Firefox 2.0 RC3 Released

midkay writes "Firefox 2.0 RC3 has just been released. The release notes cover all the changes since the first release candidate, but RC3 appears to have a new Windows installer and more security in the extensions aspect, among a few other things."

Ungrateful Bitching

After reading this list, I must say that there are more than a few features I don't care about. That's not to say other people don't need them, it's just that I'm not going to benefit from any of these yet. In fact, the only reason I'll upgrade is because it's so easy.

That said, I wish they would take care of these problems [mozilla.org] at some point. I know on the current Firefox, you can take measures [freerepublic.com] to restrict its size but I think it starts to thrash when I go to a largely intensive Flash site. I would rather it not steadily accrue memory as I use it through the day and visit sites that use Flash extensively. I know that Flash is a plug-in and this is one of the leading causes of memory problems in Firefox [mozillazine.org]. But it's the only extension/plug-in I use and it's so I can see average websites, I don't do anything special or extraordinary with it. You'll probably be able to convince me that this is Flash's fault yet I don't quite see the same effects in IE. Conspiracy? Well, I'm all ears and happy if it is.

Maybe it's the fact that I have between 5 and 10 tabs open at a time. Although I'm good at closing them, sometimes the memory doesn't seem to be freed up. Maybe that's not Firefox's fault and it's these shady sites (like Slashdot) that allocate resources that can't be freed? Maybe this is an unavoidable problem and IE 7 will experience the same problems--I'm not sure but we'll see I guess. What should worry Firefox proliferation advocates is that I'm willing to try out IE 7 when Windows forces it on my machine just to see if I can use it all day without having it blow up a couple times due to memory leaks.

So this features list has some intriguing points but the one that would make me squeal like a giddy school girl would be:

• Large Amount of Memory Issues Fixed.

It's not a feature but it means the world to me.

So, in the end, I hope that the development efforts of Firefox 2 are spent implementing better memory management and control instead of introducing more features. More features are probably a lot more fun to develop and I know I get this for free so I'm not in any position to bitch. But if you want to make me an I'm-going-marry-Firefox fanboy, fix the memory leaks that plague the occasional user--I'm not saying all of them, just the ones that large percentages of your users probably experience.

Does anyone else experience memory issues with Firefox? Does anybody know if development efforts for Firefox 2 have included memory management? I can't seem to find any record of that online.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

Dozens of memory leaks have been fixed in Firefox 2. A memory benchmark shows Firefox 2 consumes less memory than IE 7 or Opera 9 [mozillazine.org].

If you're still seeing a memory problem in Firefox 2, what you should do is describe steps to reproduce the problem so the bug can be reported and fixed [dbaron.org].

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

How are people gauging Windows memory consumption for these different applications? I don't think Task Manager is really telling the whole story.

If you want to see a neat memory trick with Opera 9, try browsing for a while, opening a bunch of tabs, etc. Open up Task Manager and note what it reports Opera is using, probably in the 30 to 70 MB range. Leaving all the Opera tabs open, click on Opera's "minimize window" button. Watch as Task Manager decides Opera's memory consumption has fallen into the single-digit MB range. Open Opera's window up from the taskbar again, and note that its memory consumption rises, but only to a fraction of its previous high.

I have no idea what this means. The most important thing I know about Windows' memory management is that it's so crazy-complicated that it's beyond my understanding.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

What's happening is that Opera 9 is swapping out memory from RAM to disk when you minimize the Opera window. To see the total memory usage (both in RAM and on disk) look at the VM Size column in the Windows Task Manager.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

I can't help but take this information with a grain of salt considering the website that this forum thread originates from.

Better yet, run the benchmark yourself and see what numbers you get. There's no reason to take anyone's word that Firefox uses so little memory. See for yourself.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

After reading this list, I must say that there are more than a few features I don't care about.

I jsut upgarded adn for smoe resaon firrefox uednerlines everyhting in red! WROST FAETURE EVAR!

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

I'm just waiting for drag-and-drop tabs so I can reorder my tab order.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but if there's a red circle with an arrow in the upper right of your Firefox window, click it and update. My Firefox allows me to drag and drop tabs to reorder them. I think I've been able to do that since version 1.5. What I'm using:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

Unless you're joking, I think this feature has already been implemented.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

If you hold shift you can drag folders. I don't know why they decided on that idea.

Re:Ungrateful Bitching

you're 0.0.0.2 behind. Update. =]

What about extensions?

I do not want t try out this release becasuse all my extensions do not work, and Firefox without those particular extensions is not worth the effort. However, I applaud their coding effort.

Gonna wait out the RCs

I installed RC2 when it came out and it completely wiped out my bookmarks in 1.5. To top that off, the tab functionality was completely broken. I think I'll wait till after the RCs.

Why...

...is this on Slashdot? This is almost like reporting on a nightly build. Remind me when it actually goes final.

Here are some great, optimized ppc/intel builds...

They are updated constantly and for my power book g4, they actually load around 2 times faster than the standard Firefox.

http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/ [furbism.com]

A little prettier.

Although not exclusive to RC3, I'd like to say that Firefox 2's UIis cleaner and fits in better with the more "friendly" GUIs out there, such as OS X and Ubuntu.

Not "new" in RC3

It's a bit obvious from the number of major additions described, but the "phishing protection" and "new Windows Installer" are just new features of 2.0, which were already in earlier release candidates. Compare the announcements of RC3 [mozilla.org] and RC2 [mozilla.org] on the developer blog.

The release notes page itself seems a bit misleading, since they specifically talk about "Firefox 2 RC3" even in places where they mean Firefox 2 - perhaps someone saved time with a search & replace.

--

So while this announcement probably means they fixed bugs and are another step closer to the final release, the major features aren't news.

WHy a new installer for Windows?

In the release notes they say:

New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.

What were the "long standing issues" that effected the old Windows installer? I've never really had any problems with it so I'm just a little curious about what was so bad about it that it required a new tool to get the job done.

Re:WHy a new installer for Windows?

Why they went to the trouble of a new installer and don't create a msi installer for Windows I don't know.

Making proper MSI packages, at least with Microsoft's Orca tool, is a pain in the butt. Nullsoft installers are much easier to create and much easier to deploy as silent installations on large networks, unless of course the tool you're using doesn't support executables and only supports MSI packages.

Biggest problem with firefox...

Memory consumption, for one. I've had situations where, upon running the app FRESH, it's shit all over 70 megs of my memory - on RC3. And on /. alone. Opera in the same environment only uses ~30, and even IE, heaven forbid, uses less. Although RC3 does look mighty swanky, I'll take Opera's modular approach to aesthetics any day - let's just hope the gents from Norway get those compatibility problems taken care of (infinitely expanding pages, anyone?).

Some nice new features (no, I didn't RTFA):

-auto spellcheck (GREAT idea, especially for your typical slashdotter)

-session saving (although Opera beat it to the punch like, well, everything else(aww snap -1 troll))

-security updates... ?

Finding the 2.0 Compatible Extensions

A guy has created a handy searchable list of the extensions / Add-ons that are compatible with Firefox 2.0:

Here is the link: Bill's Big List of Firefox 2.0 Compatible Extensions [extensionhunter.com]

IceWeasel 2?

I guess this will be what will eventually become IceWeasel 2?

Thunderbird

What about thunderbird, how is development coming on that?

I've already seen issues with Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 on WinXP 64 bit, you can't use the right click send to, mail receipient option.

Tab close buttons...

and each tab will now have a close tab button.and each tab will now have a close tab button.

I seriously hope they have changed the preferences this time so that is easy to change back to the pre 2.0 behavior (its doable but its quite a hassle - using about::config to enter a new option that does not exist is not really that user friendly).

God, having to move your mouse to close a multitude of windows just UBER sucks.. the last beta I couldn't even change the behavior to full pre 2.0 behavior - when I had less windows than what filled the horisontal screensize, the closing button would be at the right end of the tabs, not at the right end of the entire firefox window.. talk about sucky inconsistent user interface.

-pug

RC3 Totally broken for me!

I was using RC2 which worked alright, although I actually preferred the way older versions did some things, like I don't like the way you have to scrolling through tabs now, instead of just making them smaller.

But with RC3 any URL I enter is opened in the first tab - its impossible to open pages in other tabs it seems. I'm amazed how this kind of massive bug made it into a release candidate.

Faster?

It seems that page loads are even snappier in RC3 than they were in RC2?

12 hours

12 hours of always up useage...(I have the flu..and can't sleep)

Youtube, Veoh... lots of other sites.

It's using 90 Megs now, which I'm pretty sure would be 250+ megs idle under previous versions.

And this is on XP Pro.

still one of the best browsers I know

I like it, yes it may have memory leaks, some browsers may be faster, but overall it is very stable (os x, linux and win versions in use), in an easy way extendable and at least for me , fast enough. The new version doesn't have that many changes, but what is it that you can change? Afterall it is a webbrowser and not an armed flying container ship on a red cross mission.

The restore session thingi works really nicely and the "list all tabs" button is a big help, as I have always >15 tabs open.

So, thanks a lot, whoever has worked on it

python swallows javascript

What good is the yield/next iterator?

Every example that I've seen shows how to convert one loop into two loops totalling more statements. Can anyone explain to me how it makes my JS code simpler?

It still doesn't respect my themes

Unless I absolutely, positively have to have it, I'll not be installing it on my PC.

* It doesn't respect my themes.
* It's still useless without Tab Mix Plus

I'll pass for now.

Why I personally like Firefox 2

I've been using the release candidates for nearly a month now, starting with the first candidate of RC1 (yes, they do release release candidates of release candidates ;)). There were some things that took a bit of getting used to, but within an hour, I was loving it.

1/ It seems faster. It also has a MUCH better memory footprint.
2/ Session-saving and undo close tabs is now built-in. This is great, because I used to get this from an extension, and that extension was a horrible memory leaker (this might contribute to #1).
3/ New tab management. I often have lots of tabs open, and it's nice to be able to scroll the tab bar now or to get a drop-down of all the open tabs. The close button on each tab is annoying (that's what middle-click is for) and the wider minimum tab width is wasteful, but both of those settings can be changed in about:config.
4/ Speaking of about:config, there is a new hidden setting that lets you disable compatibility checking for extensions. Oftentimes, an extension marked for 1.5 will work just fine for 2.0, but the author hadn't updated the extension's manifest to say that, so FF2 would refuse that extension. Not anymore. :) No more need for NTT or for manually bumping up the maxVersion of such extensions.
5/ Button to restart Firefox after installing an add-on. And the new session saving kicks in to restore all your tabs and even what you have filled into forms after the restart. Makes installing stuff much less painful.
6/ Spell check! No more copying-and-pasting into word to check for typos.
7/ Better RSS management
8/ Better password auto-fill
9/ I personally love the look of the new theme. The old tabs looked rather ugly on Windows Classic. Now combined with ClassicFox [ktechcomputing.com], Firefox looks stunning on Windows Classic. But that's a matter of personal taste.

Personally, I didn't care much for the other features like anti-phishing (I have it disabled 'cuz I think I can protect myself, but it's good for Joe Sixpack), live titles, or the search suggest (which I also have disabled). Anyway, at the risk of sounding like some sappy endorsement, I really love Firefox 2. Once I got used to it and tweaked the settings, I can't believe how I ever managed to get along with 1.5.

copy and paste tables, old problem not solved

the most anoying bug form me is one of the oldest, if you have a table, select, copy and paste it on an excel (or OO) spreadsheet, it will put everything in one cell instead of respecting the cells content.

this bug is 4 YERS OLD!!! (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374 50)

if ie7 adresses his problems, it's probable that I will go back to it.

"un-fix" tabbed browsing?

Does anyone have an extension or a way to "un-fix" the tabbed browsing changes? I actually prefer the original method of tabs getting smaller.

Re:"un-fix" tabbed browsing?

Yes!

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:c onfig_Entries [mozillazine.org]

Specifically, look at:
browser.tabs.closeButtons
browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

Tab Mix Plus?

It is a must have yet it doesn't work with FF 2. Anyone knows a working alternative?

I tried FF 2 a few days ago and gave up because of this reason.

Wikipedia Support for FF2.0 Added

I recently enabled support for the new Firefox 2.0 auto-suggest search engine feature on all Wikimedia servers.
Wikipedia will provide suggestions to your search as you type in the search box. To enable, visit any Wiki-site (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/ [wikipedia.org] ), and click the Engine Selector button (to the left of the search box). Click "Add Wikipedia". Afterwards, when you start typing in the search box while having Wikipedia engine selected, titles will automatically appear. Sometimes a FF restart is needed for the feature to begin to work. If you have any questions or suggestions, leave me a comment at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Yurik [wikipedia.org] . At some point more relevant search will be implemented as well.

Re:Still a memory hog?

It's not a bug, it's a feature :)

Re:Who cares?

Your boat has a hole in it.

Re:Firefox 3 too

It is not an alpha of Firefox 3, that has not been released yet. It's just the trunk is listed as version 3.0a1 that'll eventually be 3.0a1 but it is not there yet and won't be for a while

Re:Who cares?

A script kiddie rules your computer.

Re:What happened to the db-based bookmark system?

It has been pushed back to 3.0.

Re:What happened to the db-based bookmark system?

Places [mozilla.org] was too buggy to make it into Firefox 2. It will be in Firefox 3 though.