Firefox 2.0 To Debut Tuesday 445
An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 2.0 for Tuesday, says the Seattle PI. They give a quick recap of some of the new features, and discuss the ongoing IE vs. Fox debate." From the article: "Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7, its biggest upgrade since 2001. Analysts said IE7 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, but the big question is whether it will stem Firefox's growth at Microsoft's expense. Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."
innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
"Web browsers are notable for implementing this kind of interface (called tabbed browsing). BookLink Technologies pioneered this interface design in its InternetWorks browser in 1994"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing [wikipedia.org]
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Tabbed web browsing in itself doesn't seem to be a milestone of great significance. Certainly no more so than tabbed text editing or tabbed image viewing etc.
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As far as browsers are concerned, I agree with you, Opera was the first one IIRC.
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MDI (Score:5, Informative)
But of course other browsers had tabs far earlier than any of these two.
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MDI is very unintuitive on its own - tabs make it much better by putting, well, a tab on the page so you know it's there.
Closest analogy is Windows 95 property sheets I guess, although they weren't the first (just the first that most people will have used).
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Tabs being in such a case buttons linking to the child windows. Hmm, I'm pretty sure Win 3.1 supported buttons
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Re:innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
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Another reason to use Opera.. (Score:2)
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Firefox, on the other hand, has no such limit
So what is this "50Mb" limit I see in the Cache section of the Advanced / Network tab of the Options dialog?
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NetCaptor has had tabbed browsing far long than Mozilla.
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:innovation? (Score:4, Informative)
Switch between tabs
CTRL+TAB or CTRL+SHIFT+TAB
Switch to a specific tab number
CTRL+n (where n is a number between 1 and 8)
Switch to the last tab
CTRL+9
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That's the same shortcuts as FF1.5
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
May I ask what are those other browsers you're talking about? I am aware of 4 major browsers other than Firefox. Let's have a look at them and how they compare with firefox.
IE7 - It finally got tabs and a search box but still has crappy html and css standards support. Actually it's a little worse than MyIE [myie2.com] for IE6. I'll pass.
Safari - Has a lot the basic features of a good browser and is very simple. Respects HTML and CSS standards. Has crappy PNG support (gamma correction) and for some reason scrolls slowly even on fast machines. It's a fine browser but I prefer Camino [caminobrowser.org].
Konqueror - Although I have limited experience with this one, it looks like a good browser/file manager, but I am un-aware of any features (appart from passing that ACID2 test) that make it better than Firefox.
Opera - The only browser that is at least feature-wise better than firefox. But for some people Open Source actually matters. Though even with that into the equation, I can't really say which one is the better browser.
So, while you can argue and I might accept that opera is better than firefox, what are the other browsers that I've been missing that are better than the "overrated" firefox? Oh, and preferably opensource.
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Funny)
Your signature is just so... um... I won't use that I word that Alanis poisoned. No, no, I won't.
Re:innovation? (Score:4, Insightful)
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My desktop PC is just a touch more powerful than my router, even ignoring all the other reasons I'd want to block ads from within the browser.
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Unless they've added something to routers recently that I'm not aware of...
Konqueror is rock solid and light on resources. (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, when I simultaneously open about 15 of the blogs and websites I read daily, top reports Firefox 2.0 rc3 as using 149 MB of virtual memory. Konqueror, on the other hand, uses a cool 28 MB for those exact same sites. Opera uses 31 MB. So as far as I can tell, Firefox is the lame duck when it comes to effective memory usage. This is with a build right from mozilla.org, without any additional extensions installed. I also disabled the cache for all three browsers, since I've heard that Firefox has a policy that leads to excessive memory usage.
A problem I have had with the Firefox 2.0 release candidates is crashes. This doesn't happen with Konqueror, or any other application I'm using, so I doubt it's faulty RAM. These crashes aren't easily reproducible, and I frankly don't have the time to bother debugging an application that I really don't use, and that crashes the few times I do try it out.
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'course, it helps that Konqueror can leverage a ton of the infrastructure already present in KDE, and as such, it's actual resident set size can be much lower (since many more of the libraries it utilizes will be shared with other apps).
The question is, how much total RAM is that monster KDE desktop taking up?
Of course, if you're using KDE already, then you're absolutely right, konq
Re:innovation? (Score:5, Informative)
But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.
I'm a power user. I routinely switch between Camino, Safari, Firefox, and IE under CrossOver as I'm browsing different sites and designing web pages. But for my friends who aren't power users and want something that "just works", I always recommend Firefox. It's safer than IE and has a few nice features that they'll appreciate, but is still simple and most importantly, is going to work on 99% of the sites they visit. Safari, Opera, Konqueror, and others all have compatibility problems.
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Every competitor except IE, Mr. +5 Informative.
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You're a whole new brand of naive if you think that FF is more compatible out there than IE. While IE may not be compatible with the hardcore standards, it is more compatible with websites, since those websites know the market share, and specifically cater to IE.
Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? People used to say that Service Pack 6 for NT4 was RedHat.
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Re:Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tuesday? (Score:5, Funny)
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Minimum tab size (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Minimum tab size (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Minimum tab size (Score:5, Informative)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButto
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidt
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TabMixPlus RC (Score:3, Informative)
RC1 of new TabMixPlus version (with FF 2.0 support) is already available.
Good news for me.
Hey Folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Folks,
They're both free apps under Windows! How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare? In fact, if FF were to take over it might actually benefit MS. How? IE has been their worst blackeye of the past couple of years. More problems with than than everything else. If MS could make all the bad IE press go away, don't you think that would be a positive? I realize this is like suggesting to Apple to let Dell build their hardware, but does that make it a bad idea? As long as FF adheres to Open Standards, everyone can compete with web-sites equally with it.
Re:Hey Folks (Score:5, Insightful)
If all the people use Firefox, there won't be that many IE-only applications. This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems, which usually means that people stop using Microsoft software. Microsoft's strategy is to force people to stick with their system. Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?
Re:Hey Folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.
Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?
There are plenty of possible reasons:
* It's easier
* It lets you do stuff that you consider useful/necessary/cool but that isn't in the spec
* Not Invented Here syndrome
* As you suggest, lock-in
* They're arrogant enough to think they know best and big enough to get away with it
Reason to remain on Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as there are web sites that are built for IE (important stuff like online banking) this is a reason for people to stay with IE and Windows. I hear it all the time. As IE looses more marketshare, companies are compelled to think about shutting out potential customers. That will lead to their web sites being compatible to web standards. That will make one less rason for people to switch away from windows. That again will lead to some chair throwing in Seattle.
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Listen up, it works like this. If IE had close to 100% market share (as it did in the past) lazy web developers would only develop sites that ran properly when viewed in IE. Now that it has dropped to around 80%, web developers must make their sites compatible with all browsers.
This means that when I view these sites on my linux machine they actually work! It effectively removes one barrier to switching my OS. Now if only the game companies would release linux versions I could put linux on all my machines
Re:Hey Folks (Score:5, Insightful)
plus it's an anchor to hold people to their products.
how many people you know have computers only to check e-mail and browse the web ? if all these people switch to firefox, how soon they'll realize they can use FF running in linux, freebsd, mac, etc ?
what MS wants is joe sixpack to think that "internet == internet explorer" so they can keep shoveling windows on the unsuspecting masses
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Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Starts without maximizing itself to the full PC screen area. Always leaves space available. In contrast SeaMonkey correctly occupies the full PC screen area when starting (but SeaMonkey makes me create a new profile except for once.). FF thinks its full screen according to its maximize/window button but is mistaken.
2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ [webstandards.org]
Those are my FF issues. What are yours?
Thanks,
Jim Burke
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Those are my FF issues. What are yours?
Definitely its memory usage.
Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement (Score:5, Informative)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-
Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement (Score:5, Informative)
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full screen (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox has always left the toolbars around to eat up valuble screen real estate. The application goes full screen, but not the web page.
If firefox wanted to 1-up IE, they could make the toolbars autohide, and then even make the scrollbar autohide. Then it would be true full screen. How's that for marketing speak?
But in all honesty, this is a feature I would enjoy.
Re:Two of my prayers for FireFox Improvement (Score:5, Funny)
And that's just *nothing* compared with all the goodness we're putting into Firefox 4! Why do it now when you can wait a few years?
But where can I get my IceWeasel 2.0 ? -- NT (Score:4, Funny)
Here's hoping. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's hoping. (Score:4, Interesting)
Market? What market? (Score:5, Insightful)
This has gotta be one of the weirder (mis)uses of the term "market". After all, the competing "products" aren't for sale, and a "market" is usually a place where people sell things.
Of course, it can be difficult to establish a market when the "market leader" does the ultimate price-war thing and gives its product out for free. They did kill Netscape Corp, of course, but somehow they still didn't capture the "market".
There are some bizarre (bazarre?) economic theories at work here, I think.
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Most ordinary users aren't even aware of the browser wars. It's mostly irrelevant to them. As long as they can surf the web they don't give a crap whether they click on a big "E" icon or or an icon of a curled up little fox to get there.
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If I could run every intraweb site/application on Firefox, I could convert my desktop to Linux. If I could run Linux, most of the rest of the company could, too. Most businesses don't play games, use photoshop, or some obscure DVD-ripping software that is only available on Windows. Most businesses are stuck on Windows due to the Office stack (which is getting to be replacable) and IE-based applications. Where the business machines go, the home users will follow.
Ye
One-time importing from SessionSaver? (Score:2)
It turns out that SessionSaver doesn't work with Firefox 2.0, and it doesn't really need to because Firefox 2.0 has a session saver feature built in. I have several dozen pages open, and I'm wondering: is there any convenient way to bring those pages forward? Basically I just w
FireFox still rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Few days ago I installed IE 7. I know, installing brand new MS software is a bad idea. But I'm reinstalling this OS soon anyway, so I wanted to give it a try. I opened the same tabs in the browser. Some of them didn't have my cookies, so slightly different pages loaded. But to my surprise, IE7 was taking up over 400MB of RAM. That's almost 3 times as much as Firefox. It got sluggish compared to Firefox. (I have a gig of RAM in a decently fast computer)
I'm sticking with Firefox. I'll test out 2.0 when it comes out, and baring bugs or bloat, I'll be using it as my main browser on all 3 computers I use.
m
Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been using the 2.0 betas since they were publicly available, and have to say it's a big improvement. The individual tab closing button (it's nice...just give it a shot), the spell checking, improvements in the preferences interface....all around, a very nice job!
Who cares? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm a web developer (Score:4, Interesting)
should we care to support Firefox 1.5 now?
We know we'll have to support IE6 for years to come, even IE5. But Firefox users typically upgrade their browser quickly.
So: do I check my sites in FF 1.5? Do I even keep it?
Before you tell me "but they all render perfectly and the same": it's not true. I keep Firefox 1.07 for this reason here, since it handles quite a bit of elements/CSS in a different manner (even clearing floats differs a little in some cases).
There's also lots of bugs fixed in 1.5, but not in 1.07. And there's also new oddball behaviours in 1.5 not present in 1.07...
FF has 10% market share. I'm just split if it's worth it going into so much detail.. maybe I'll just support 1.5 for a few months and move to 2.0.
Please share your opinion.
Re:I'm a web developer (Score:5, Informative)
Fx 1.5 uses Gecko 1.8
Fx 2 uses Gecko 1.8.1, so a much smaller change (as in no new feature in HTML/CSS, just bug fixes I think). The new features are in SVG (textPath support), JavaScript (1.7) and Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]
Fx 3 will be the next big jump to Gecko 1.9, with the reflow that will fix Acid 2 and incremental layout bugs, plus more CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 support.
The elephant in the room... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, 640K should be enough for any web browser!
Firefox 2.0 Themes (Score:4, Informative)
IE7's Zoom / Magnifier.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But I do some website testing and as a result felt it was in my interests to install IE7 now that it is released and see what its like.
Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?) but the one thing I do really like is the new magnifier feature for web pages. It just works really rather well and seems to handle most pages well.. and doesn't break formatting at all on any site I tried it on. It even scaled up Flash movies to 400% without making my machine die on its backside.
So certainly for people with sight issues, it'd be hard not to reccomend!
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Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?)
One could say a similar thing about FF 2.0.
Restore session after crash and individual tab closing buttons - both have been in Galeon for some time...
While true innovation is admirable, improving by learning from others is also a good thing. The users benefit, the "ecosystem" is improved overall.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
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Re:YAY! (Score:5, Informative)
I find "Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future. There are also JavaScript 1.7 [mozilla.org] which makes JavaScript more Pythonic, SVG [mozilla.org] support, and several other features.
Re:YAY! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:YAY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Informative)
Is this a non-standard attribute?
We wanted web pages to control the spellchecking defaults to some degree. For example, webmail applications will want to automatically turn it on for subject lines, even though it is normally off for <input> elements.
We discussed with the WHATWG web standards group to come up with the attribute. I'm not sure about the status of this in any of their specs, as I'm not sure there was any strong consensus. That's one of the problems coming out with a new feature not currently supported in any other browser or mentioned in any standards.
- Brett (Firefox spellcheck contributor)Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's not like people were getting a hard time with IE6, despite it's handicapped CSS handling, for instance.
Re:YAY! (Score:4, Funny)
U ar right.
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Re:Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Also, did Mozilla say they invented it themselves, or is the writer getting things wrong? Answer that before you place blame.
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FACT: OPERA DID NOT INVENT TABBED BROWSING! (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing [wikipedia.org]
Re:IE 7 Quick Tabs (Score:4, Informative)
Omniweb has had it for a little while, here's a screenshot [omnigroup.com].