code animating the star creates a websocket connection to mozilla headquarters, on which the hatred is transmitted into a black box in their basement with the label "hatred". When the box is full, they sell the hatred on the international hatred market. In recent year

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by marsu_k ( 701360 )

      On Linux (the opensuse-kde-friendly fork, running on Arch though), I cannot say I've found 29 that different. The tabs are more rounded, yes, but other than that, the difference is quite minimal. Instead of having a menu link on the left of the tabs, it's on the right of the location/search bars - I pretty much never use it anyway, so I don't really care.

      On Windows 7 it is distracting, but I never liked the Aero transparency anyway. But on KDE, a non-issue personally. If Firebug works better, I'm all for it

      • Under windows the menu is just gone, replaced by the thing on the right that only has the most popular menu items. It doesn't really seem more useful to do this, especially when every other application either conforms to existing system UI standards or has an Office style ribbon, so having yet a third UI type is strange. This is a serious problem I think.

        The title bar has shrunk to being nearly nonexistent (or more precisely, a slightly fatter tabs bar exists), so moving around Firefox by the titlebar is

  • And the layout? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:38PM (#47206635) Journal

    Does it still require Classic Theme Restorer?

    • And the layout? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      >Does it still require WeUnfuckedEverythingYouFucked.xpi?

      Yes.

      • For me, its not the xpi file but the alt key. You will see the old menu, as you knew it.

        • There's right-click on the tool bar then click "Menu bar", to show the old menus permanently (I did not know about the alt key, I think I will sometimes use it)

  • Wrong version? (Score:3)

    by MurukeshM ( 1901690 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:39PM (#47206655)

    The linked changelog and description are for Firefox 28. For FF 30: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/30.0/releasenotes/ [mozilla.org]. Even accounting for FF's release schedule and for Slashdot delay, that's a bit much. Only important change for me as an end-user looks to be:
    Ignore autocomplete="off" when offering to save passwords via the password manager (see 956906)

  • Memory usage fixed? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by riverat1 ( 1048260 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:42PM (#47206683)

    I hope they fixed the memory usage problem I've been having since the last update. Lately for me FF has been running up over 3GB of memory usage and then crashing after anywhere from 6 to 12 hours with only 7 or 8 tabs open. It's been driving me crazy.

    • I use firefox on an atom netbook with 2GB of RAM, with 20-200 tabs open at any given time. I occasionally debug javascript as part of my work activities, so I have a ton of web development plugins installed, plus a tab tree plugin, plus SQLite Manager, and then of course NoScript, Adblock, etc. I'm using Crunchbang Linux, and Iceweasel 30 from Debian backports.

      If you have the time, you may want to try some debugging, [mozilla.org] because this is not quite the most limited x86 machine sold in anything that we might call

  • I wonder what version we'd actually be at... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @04:42PM (#47206685)
    ...if they used sane version numbers?

    Probably something like 12.0.1...
    • More like 0.93 alpha, based on the daily crashes I see. See my other post in case you want to post "It's the add-ons!".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Prune ( 557140 )
        I use Firefox daily, with many tabs and many add-ons, and I haven't seen a crash in years. Nice FUD spreading.
        • You can actually verify my claim, if you can be bothered:
          • bp-03011e04-04c7-4e46-b036-cb8ef2140610 06/10/2014 05:37 PM
          • bp-0e6c0cd6-07c1-428e-b2eb-04e262140605 06/05/2014 04:27 PM
          • bp-6012fb1f-5257-44f7-bff8-9eadb2140604 06/04/2014 03:23 PM
          • bp-4ec85a71-b780-4a39-a4b1-9f26f2140603 06/03/2014 06:31 PM
          • bp-a9d6d043-f942-4bd2-9edc-414602140601 05/31/2014 10:22 PM
          • bp-dcbe3dfc-f3b7-4308-a9da-47de32140530 05/30/2014 05:23 PM
          • bp-dd3f7257-8b2e-430b-9bf2-dd7b02140530 05/29/2014 08:22 PM
          • bp-5f35a17e-dc2a-4cf2-8c1a-ba618

    • 1.1.

      Australis is such a big change in direction that the browser Mozilla currently releases as "Firefox" shouldn't be treated as a new version of the browser Mozilla used to release as Firefox, but rather as a fork. (Which, yes, implies that users shouldn't have been silently moved from one to the other -- that's something those users should've had to actively choose to do.)

  • Is Devmode back yet? Or alternatively, does SuperDevMode work correctly yet? I like Firefox as a browser, but can't test my GWT stuff in it.

    • It never left.
      Switch to Firefox ESR. It's FF24 with security fixes. You'll be fine for another 18 weeks, when only the not yet released ESR 31 will get security fixes.
      Maybe someone on the GWT project will fix the plugin to work with FF31 in the 12 week period both ESR versions are supported.

  • Tell me how to place the fucking tabs below the URL box.
    Bless Firefox, and forsake them for hyped redesigns like these.

  • http://www.palemoon.org/ [palemoon.org]

    Switched from Firefox to Pale Moon because of Version 29 and haven't looked back. It is excellent.

  • User interface randomization feature? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:27PM (#47207011)

    Why don't they just randomize the user interface every time you start the program? I've spent over a decade getting used to things being in certain places with FF. Each version shuffles things like rearranging the furniture in a blind man's house. I have to put things back where they were so my muscle memory still works. I still go for View/Page Source - it's been that way for many years. Why change it? What does it accomplish to change it?

    So, do the people who write this software not use it themselves? Do they not have muscle memory? Do they really re-learn where everything is every new release?

    I mean, why? Why rearrange everything and trash the user interface? There's no reason for it. I don't understand. I can't process the idea that they just go in and trash everything for no reason.

    I don't understand. I am not sure I want to understand. This is crazy, so should not make sense.

    • It's just the hipsters fucking stuff up again. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:46PM (#47207157)

      Most UI designers these days are hipsters. They don't give a flying fuck about usability. All they care about is making a UI that's trendy. It's totally cool if it's trendy but isn't actually usable. Usability is irrelevant to them.

      Firefox is just one victim among many. They've fucked up Chrome from the very beginning. They've fucked up GNOME 3. They've fucked up Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. They've fucked up iOS 7. They're in the process of fucking up OS X 10.10. They've been fucking up web design for a great many years now.

      Hipsters are a disease that infects software projects. Once you understand that, then what has happened to the UIs of these formerly-great software projects makes perfect sense. It's much like the plagues that ravaged Europe centuries ago. A small hipster infection can spiral out of control and can destroy even the most robust and usable of software systems.

    • "I mean, why? Why rearrange everything and trash the user interface? There's no reason for it. I don't understand. I can't process the idea that they just go in and trash everything for no reason.

      Taking cues from Microsoft?

    • Because if they don't change things then they start to feel irrelevant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sd4f ( 1891894 )
        I think that's completely correct. My imagination likes to think that in a similar situation, the designers of windows 8 were sitting around a board room table, 'brainstorming' and some one comes up with their own gem of "how about we get rid of the start button!".

    • I hear yah. I just switched all the public computers in the library I run over to Pale Moon, after hearing yet another patron complain that "Firefox is broken!" A large proportion of the users here laboriously learned to use a computer and rely on careful repetition of the steps they memorized to access email or other simple tasks. Suddenly, the back button is in the wrong place, the tabs are on top, the progress bar is gone and so is their weather! They can't cope with the changes, and aren't savvy enough

  • GUI? (Score:3)

    by Hamsterdan ( 815291 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @05:48PM (#47207183)

    At the rate they're going, they'll probably emulate IE's look by version 40 (around next week)

  • I have to wonder what they think makes all these updates worthwhile. This release breaks two-finger scroll and swipe when I open a couple tabs.

  • Really. This rabid [sic] release cycle is supposed to be a benefit.

    .
    Unfortunately, the rabid [sic] release cycle seems to do little more than encourage the developers to make changes for the sake of changes, not for the benefit of the users.

    Stop this insanity.

    • It's good enough for me, it made me switch from a three-row browser UI to a two-row one after all those years, and I can hand it confidently to other users.
      I get to keep pet features like showing zoom buttons on the toolbar (like any PDF reader has zooming controls) and access to a list of tabs to "unclose".

      It's trivial to add the menu bar : I so got used to the browser, and after using it fresh on new computer I switched the menu bar off on mine.

      • ...It's good enough for me..

        Good enough. Just barely meeting the grade. A D-minus.

        .
        Yes, I would agree, FireFox 29 is a D-minus effort.

  • Did they restore "delay image loading"? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @08:19PM (#47208147) Journal

    I'm at my Nevada vacation/retirement place for the first time since migrating my laptop from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS. This dragged in Firefox 29.0 ("... Canonical 1.0").

    The place only has dialup Internat at about 38Kbps. (Somewhat higher speeds are available at substantial cost, which doesn't make sense untlil we're here for more than a couple weeks a year.)

    Web browsing was barely usable at this speed by using a few tricks. The most effective one was to configure Firefox to not load images until/unless I wanted to look at them.

    When I got out here last Friday I discovered that firefox 29.0 no longer has the radio button in the preferences/configuration menus. An hour or so looking at about:config didn't turn up anything likely-looking, either.

    Without this feature, "surfing" the current image-heavy web pages is essentially impossible. Even trivial pages may take a couple minutes to a half-hour to load. PER PAGE.

    Did the Firefox crew restore the feature for 30.0? (Or does anyone know where it was hidden, if it still exists on 29.0 and 30.0?)

    Developers breaking important features (that THEY don't use) while "improving" products is a real problem.

    • Oh crap. This is sad, I hope they get this fixed.
      I want to believe that FF29 is the major "breaks things" version and that after that the subsequent versions will be better.

    • Re:Did they restore "delay image loading"? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BZ ( 40346 ) on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @09:02PM (#47208355)

      Do you mean the "Load images automatically" setting?

      The preference for that seems to still be in about:config. It's called "permissions.default.image" and the values are documented as: // 1-Accept, 2-Deny, 3-dontAcceptForeign

      • Do you mean the "Load images automatically" setting?

        Yes, that's it. (I couldn't remember the exact wording and with it gone I couldn't look it up. B-) )

        The preference for that seems to still be in about:config. It's called "permissions.default.image" and the values are documented as: // 1-Accept, 2-Deny, 3-dontAcceptForeign

        Geez! No WONDER I couldn't spot it. Didn't they ever hear of mneomincs?

        Thank you. I'll give it a try.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by David_W ( 35680 )

      The Web Developer [chrispederick.com] toolbar extension exposes a lot of different options to control image loading. It might have what you need.

  • I've been a fan for years, mostly because of the addons. Between the flakiness of the Android version and the chromification of the desktop browser, I think I'm in the market for something different. I understand the need to release security updates ASAP. But tossing in features and jacking up the UI every freakin month is a bit silly.

  • And not even on FTP (Score:3)

    by B2382F29 ( 742174 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @02:03AM (#47209751)

    Why do they release Firefox 30 for Android in the Play Store BEFORE it is even on their own FTP server [mozilla.org]

    Life exists outside of Google, you know...

  • Release early, release often (Score:3)

    by DerPflanz ( 525793 ) <bart.friesoft@nl> on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @04:45AM (#47210435) Homepage

    Why are slashdotters so angry about the release schedule? Isn't this what is supposed to happen? According to ESR, release early, release often (and listen to your customers) [wikipedia.org] is what makes open source great.

    Is it really the release cycle, or is it that you feel that Firefox isn't listening to its customers. And who are the customers, really? The extension developers, or the people that use it on a daily basis to surf the web?

    In my opinion, the customers are the people who browse the web. And if I look at it as that kind of customer, I am quite happy with Firefox and its release schedule. I get updates automatically and often and they often make the browsing experience better. Sure, sometimes something breaks, but they are keen to fix many of these problems.

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