Mozilla Firefox 2 Alpha 1 Available

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'"

Re:But...

[fermizhang]

It's a bad experience swithing between 1.5 and 2.0 a1...seriously...

Re:SQLite

[G)-(ostly]

I forsee no problems. It's a surprisingly minimal addition to a software package, and the problems with Firefox's memory management are very likely in unrelated modules.

"SQL" engines tend to evoke images of hulking software packages like PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle, but those things do an awful lot more than the typical desktop app needs, and the SQLite engine is much, much simpler in order to meet that lesser demand.

So Far So Good ....

[abhinavmodi]

Works fine on Windoze even after 2 hours .. No crashes or memory hogs. In addition, it is co-existent with Firefox.

what's really new?

[scarlac]

TFA doesn't say anything about new exciting features. I wonder what made them decide it to be 2.0 alpha instead of 1.6? Was it just so that they could reach the planned milestone?
I read something about they were trying to optimize the renderengine, so it could support cairo and have hardware acceleration... no promises was made, but they expected it to be in 2.0 (correct me if I'm wrong).

I guess the more comprehensive changelog (which isn't available yet) will reveal some more interesting changes - perhaps some nice performance enhancements?

ACID 2

[Agelmar]

For those who are wondering - the 2.0 alpha build renders the ACID 2 test exactly the same as Mozilla 1.7.12. (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html #top [webstandards.org])

I don't personally think that the ACID 2 test is the be-all end-all test, but I know the question will be asked, hence the post.

Re:SQLite

[LurkerML]

http://www.sqlite.org/ [sqlite.org]

The website says 250KiB fully configured. That is tolerable, i think.

Re:I hope they don't change the tabs too much

[night_flyer]

Open Bookmarks, right click and Sort By Name

Re:Will Firefox 2.0 support the latest standards?

[lithvanguard]

Acid2 Test? http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ [webstandards.org]

Re:But...

[Adult film producer]

I hope so, check out Ben Maurer's [blogspot.com] latest blog entry, near the bottom he talks a bit about this. Actually, the latest entry is quite informative about the new memory mapping features in the latest kernel.

Re:SQLite

[smooth wombat]

We all know that Firefox has had (and still has) a lot of memory issues.

We do? Funny, I've been running FF since the 0.8 days (Phoenix) and have never had any memory issue. In fact, I've never had any issue other than one mini-crash which forced me to use a default profile until I pulled up my old one. Further, I've installed FF on several different systems, including W98, and not one of those systems has ever had a memory issue.

Looking at the FF boards it appears the issue is not so much with FF but the multitude of extensions that people think they need to install.

Re:So Far So Good ....

[SimonH_1978]

In addition, it is co-existent with Firefox.


Kind of . . . it's disabled all of my extensions, even when I start FF instead of Bon Echo.

libstdc++

[calzplace]

Note that most FC4 machines out there will need the compat-libstdc++-33 package for the libstdc++.so.5 library. Just an FYI. :-)

Portable version just posted

[Anonymous Coward]

A portable version of this build was just posted for those that want to use this with a separate profile:
http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=417 [cybernetnews.com]

Re:SQLite

[bperkins]

Mu.

The memory usage problems have been related to the image cache. (I've heard that this is often caused by an old version of the adblock extension)

Using SQLite to store profile information will probably have little impact the memory usage problems people see.

Re:I hope they don't change the tabs too much

[laa]

Personally, I dislike all kind of autosort behaviour like the office feature of showing only recently used commands. Many (most?) people remember the positions of items and choose before reading the actual bookamark. If the sorted in some random way (like most recently used) then each item has to be read -- and you can't assume that people with a collage degree are able to read :)

Re:SQLite

[smittyoneeach]

You believe falsely. (Possibly you're thinking of BerkelyDB). http//sqlite.org [slashdot.org] has full disclosure, even describing the virtual machine and opcodes that drive this little ~300kb, mostly-ANSI '92 compliant wonder.

Combine a scripting language for end-user forms, and you've got everything MS Access wishes it could be.

Get Hipp. Get SQLite.

Screenshots

[MagPulse]

Here [osdir.com] and here [amanzi.co.nz].

Re:But...

[Pneuma ROCKS]

That's why it's called an alpha developer build. It's barely beginning active development. You cannot expect it to be stable. You cannot even expect it to be safe. This is not a beta or release candidate. It's meant only for testers and active developers. Use with extreme caution.

Re:That's all?

[Pneuma ROCKS]

It will be much more than that when Firefox 2 actually makes it out to the world. This is a very early build and according to the Roadmap [mozilla.org], it will be released near the third quarter of 2006. I'm guessing it will actually be a little later than that. I also found this Feature Brainstorming [mozilla.org] page, which seems to be closer to what's being planned for 2.0. I see a lot of new stuff.

Re:ACID 2

[nonpareility]

Firefox 2.0 is based off the 1.8 Gecko branch, just like Firefox 1.5 was [mozilla.org]. 1.5 uses 1.8.0, 2.0 will use 1.8.0.1, 3.0 will use 1.9. There shouldn't be much difference in terms of rendering pages between 1.5 and 2.0.

Re:SQLite

[MooUK]

Adblock itself has had, and still does have, memory leak problems. The original maintainer shows no inclination to deal with them. It's generally recommended to use Adblock Plus, which has fixed most of these problems and also has useful new features, such as whitelisting. The maintainer of Adblock Plus has also shown strong interest in debugging and fixing any problems, including memory leaks.

There's a few problems that can cause leaks in FF itself which have been fixed in the main trunk. Almost all of those fixes are supposed to be included in 2.0.

Gecko version

[jonasj]

1.5 uses 1.8.0, 2.0 will use 1.8.0.1, 3.0 will use 1.9

Almost:

1.5 uses 1.8.0, 1.5.0.1 uses 1.8.0.1, 1.5.0.2 will use 1.8.0.2, etc.

2.0 will use 1.8.1.

3.0 will use 1.9.

Re:SQLite

[Tezkah]

Yes, here are the instructions [pierceive.com] for using with Adblock plus.

Re:SQLite

[zerblat]

Firefox already includes a database, mork, which is used for e.g. storing history. The problem with mork is that it's a completely braindead format (it's text based, but definately not human readable), it's practically unmaintained and it's almost imposible for third party programs to read.

So, this will make all the data that Firefox stores accesable to others, and hopefully all the mork-related bugs will just disapear.

Known Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: [mozilla.org]

History and Bookmarks:

• There are significant issues with the user interface, including the history/bookmarks manager, the personal toolbar, the bookmarks menu, the bookmarks add/properties dialog, and livemarks. Many operations cause assets or other warnings, not everything updates properly, some operations don't work or are disabled.
• Can't export to bookmarks.html.
• Livemark loading locks up the browser.
• No sidebar-like functionality yet.
• Viewing all history is slow if you have a lot.
• All bookmarks with the same URI will have the same title/properties.
• The first run may take a few seconds to import the data from Firefox 1.0/1.5. There is no progress UI for this.

Extensions:

• When moving to Bon Echo from an earlier version of Firefox, some of your Extensions and Themes may be disabled. This is not an issue, but it may appear to be one (hence its listing here). For rationale, see "Extension and Themes" above.

Re:I hope they don't change the tabs too much

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't doing this just to get sorting algorithms. This actually improves things because right now there are a number of different formats that Firefox stores data in. Look at your bookmarks.html(HTML), cert8.db(Berkeley DB), formhistory.dat(mork... don't ask). Using sqlite reduces the amount of code for accessing all of these formats and provides some degree of uniformity. Getting data from sqlite is pretty easy(and much easier than the current situation) because we have dozens of language bindings and tools to do it with.

Yes I read the arguments against this is in AUP, but Firefox is an application that runs completely counter to most of what's in there. Firefox is never going to be a Unix application following the advice in AUP. It wants to be an operating sytem(or platform if you prefer), and not just an application.

Re:I hope they don't change the tabs too much

[cduffy]

This will also almost certainly kill any chance of reusage of bookmark data by other programs

Not at all. SQLite is extremely easy to use -- it has bindings for major scripting languages, and trivial queries can be run on the command line. I use the Python bindings in a number of my minor scripts, and it has frequently resulted in a massive performance improvement (as opposed to using flatfiles and writing the data-munging and analysis code myself).

For those who want multiple versions of Firefox

[zero0w]

If you want to try out the latest 2.0 alpha version of Firefox without affecting your current 1.x installation, that they can run along each other, then you can check out this homepage for further detail (I have tried it, the tricks works for Linux version as well):

Running multiple Firefox versions concurrently
http://www.jeroencoumans.nl/journal/multiple-firef ox-versions [jeroencoumans.nl]

Re:What is Bon Echo & FF2 Alpha does not updat

[jhermans]

BonEcho is the codename for Firefox 2, just like DeerPark was for Firefox 1.5. They're not using the name Firefox, otherwise people will claim various bugs and half-implemented features for Firefox, ignoring that it is an ALPHA release.

Re:SQLite

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

Why do people use adblock? Isn't that what the hosts file is for?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the Hosts file lines in Windows\system32\Drivers\etc\
think of it as a blacklist.
Windows won't allow those sites to connect to you, thus, No ADS!
If you are thinking, golly, that's alot of typing, my hosts file is 421k. You can copy paste from others off the internet.
that's one less process, smaller footprint, and speeds up browsing somewhat, as the ad connections aren't made so the crap isn't loaded.