Firefox 2 Launch - Interview With Chris Beard 270
ReadWriteWeb writes "This afternoon Firefox 2 will be 'officially' launched. In anticipation of the unveiling, ReadWriteWeb has a brief interview with Chris Beard — Mozilla Vice President of Products. Subjects discussed include the growing enterprise usage of Firefox, the importance of user experience and security, Mozilla's theory behind Web feeds and why they haven't included an integrated RSS Reader, the growing add-on ecosystem, offline browsing, and finally a little about the future of the browser." From the article: "It felt to us like a 2.0 product, particularly if we looked at it from what 1.0 was, to 2.0. It was like half steps, from 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0. It's also a very stable and rock solid release - it's really ready for the masses. So it really does feel like a 2, as opposed to a 1.x product. Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn't just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues. But there's certainly a lot in it which makes it really solid." Also on the site is a concise review of the product, and an overview of Marketing Firefox 2.0.
Good so far.... (Score:5, Informative)
So far, so good. I was upset my Daily Dilbert and FastFirefox Extensions weren't compatible though.
Good job Mozilla!
Re:Good so far.... (Score:5, Informative)
tends to fix extension incompatibility issues. Most extensions really are compatible; they just have 1.5 as the highest version supported. That extension lets you modify the maxversion with a single click in the extension manager, "fixing" the incompatibility.
Of course, YMMV, but Bookmarks Synchronizer, TinyURL creator and Flashblock (the extensions that broke for me) work fine when I "Make compatible".
-Z
Google Browser Sync (Score:2)
I'm planning to get the release when it goes public this afternoon (finally, an inline spell-checker!), but I'm not going to start using it as my primary browser until GBS supports it.
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Why wait? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.ht
I don't see this as a bad thing, as your still getting it the way they want (using the official link that selects a mirror for you) I'm just not waiting for them to post the link, so I wrote it myself
Re:Why is the setup file larger than that of Opera (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why is the setup file larger than that of Opera (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is the setup file larger than that of Opera (Score:5, Funny)
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Slate was always kind of "independent", we must admit it. I have seen/read many anti BillG/Windows stuff there.
Firefox 2 is a major update to a browser which is used on millions of machines and started to be choice of companies. I don't favour it on OS X (feels like Windows) but it is the truth.
See where Firefox 2 r
Half Steps? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Half Steps? (Score:5, Funny)
Bb-B-C-C#-D
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I certianly hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
I even recently downgraded all the office machines to Office 2000 from office 2003 as the minimal feature benefits do not outweigh the increased speed in loading and operation as well as far smaller memory footprint.
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And for the memory footprint, well I noticed I stopped paying attention when to that, because it doesnt matter when you have 512+ or RAM in a computer.
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What I sure can say is that the new default theme is AWFUL. I never cared much for custom themes, but it wasn't more than ten minutes using 2.0 and I had already installed a "Firefox 1.5" lookalike theme.
New tabs are great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New tabs are great (Score:5, Informative)
browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3
and to hide the Go button set
browser.urlbar.hideGoButton to true
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Re:to OP: What I've been wondering about with FF.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you've read slashdot for several years? You must be a god!
Look, you don't have to go in search of extensions. The browser works fine out of the box and provides privacy protection, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, the best javascript implementation, proper support for more image formats than any other browser including SVG, MNG (last I checked) and proper PNG... It just happens that you can add additional functionality through extensions. If you don't need it, then you don't need them. Meanwhile, they provided a very nice site from which you can download extensions so that you can get them if you need them.
There's nothing stopping anyone from making a nice website that has a great set of extensions, except that there's apparently little demand. Every so often I do a writeup on which extensions I happen to use, and post it on my website [hyperlogos.org]. (The last one was on a different site - I haven't updated for 2.0 yet but that's coming.) (ObDisclosure: I have amazon referral links, but no other ads.)
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I can't believe Firefox don't state this anywhere easily accessible (I've read most the upgrading documents and never seen this mentioned, only something about editing non-existent config files which didn't work for me).
Previously I couldn't understand why on earth Firefox changed the system, but now after changing back from the new system I find it a little annoying having to trek the mouse across the screen to close every tab.
Hmm, not sure which way I prefer anymore
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Ctrl+W is your friend. I can't remember the last time I closed the current window with the mouse.
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Unless you mean middle clickin in the content of the tab, but that would remove the ability to show the autoscroll thingie that appears.
Re:New tabs are great (Score:4, Informative)
Alternatively, setting it to 0 will put a close button only on the current tab, if you prefer.
Personally, I like the default, though.
Re:New tabs are great (Score:5, Informative)
browser.tabs.closeButtons 0 = close button on active tab
browser.tabs.closeButtons 1 = default, close button on all tabs
browser.tabs.closeButtons 2 = no close buttons
browser.tabs.closeButtons 3 = Fx 1.x style, one close button on right
It updates instantly so you can try them all out and find the one you like. I like 2 because I use an extra mouse button to close tabs instead of the close buttons.
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How to get rid of the scroll button (Score:2)
You can further tweak the UI by editing userChrome.css in your profile's chrome subdirectory. E.g. the following code gets rid of the default icon in the tabs next to the title
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Re:New tabs are great (Score:4, Informative)
From the review of FF2: Tab Tweaks [mozillalinks.org].
I've also found that this extension works fine with FF2: Tab Minus [mozilla.org].
Small,and does the job perfectly. This was my single-biggest hassle with FF2. I do not understand how quasi-randomly moving the location of an item I use ALL the time is supposed to make things more efficient. Especially when you've opened up a bunch of images or documents in separate tabs and want to quickly scan through them looking for someting. Your eyes have to bounce around the screen, finding the stupid close button.
The old mechanism seemed to work better for that: put your mouse on the close button, and now you can focus on the *data*, not finding the button over and over... With the extension, you don't have to choose: they're both avaiable. Works for me.
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Keyconfig [mozdev.org] might be able to fix that.
Re:New tabs are great (Score:4, Informative)
More information. [mozillazine.org]
* Dawg.
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I actually missed it (Score:2)
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Looks good. (Score:5, Funny)
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Stats (Score:4, Interesting)
Where do they get these stats?
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Get a clue already. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love firefox, use it daily. Even put up with the bugs that were "ignored" for a long time (like memory leaks, having your bookmarks vanish for no reason, etc). Yet reading the review it is still clear that too many miss the point.
It doesn't matter how much better you are than IE, you have to give people a real, tangible reason to switch and then you have to make it so exceedingly easy that there is next to no effort involved. That second part is more important than the first. I like many others here can come up with many "tanglible" reasons for people to switch, I still can't get them to download it or install it.
Penetration comes with getting someone that people trust to distribute the software along side their product. May I suggest Quicken (all that tax software coming out can easily accomodate FF). Hell, get a game manufacturer to provide the browser as part of the install process. With a good windows installer it can be made a seamless part of experience.
Re:Get a clue already. (Score:4, Insightful)
The goal of Firefox is to have a browser that supports web standards and puts users first. It does a great job of that. It isn't to have 100% market share. To the extent that it re-energized ie development, it is a boon for web standards. Better is better, even if it is from Microsoft.
Re:Get a clue already. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup and it took word of mouth from someone "in the know" in order for it to happen. It doesn't automagically update like IE and doesn't ship with most people's computers being labeled "The Internet".
Firefox works better and all and I've finally switched on most of my machines (as I said I would when Slashdot didn't have that annoying leftnav overlapping bug anymore -- to which they responded by fixing it for FF and
Re:Get a clue already. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Bingo! It's worked on all my family members and friends.
The other approach I take is that I am the system administrator at my office and they do what I damn well say!
OT -- bookmarks disappearing? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have more bookmarks(a few hundred) than anyone else I personally know, and I've never seen this happen. Is this something people besides yourself have experienced?
I'm Just curious.
Cheers.
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Seemed to be an extension problem because the 2nd time I installed FF2 it recognised 2 incompatible extensions that weren't spotted the first time.
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This bug has been around for years, I don't know why something that serious hasn't been fixed yet (well, I'm assuming it hasn't been fixed, I haven't been hit by it since I switched from FAT32 to NTFS). I'm hoping they might have fixed the 'switch to a random font size' bug that has become really annoying lately.
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As should you (get a clue). (Score:2)
To quote Mitchell Baker: "The goal of the Mozilla project is to promote innovation and enable the creation of standards-compliant client technology to help keep content on the web open."
I think they are doing very nicely at that, myself. I take my hat off to them.
Justin.
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The only way to get Firefox in use in the majority of homes is to bundle it with the OS on OEM systems. Get Dell to use Firefox as the default browser on every computer they sell, and market share will skyrocket. Most people just don't even consider switching browsers on thei
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After running both.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Really? I don't see anything there about hoops to jump through for IE7, except for one article that talks about how all the old hacks for IE6 will stop working, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention for the last two years.
IE7 certainly isn't perfect, but in my experience so far, I haven't found any issues that couldn't be worked around while still remaining compatible with
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Get rid of the tabs list button? (Score:2)
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Mainstream usage my aunt fanny. (Score:2)
It's a shame too, since I had really hoped to replace Opera 9 on the iBook, because that didn't really live up to my expectations. Here's hoping to
Fedora Core 6? (Score:2)
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Mozilla is nothing but a front for Google (Score:2, Funny)
Information wants to be free, don't use firefox. use a TRUE free GPL webbrowser like Elinks instead and
LEt freedom Ring!!!!
priorities? (Score:2, Informative)
Also, it seems to me that Firefox has developed a rather hefty memory / CPU footprint, and its text rendering performance is noticably slower than Opera and IE, especially on Linux. (Just to be clear that means Firefox on Linux seems to ren
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Okay, I'll feed the troll and call BS.
There is no way you can reliably compare Firefox to Opera and IE on Linux (no, Wine doesn't count). I do believe that you may be experiencing a performance lag on Linux compared to Windows if you're running an ATI Radeon in non-accelerated mode, but this is by no means to blame on Firefox.
That said, here at work I often witness the opposite: I type a link in IE, find out it'
Read TFB (Score:2)
From TFB:
Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn't just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues.
There ya go. Better engine under the hood. This is not so much of an eye-candy upgrade as a "let's make it work better" upgrade. Unlike some other browser authors I could mention.
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Hard to overcome inertia... (Score:2)
I guess I can understand people having a hard time moving away from IE.
Now if Firefox could just copy Opera's zoom feature
Yes I know FireFox has a much better increase text feature than IE but the zoom in Opera really is very nice.
It works great with those websites that value "White space" over content.
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I know exactly what I'm talking about, thanks. If you want to be fussy, yes, it is an extension. Opera's (built in) content blocker doesn't do a fraction of what I need - blocking images and Flash is cute, but I want to block iFrames, specific patterns, and domains. Firefox with Adblock (and Filterset.G updater) makes that very easy. Opera doesn't - not an
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Blow me, bitch. It CAN'T do what I'm talking about - Opera has a glorified pattern matching filter hidden in the Advanced Options controls, and the click-block functionality doesn't help with hidden elements or scripts. Meanwhile, the Firefox solution provides an interactive list of all blockable elements, not that you even need it because the Firefox/Adblock/Filterset.G combo kills 95% of junk automatically.
Sorry boy, ther
The ultimate browsing experience (Score:2, Insightful)
I think firefox needs a tagline. Maybe Mozilla foundation can contact BMW [bmw.com] and include a free firefox CD with every BMW sold. (ie. the Ultimate Driving Experience along with the Ultimate Browsing experience). Things like this will help firefox's penetration. People really need a reason to use firefox over IE, and right now I can think of two good reasons:
1) Firefox doesn't have the huge ActiveX security hole that IE has.
2) Firefox offers tabbed browsing (now that IE7 is out, this is no longer a Firefox
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Well, this could surely be worked out. Just imagine if the default Firefox home page included a permanent ad for BMW... now, which car brand would refuse such a grand (and mostly free) advertising campaign ?
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At the same time, here's a good reason not to get Firefox:
1) Firefox doesn't have that huge ActiveX feature that IE has
Believe it or not many corporate intranet sites and even some web sites in general use and like ActiveX to make their pages more "interactive". Until FF can replace ActiveX with something more secure while providing similar functionality I don't see FF replacing IE in any large corporate environment whose web development teams are using ActiveX components -- and that's a lot of them
One more thing: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a biggie if you don't use online forums, but with the increase in the number of websites that let you write as well as read (think MySpace, Facebook, various forums, Writely/Google Docs, etc.), people are going to come to expect more advanced editing capabilities in their browser. Having spent some time using browsers that have inline (red underlining) spell checkers, such as Safari and Konqueror 3.5, going back to Firefox is always painful.
It's not nearly as much of an advantag
Undo close tabs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Neat sounding feature, but kinda useless if you can't find the shortcut anywhere.
P.
Re:Undo close tabs? (Score:5, Informative)
You can also right click the task bar and say Undo Close Tab.
And the History menu contains a submenu called Recently Closed Tabs.
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And Yet (Score:2)
it doesn't compile (gcc-4.1.1):
g++ -o nsDependentString.o -c -I../../../dist/include/system_wrappers -include
Point Release (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Will it be on autoupdate ? (Score:5, Informative)
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Looks like you're vaguely in the U.S.
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Just before brillig, and a little after the hour of scampering.
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I wouldn't called this redundant I would have just called it stupid