Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review. It is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel. DesktopLinux.com has posted a list of the changes along with a few quick screen grabs. Apparently, the download can be found on Mozilla's ftp site."

Portable version

[xorowo]

For those of you that want to test this out without installing it, consider a portable version of Firefox 2 Beta 2 [cybernetnews.com].

Portable version also available

[.killedkenny]

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/08/31/download-t he-portable-version-of-firefox-2-beta-2/ [cybernetnews.com]

Re:One question before I try this out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I downloaded 2.0b2 and installed it alongside 1.5.0.6 and played with it for about 10 minutes. I like that you can reopen a recently closed tab. I don't like how Adblock and Flashblock are no longer compatible with it. I uninstalled it and am back to 1.5.0.6 without any problems.

Re:I hope they improved the reliability

[bigbigbison]

A beta was unstable and not ready for daily use? That's umpossible!

Seriously, beta 1 was unstable for me as well until I realized that it was because of a couple extensions that I had installed with the nightly tester tool that were crashing it. Since I removed those I haven't had any trouble with beta 1.

Re:Tabs will be broken

[.killedkenny]

-Red X (Close Button)-
Some people were frustrated that Mozilla added a close button to every tab which resulted in an extension that removed those close buttons. Well, you no longer need to get an extension to remove those pesky X's, in fact there are multiple options that you can do now: display a close button on the active tab only, display close buttons on all tabs, don't display any close buttons, and display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). Here is how you can customize the placement:

      1. Start Firefox.
      2. In the Address Bar type "about:config" and press Enter.
      3. Right-Click and select New->Integer.
      4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter "browser.tabs.closeButtons" (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
      5. Now you need to select the type of close button you want: 0 - display a close button on the active tab only, 1 - display close buttons on all tabs, 2 - don't display any close buttons, and 3 - display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). After entering the value corresponding to your preference press OK again.

Re:One question before I try this out...

[_xeno_]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Sure, if you make sure you use a new profile and never run Firefox 2.0 beta2 using your old profile.

If you don't understand what I just said, then stick with "no." Portable versions of Firefox 2.0beta2 may coexist as long as they don't use the standard profile directory. Unless you're absolutely sure that your existing profile won't be touched, it's best to assume not to.

In any case, if you're going to try out Firefox 2.0beta2, you should definitely make a backup of your profile.

Re:One question before I try this out...

[LiquidCoooled]

When it installs, does it create its own beta profile without personal configurations, or does it attempt to migrate your existing profile, or even more disturbingly, does it use your live 1.5 profile?
I realise the app exists in its own place, but the profile is more important.

Re:Tabs will be broken

[ZeroExistenZ]

What about the middle button-click on the tab? (mostly using the clickable scrollbutton on your mouse)

It took a bit of adjustment, but middleclicking a link to open it in a new tab is really easy; in the case of slashdot I just load the comments I want to read, or the article while I browse on until I decide to go more in depth or reply without losing where you were.

When finished, I just middle-click the tab. It dramatically speeds up the browsing experience if you're used to using your mouse alot. (once I'm actually with both hands on my keyboard I tend to switch to keyboard shortcuts. But it's tedious to get to the right links using TAB)

Re:One question before I try this out...

[LiquidCoooled]

Shit, its shared - backup before installing people.

This is INCORRECT

[asa]

We have not yet released Firefox 2 Beta 2. This story is incorrect.

- Asa

Re:Even better...

[LiquidCoooled]

Actually, you have always been able to close a background tab; just do a middle click with your scroll wheel on the tab.

Re:One question before I try this out...

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

The -profile profiledir argument is your friend. Create a shortcut and stuff it in there.

Re:Scrolling tabs?

[Kelson]

Fortunately, there's also a drop-down menu of all open tabs at the far right of the tab bar, which will probably get a lot more use than those arrows.

Re: Question Answered

[thetamind_pyros]

I've been using Firefox 2.0 daily builds [portableapps.com] and Thunderbird 2.0 alpha [portableapps.com] along side the stable versions for quite some time using PortableApps.com [portableapps.com]. They are an entirely self-contained directory separate from your regular install.You can even run PortableFirefox from a CD so make sure to turn on the disk cache, otherwise performance is slow.

Firefox's auto incremental updates work great, plus it remembers your tabs so after the restart I'm right where I left off. I'm enjoying the built-in spell check--right now in fact. Firefox's reopen recently closed tabs feature on the renamed History menu is a life saver. I just accidentally closed this tab after checking that my links worked and Firefox brought it back complete will all form information. Google Suggest in the search box rocks.

The RSS feed summary page is cool and has support for Simple List Extensions [msdn.com]. Check out a sample here: Jeff Bezos's Wish List [amznxslt.com]. The ability to subscribe using your chosen feed reader is nice.

The tab bar is interesting. It changed to a grey gradient from a lighter, whiter washed out look a few builds ago. The grey doesn't match well with the Windows XP light tan gradient toolbars and the overflow arrow on the side of the tab bar are too faint to be noticeable. The list all tabs drop down on the right side is great though. I guess Mozilla has reached their goal of making the active tab better distinguished.

Generally, it seems to me that memory usage is lower than 1.5, even with 4 windows with 10+ tabs each. :-)

I'm lovin' it!

Re:Really a step forwards?

[Excors]

The spec states [whatwg.org]:

In non-visual media, and in visual media with scripting disabled, the canvas element should be treated as an ordinary block-level element and the fallback content should therefore be used instead.

which sounds like what you want. Unfortunately Mozilla hasn't implemented that behaviour, which is a bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3025 66) that ought to be fixed. (I guess you could get the right behaviour by creating the canvas element in script and adding it to the DOM, but that would be kind of nasty.)

The spec also says that authors should provide alternate content that "conveys essentially the same function or purpose as the bitmap canvas" and also "should not use the canvas element in a document when a more suitable element is available. For example, it is inappropriate to use a canvas element to render a page heading". I can't think how else they'd encourage the use of alternate content, but it'd be interesting to see any ideas of how to help overcome the laziness of authors. Chrome-spoofing (assuming you mean making canvas content that looks like part of the web browser) is usually no different to the issues caused by normal images, except that the drawWindow method (a Mozilla extension (not added through the proper extension mechanism, which isn't terribly polite of them – Opera has done it more properly)) would let scripts read the pixels from e.g. form buttons and work out what theme you're using – so that's currently limited to being run by JS code in extensions and it can't be used by web content, to avoid the security issues.

And SVG does seem a generally better way of doing vector graphics than canvas+JS; but it's worse at dynamic bitmap graphics, which is why both exist :-)

Re:Tabs will be broken

[anagama]

In linux, middle-click performs a different funtion, namely, it pastes whatever text was last highlighted into the location bar and tries to go there. Maybe it's changeable but out of the box, middle-click does not close tabs in firefox in linux.

Re:Tabs will be broken

[ben there...]

Oh yeah, your question. You can disable the 1.x red close button with Tab Mix Plus [mozilla.org].

(and moreso should be too words)

Re:Does it still hog memory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is a bitch when it comes to writing javascript.

Most of the time it's people who are bitches when it comes to writing JavaScript. There are now even some websites that take use of Gecko's internal XBL methods that are wrongfully exposed to regular web pages (Gmail's chat comes to mind, with its explicitOriginalTarget property).

1. Opera hates innnerHTML. So generating options for a select list and then setting it using innerHTML means opera doesn't work.

Do you know that the innerHTML property is Microsoft's proprietary, non-web-standard invention? How about Gecko's and Presto's embrace & extend when it comes to innerHTML? It's not even supposed to work in XHTML documents, but they both support it. Perhaps you should try writing standards-compliant code.

2. Opera doesn't like generated elements and doesn't treat them in the same way as elements that were part of the page. For example if you add a select and some options to a page using javascript, Opera will not let you set any of the options as selected.

Do you have a valid testcase, and have you reported it as a bug -- if it is a bug in the first place? I'll try this later, but so far, I have never witnessed Opera having any problems with generated content, either through DOM, or through CSS.

3. Visual consistency. Opera just doesn't have it between versions.

Yes, the application's visual consistency is the primary factor for evaluating its standards-compliance.

Re:Does it still hog memory?

[umrain]

1. InnerHTML is a proprietary IE-created feature. It is not javascript. Regardless, Opera has in fact supported it for several years now. If you are having a specific problem you might want to report it so it can be fixed: https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/ [opera.com]

2. I just wrote a quick test generating a select with options and selecting an option with javascript and it works fine for me (innerhtml and dom methods both worked). Maybe I am misunderstanding what specifically you are having problems with?

3. What does this mean? The browser chrome has changed a couple of times since Opera has been out but I don't see how this affects web pages. Or are you talking about CSS? There have been a lot of rendering fixes over time but unless you are doing something fancy you should not notice the majority of these usually. Again, maybe I am misunderstanding.