Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released

Mini-Geek writes "Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 has been released. As with previous 1.5.0.x patches, 1.5.0.3 can be downloaded as a small, incremental download. From the article: 'This update fixes a publicly disclosed denial of service weakness. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this version. The bugfixes previously planned for Firefox 1.5.0.3 were shifted to 1.5.0.4, and a quick update was released shortly after the recent to address the publicly reported issue.'"

Flaw Found In Firefox 1.5.0.3

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am just kidding, right now, it seems that this is likely to be the case given current Firefox trends.

The question is; Is Firefox more bug ridden because it has developed enough features to make it large and cumbersome or, is Firefox bug ridden because the developers are rushing it out too quickly, or is Firefox bug ridden because it was poorly coded from the beginning and it is only now that the bugs are being found?

No matter what the answer, the fact is that Firefox is bug ridden to the point that people aren't too kean to use security as an argument against IE 7.

Re:Weird Firefox behaviour when typing

[cs96and]

Go to Options->Advanced->General and deselect "Begin finding when you begin typing"

Re:Yet again I was interrupted while I work

[bunratty]

I was happily reading a webpage when this popped up. I want it to only check for updates during a new tab or window, NOT when I'm just sitting there browsing or typing or watching something.

Bug 323041 - Software update dialog steals focus [mozilla.org]

Re:Encouragement!

[rakjr]

Not 100% correct. Micro$oft frequently has patches which state, 'only use this patch if you are suffering from the following computing affliction.' Ok, not that exactly, but it is just a variation on, 'if it is not broken, do not minor patch it.'

Re:Incremental patch?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/ [daemonology.net]

Re:Ooooo...

[AKAImBatman]

The book of Mozilla has changed for each product released. There's a Wikipedia page that gives the history here [wikipedia.org]. An official page containing all the passages to date can be found here [mozilla.org]. And in case you're too lazy to click, here they are by browser:

Netscape:

And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.

from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

Mozilla:

And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.

from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
(Red Letter Edition)

Firefox:

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Re:Can someone fix the damn javascript console

[tobinibot]

You should be using Firebug https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/ [mozilla.org]. More information here http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/ [joehewitt.com]. And coming soon in the next version, a Javascript debugger. I'm been using it, and it works great.

Re:Just a minor revision

[Kilz]

So, that removes security as a reason for using Firefox. Speed never was a reason, and it certainly isn't efficient memory usage. That leaves what, exactly, as a reason for using Firefox over Opera, or even IE7? That it's open source? That's a pretty lousy reason

IE7? You have to be joking right? Its still in beta and relies a lot on IE6 code. You know the code that recently had 2 giant security flaws exposed, and they along with others have not been patched. Better to stay with Firefox, at least when holes are found they are patched faster than any other browser that I know of.

Re:Incremental patch?

[mlefevre]

Because the downloaded file contains the differences between the binaries, and the updater leaves the rest of the binary file as it was.

See http://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:MAR [mozilla.org] and http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/ [daemonology.net] for more.

Re:Just a minor revision

[93 Escort Wagon]

"So, that removes security as a reason for using Firefox. Speed never was a reason, and it certainly isn't efficient memory usage. That leaves what, exactly, as a reason for using Firefox over Opera, or even IE7? That it's open source? That's a pretty lousy reason."

People like you who have never really understood what a security nightmare IE still is probably never will - so I won't waste your time on that. But you (probably intentionally) totally ignored proper rendering and standards support. IE7 fixes a few of the glaring issues (e.g. PNG transparency), but it really isn't much of a step forward toward CSS 2 or 3 compliance. If you want to see a simple demonstration of this for yourself, try playing with an object's opacity sometime.

Portable Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released

[CritterNYC]

For the portable folks, I updated Portable Firefox 1.5.0.3 to the new release as well:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/por table_firefox [portableapps.com]

Also added in a few new features in the recent releases:

• Split Apps/Data directories for easy backups
• Local homepages (for users of TiddlyWiki, etc)
• Self-extracting packages (easy install, only 4.8MB download)
• Few bug fixes

Re:unicode symbols fail to display FF1.5.0.3 for M

[Dis*abstraction]

Since you're on a Mac, why are you using Firefox when you could be using Safari instead? Honest question.

People accustomed to PC-world mediocrity may find Firefox satisfactory for their tastes, but Firefox pales in comparison to the legions of Cocoa-native Mac browsers. Even Jon Hicks, the talented graphic designer who designed Firefox's logo and icon, switched to Safari a while back after getting fed up with Firefox's sluggish performance, not to mention its wretched user interface and terrible rendering. He now maintains this site for extensions to Safari [pimpmysafari.com]. Hope this helps.

Re:Weird Firefox behaviour when typing

[harryk]

thats an incorrect solution, as both functions should work. I've had this same problem when using Sprint PCS's website, pretty routinely. I think this is a page loading issue, as it doesn't recognize that the text is in form, as opposed to search strings.

But yes, I've had the problems too.

harryk

Re:Weird Firefox behaviour when typing

[drinkypoo]

Yes I just got this problem after updating. It happens when I type an apostrophe or a slash into a form field, or even when I paste one. I also cannot use the up and down arrow keys in form fields now. The box for begin finding when you begin typing is turned OFF, so that is not the problem.