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Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Alpha Peeking Out (Or Not)

Posted by Hemos on Mon Mar 20, 2006 08:05 AM
from the take-a-walk-on-the-wild-side dept.
Mozilla The Internet
anadgouda writes "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha is released. The links for download were not available directly on Mozilla.com website. Being Alpha, all features might not work and most of the plugins might not be compatible." Reading thru the comments, it appears there's some disparity as to whether or not this is actually just a naming scheme that they use; but let me reiterate that there has been no official announcement from Mozilla, so take with a giant grain of salt. Some good screenshots at OSdir.
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[+] Technology: Mozilla Firefox 2 Alpha 1 Available 327 comments
Mini-Geek writes "Code-named Bon Echo, the first Alpha of Firefox 2.0 is now officially available. You can download it at ftp.mozilla.org. From the article: 'Here are some new features in Bon Echo Alpha 1 that require feedback: Changes to tabbed browsing behavior, New data storage layer for bookmarks and history (using SQLlite), Extended search plugin format, Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions, Support for SVG text using svg:textPath'"
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Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Alpha Peeking Out (Or Not) 50 Comments More /

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  • Okay, seemingly little to no information about what comprises the new Firefox. For those who also might be curious, I have found these features [mozilla.org] described in a Firefox 2 Roadmap, but don't know if and how many of these made it to the new release.

    Anyone else have any links to release notes?, what's new in FF 2?

  • NOT released. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Myen (734499) on Monday March 20 2006, @08:09AM (#14956063)
    Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha NOT released.

    The nightlies are now branded 2.0 alpha because... well, for some odd reason they like to brand their CVS builds before things get released, to make sure the act of rebranding breaks nothing. IIRC that actually hit them way back and they got scared.

    Firefox 2.0 will be considered released when you see it on www.mozilla.org / www.mozilla.com / irc.mozilla.org

  • It's NOT released yet! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2006, @08:09AM (#14956064)
    Quote from Asa Dotler's blog [mozillazine.org]:
     
      When we make a new release, we'll say so. Please don't report new releases because someone checks in a change to the user agent or similar. If we're actaully doing a release, we'll announce it. Thanks.
      • It's called quality assurance. There needs to be someone in charge to avoid the scenario you describe: someone takes a buggy pre-alpha nightly, and distributes it as "Firefox 2.0".

        That would obviously be devastating for the project. I'm glad Mozilla.org is in charge, albeit the only thing really preventing the previous scenario is community respect.

      • Re:But isn't this all open source? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kjella (173770) on Monday March 20 2006, @09:30AM (#14956449) Homepage
        Isn't this all a community written thing? Can't someone just take all the source-code and say "It's released"? This is my version of the released Firefox.

        First off, the source code is there. But claiming it is a release (as in Mozilla.org's) when it is not is just misinformation. A minimum of honesty in advertising would say you've made your own fork of Firefox.

        Secondly, you don't need to give out source unless you give out binaries. So you could (though this is only realistic on smaller projects or those controlled by one company) say "When we make a new release, we'll release the source". I think Apple did that with their Safari browser.

        Third, the GPL doesn't change trademark law. You can take the code, but you can't release under the same trademarked name. You can make a clone like CentOS is of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but you can't release under the name itself.

        So when YOU make a release YOU'LL say so (presumably under another name, since Firefox is trademarked). It only gets stupid when other people is making release statements on behalf of someone else.

      • Re:But isn't this all open source? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymovs Coward (724746) on Monday March 20 2006, @09:48AM (#14956552)
        So how can they say "When WE make a new release, WE'LL say so"? I mean, who are they to say anything on what happens to this open code?

        You're welcome to make a release, but you can't call it Firefox. Firefox is a protected trademark [mozilla.org], as is Mozilla.

        Besides, that's not what the article said.

  • I was looking for the same thing as you, documentation about the features. You provided an interesting link, here's another one from the latest status meeting [mozilla.org] which includes the features, but a lot more :-)
  • Where's the link?

    Where would we be today if Linus came along and said, "Well guys, I'm working on a Minix clone and it's going to be totally k-rad, and I'll keep the development open to anyone who wants to help out, but you can't download it anywhere. Sry, kthxbye!" ?

    Not that the Firefox team is all that willing to let anyone just start developing the core stuff, but note the nick and try not to concentrate on that.
  • "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 alpha is released. The links for download were not available directly on Mozilla.com website. Being Alpha, all features might not work and most of the plugins might not be compatible."
    This is about half a step above gibberish.

  • Great job pushing out Bon Echo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suman28 (558822) <suman28&hotmail,com> on Monday March 20 2006, @08:15AM (#14956085)
    I tried it on my computer. I didn't see any significant changes, and as others have pointed out, there was not much information on what exactly went into this release, but great job in making advancements.

    • Obviously you didn't actually try it. The entire bookmarks and history systems have been rewritten, backend and frontend. Tabs have changed slightly to improve UE for new users. Plenty of other things have changed as well. That's not "no significant changes".

  • Why does each version of Firefox break plug-in and theme compatibility? I can maybe forgive SOME plug-ins but all of them? and THEMES!?!? WTF? There are plug-ins I used to use that ar still not compatible with 1.5. This is a MAJOR flaw with Firefox in my opinion. If you're going to tout the expandibility of Firefox as a major feature then youneed to make sure there's going to be at the very leat backwards compatibility for most plug-ins.
    • .. i can tell you that there is one thing that "breaks" most extensions: In the extension, you can specify a maximum version number under which the extension works. Normally, the extension developer sets it to a version he has personally tested (the actual release). Whit each version-bump, he retests and changes just the maximum version-number. If you want to do it yourself: get into the manifesto of the extension and search for this String "1.5" and replace 1.5 with a higher number.

    • Some of your extensions will continue to work properly in new versions. Others will not. That gives you a choice:

      1. Disable them all
      2. Let them all keep running and have some of them work, and have others break the browser entirely because they interact poorly with new features

      Which do you choose?

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

        by dolphinling (720774) on Monday March 20 2006, @08:52AM (#14956257) Homepage Journal

        That would be the case... if Firefox extensions needed to be compiled. Which they don't.

        Extensions are programmed in Javascript and XUL, and for some advanced ones, XBL. They don't need to be recompiled, because they don't need to be compiled in the first place. The fraction of a percent that have more demanding interaction with the host system don't even necessarily need to be recompiled, depending on how they hook in to the mozilla code.

        You'd be right for other programs, but that's not how Mozilla works.

      • Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Myen (734499)
        Actually, the overwhelming majority of extensions are not even compiled. They're pure XUL/JS/CSS/RDF. The maxVersion arc mentioned in the sibling is the reason. It's used to guard against the browser internals changing under them - and yes, pretty much most of the things you can usefully change are considered browser internals. :( Then there's also the things randomly being ripped out (cf. the bookmarks and history going away and being replaced by "Places")

        And as long as you do no use frozen interfaces (
  • Opera 8.5: http://www.opera.com/download/ [opera.com]

    Opera 9 Technology Preview 2: http://labs.opera.com/ [opera.com]
    Weekly builds of Opera 9 TP2: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/ [opera.com]
    Changelog for Opera 9 TP2: http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/w90p2.html [opera.com]

  • Please don't ruin tabbed browsing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by urdak (457938) on Monday March 20 2006, @08:27AM (#14956122)
    I can't believe that after Firefox actually implemented tabbed browsing *well*, people insist on ruining it in the name of "progress".

    The fact that firefox has just one "x" button that closes the current tab, rather then a close button per tab, is a *feature*, not a bug. Users of Lotus Notes, like myself, are all too familiar with what happens when each tab has a close button: you often click on the wrong one, and destroy the wrong tab! With Firefox 1.5's single tab close button, you can never accidentally close any tab: you can only close the tab you are now seeing.

    So I hope that if the "improvement" of having many close buttons makes it to FireFox 2, it will at least be configurable, so that users made miserable by the new feature could at least disable it.
    • For people who insist on needing an 'X' per tab: middle click on the tab closes it as well. And usually fairly quicker than clicking the 'X' because it works anywhere on the tab.
    • Well, the best solution is to have both options and then let the user decide on which to use, which is exactly what Opera does.

      Tools > Preferences > General > Pages > Show close button on each tab.

      Personally, I have a close button on each tab. And, in Opera, if I do accidentally close pages that I still wanted to use then restoring them is easy: either a couple of mouse clicks or a keyboard shortcut later and your pages are restored, with their repective browsing histories intact.

      Just one of the
    • I'm with you.

      I had the close on every tab through TabMix and I quickly turned it off, though with 'Undo Close Tab' the risk it mitigated.

    • You can also close a tab by right-clicking on it, and choosing "Close Tab." This works even if the tab that you want to close is not the one you're viewing.

    • Re:Please don't ruin tabbed browsing... (Score:5, Informative)

      by rbarreira (836272) on Monday March 20 2006, @08:53AM (#14956265) Homepage
      IE7 Beta 2 solves this by showing the close button in the tab, but only for the currently open tab - I'd say this is the second best solution after having the option on the preferences (which I haven't checked if IE has).
      • In Firefox trunk, the close button appears on every tab when there're only a few tabs. It appears only on the active tab when there're lots of tabs.

        Personally, I still prefer the behaviour in Firefox 1.5, where there's only one close button on the right. It's more efficient when I need to close multiple tabs. (aim, click, click, click vs. aim, click, aim, click, aim, click)
    • Yeah, a "feature" like this should be able to be turned off, as all the extra close buttons take up extra space on my screen that I don't need. Also, Even with it on, I'd want an "unclose" tab feature, so that you can open a tab back up if you accidentally close it.
      • Am I the only one that finds clicking the mousewheel to be a stupid way of middle clicking. It's right up there with pushing on the control sticks in XBox/PS2 as a button. It's hard to push these buttons without having the scroll wheel/joystick move. Most people aren't even aware you can use these as buttons. I think if you're going to have a third button on the mouse, it should be a real button.
  • There's a "portable" version available here:

    http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=411 [cybernetnews.com]

    Definitely a plus b/c it let's you avoid dealing w/profile incompatibilites/conversion between the different versions of firefox and instead stores it in the directory with the portable firefox program
    • Sir, you just made my day. I already had portable FF 1.5. All I did was copy the profile folder to the 2.0a1 one, and presto...all settings...all extensions were migrated. Of course, to make them "compatible" I had to use Nightly Tools Extension. The only one that "broke" so far was tabbrowser extensions, and I'm sure it's going to be updated pretty soon...
  • What I would like to see in 2.x is some MNG support. It's about time people moved away from animated GIFs as the situation is rapidly getting out of hand. On some forums, animated sig images can be up to 500KB in size. There's demand for a better animated standard, and why MNG support was dropped from Firefox 1.5 is beyond me.

    Also, Javascript needs an overhaul. If XUL is ever going to take off, it can't rely on a language that doesn't even have a "class" keyword or equivilent.

    It would be nice if the Mozilla
  • Now, I'd expect this amount of excitement over, say, a BETA release, but for an Alpha? Why bother? I like checking out new things and having the latest and greatest, but I think I'll wait for one that the developers at least hope will be functional enough to release. I'm not a developer, I don't need to be digging out a Tinderbox version to satisfy my needs.

    Oh, and for informational purpsoses:

    Firefox = official public release

    DeerPark = developer's copies, optimized and/or individualized bulids, and al

    • There are two reasons I can think of:

      1. Mozilla puts the release out so users can report bugs. Unless you already have a Bugzilla account, I suggest you wait until a release candidate is out.
      2. If Firefox 1.5.0.1 is crashing so often or leaking memory so badly for you that you need to restart Firefox every day or so, you might want to try 2.0 Alpha to see if it fixes your problems. Of course, if it doesn't you should report the problem (see #1).

      End users generally should not be downloading alphas becau

    • Reasons? Yes, just a few.

      1) You're helping Mozilla.org find bugs.
      2) Because you can.

    • There's reason for some people to use it - otherwise who is going to find and fix the bugs, or make the extensions compatible?

      But for most users, there is no good reason for them to switch. This will be (it's not actually released yet) a release aimed at developers. In particular, for developers who want to try out the new bookmarks/history back-end stuff.

      I certainly can't think of a good reason for posting on slashdot about an alpha release that's not even released yet...
    • 1: Losing compatibility with extensions
      2: Losing stability/higher memory usage (come to think of it, this isn't really a change)
      3: Bugs galore - possible security issues?

      Repeat after me:

      1 Compatibility issues are *normal* in alpha software. That's what they release it for: to find problems.

      2 You *shall not* evaluate stability, performance nor memory usage in an Alpha stage software. Jeez, it has debugging code in it!

      3 You *shall not* install Alpha or Beta software in a production environment, or on

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