Your favorite browser is now v1.5

[Bozo]

Task Manager says Firefox is using 33Meg of RAM as I type this. My Firefox install is pretty minimal though. Not a lot of extensions or tabs.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Groltz]

Firefox Myths Page was updated on 12-18-05.

 

[LiamC]

Who is this Andrew K?

 

[Tannin]

Reluctant as I am to defend the second-worst major browser on the planet, that Firefox myths page is, in the main, biased crap that tries its best to twist the truth as far away from the facts as humanly possible. It displays a masterly gift for misleading by telling only that part of the truth which happens to be convenient. The guy is a slimeball.

 

[time]

Whilst I agree that it's plainly slanted, I would have thought that the claimed facts are fairly widely known - i.e. more or less true.

 

[sechs]

he guy is a slimeball.

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

 

[Explorer]

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeheeeeee!!!!!!!!!! Sort of the browser-world's equivalent of the Yalta summit...

Microsoft to use Firefox RSS icon in IE 7
IE developers have met with their counterparts at Mozilla to exchange ideas

• "This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last,"

http://www.computerworld.com/softwa...10801,107209,00.html?source=NLT_AM&nid=107209

 

[sechs]

Sounds more like, "peace in our time."

 

[Tannin]

Whilst I agree that it's plainly slanted, I would have thought that the claimed facts are fairly widely known - i.e. more or less true.

Oh they are. That's the really slimy thing about it. It's easier to demonstrate by example. (For Bloggs below, substiture Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Americans, Women or apes with orange fur, as desired.)

Blogs commit murder
Murder is a horrible crime.
Last year, 804,403 crimes were committed, including many gruesome murders
(Not stated, left for reader to infer): All Blogs are murderers

That's not a very good example, but I'm rushed. The point is, that the very best way to lie is by telling only part of the truth.

 

[CougTek]

I'm sad to see that v1.5 still doesn't pass the Acit 2 test.

I knew it before and I'm sure many among you know it too, but Konqueror passes the Acid2 test. I'm typing on it right now and the test looks exactly like the reference page.

Konqueror also has tabbed browsing. It feels slow on that machine though (old Thunderbird 800MHz with a paltry 256MB of RAM).

 

[Mercutio]

Firefox 2.0 Alpha is out.

Also the Calendaring app for Thunderbird Lightning had its first point release yesterday. I'm not someone who would use a calendar app (I don't even use an address book), but maybe Tbird will actually be a valid Outlook replacement someday. Looks like they've got a decent system for Calendar sharing based on WebDAV already in place.

 

[LiamC]

Alpha 2 is now out

http://tinyurl.com/htslr

 

[time]

Changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
• Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash

All lifted straight from Opera. Presumably, the Firefox project will wither and die once the 'developers' can no longer copy someone else's hard work and innovation. :roll:

 

[Bozo]

The new IE in Vista does the same things. :roll:

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[timwhit]

So does Maxthon.

 

[ddrueding]

Changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
• Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash

All lifted straight from Opera. Presumably, the Firefox project will wither and die once the 'developers' can no longer copy someone else's hard work and innovation. :roll:

All options that I enabled in Firefox via extensions without ever using Opera. I choose to use them because they are a good idea.

Round wheels, windshields and heaters all took significant levels of innovation in the car industry. Would you hold it against the other manufacutrers if they copied such ideas?

 

[Mercutio]

Maxathon remains vulnerable to all the same problems IE has. You still get pounded in the ass, but your rapist looks a little bit nicer. Thanks but no thanks.

IE7 kinda sorta implements tabs, has a really pathetic RSS reader and a persistent search with your choice of a whopping 20 different service providers. And a good ass-pounding in store when your kid decides he wants that Britney Spears screen saver. I don't know. All I can figure is that IE users really like having large blunt objects inserted in their rectums.

Opera still has a user interface that behaves in different and unexpected ways from normal browsers, and doesn't offer extensions for required additional functionality. Plus it's closed source. I remain unimpressed.

 

[Howell]

Changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
• Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash

All lifted straight from Opera. Presumably, the Firefox project will wither and die once the 'developers' can no longer copy someone else's hard work and innovation. :roll:

Sheesh time, you have a very low threthhold for what qualifies for innovation. I'm sure the Firefox developers are guided much more by users than other products. "Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows" is not exactly difficult to conceive anymore than microsoft writing an operating system that doesn't crash is following in the footsteps of other OSs.

 

[time]

Tabbed browsing first appeared in Firefox 0.3. It's taken 3 1/2 years to change the default to opening Links in new tabs, not new windows.

I'm really tired of the hypocrisy. I've noticed that Firefox fanboys rabidly defend 'features' that other people might call stupid design decisions. Then, when Firefox is changed to reflect the way other software works, it's seen as innovative.

And spare me the sanctimonious 'open source' crap. How many open source developers does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer is that it never gets changed - all the developers are busy adding colored spinning lightbulbs, with cool built-in web servers to support inter-bulb messaging.

Rather than everyone lining up to sound off at my simple observation, try broadening your view of the world - including software.

 

[Mercutio]

Open source works, time. That's why you can get a CPU-optimized version of a Moz-based browser and support for a modern web browser on platforms where none would be available. That's why bugs in Moz-based products are fixed within a few hours of being found.
The Firefox extension API literally makes anything possible, including taking the few things that Opera does right and integrating them into a superior program. As an Opera user, one has to make do with whatever little scraps OperaSoft chooses to hand out on New Version day. As a Firefox user, one can hit the Mozilla Extension room and have one's needs fulfilled, instant gratification style.

How is that not better in every way?

 

[Bozo]

Firefox works in Vista. Haven't tried Opera yet.

I think I need to see a shrink: I'm beginning to like IE7 :-?

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[LiamC]

I prescribe a quick dose of SuSE 10.1 or Mandriva. That should get rid of the horrible taste in your mouth. If you need some old skool medicine, I prescribe W2K SP4, but beware, it's a little rough these days...

 

[Tea]

It's not about my browser has a bigger sex organ than your browser, it's about choice, it's about competition improving the breed, it's about progress.

Hell, even Internet Explorer is vaguely thinking about dragging itself out of the stone age and up to low-level bronze-age functionality, if what I read about IE 7 is half true.

I suppose evangalists are lively and interesting in a watching-the-trainwreck sort of way, but one should probably feel guilty about enjoying watching this debate. But I am anyway.

Keep it coming, gentlemen.

Of course open source works, Merc. No-one is going to argue with you on that, not even Microsoft who are, frankly, pissing in their pants big-time over various open source products and have been for years.

But the reason OS scares MS so much isn't because of anything magic and different about OS quality or development cycles, it's because much of the OS movement just happens to be immune to the usual ruthless Microsoft anti-competition tactics. In other words, the reason a good deal of the best software around these days is OS isn't because it's OS, it's because it's running on a business model that Microsoft can't destroy. (Yet.)

Note well, Mr Firefox-is-God: there are other business models that produce good software too, and those other models have advantages that the OS community cannot match. One of those advantanges is focus: the ability to work on stuff that actually needs doing, as opposed to working on stuff that seems like a fun idea to work on at the time. This is why Firefox/Moz/Seamonkey still has an unacceptably serious CPU utilisation bug that brings systems to their knees from time to time, and Opera doesn't.

This is why I laughed out loud when you started talking about Firefox having CPU-optimised builds — i.e., it has ways of (if you can be bothered) partially catching up to the long-established and very real performance and size advantage Opera has held for years now.

Which browser suppoirts more platforms? Opera is available on an incredible range of devices (and is the native browser of quite a few of them). Firefox and its relatives are available for heaps of different things too. I don't know which has the broader range, but both are impressive.

Can you get Internet Explorer for refrigerators yet?

Oh, and with reference to the Firefox (latest version) that brought my system to its knees again yesterday (for the 17 millionth time) with 99% CPU utilisation, how the hell do you justify writing palpable nonsense like "That's why bugs in Moz-based products are fixed within a few hours of being found"? This one has been around since before Firefox even existed - it used to happen to Mozilla 1.0.

And as for extensions, Tannin has written about how impractical and painful managing a system that needs third-party add-ons to function before, at considerable length, probably in this very thread if I could be bothered scrolling all the way throough it.

The long and the short of it, Firefox needs to start getting a lot of stuff right tha it hasn't tackled yet, including fixing the brain-dead Explorer-is-too-complicated-for-me interface, finding the CPU utilisation bug and actually fixing it, and providing the basic functionality that both Opea and Mozilla have had for ages.

Opera, in contrast, needs only two things that I can think of: adding an "are you sure you want to close all tabs" function that's the same as the Mozilla/Firefox one (Opera's present one is considerably less useful), and providing the option to have an individial dialogue box instead of the stupid Firefox-style download manager.

Right now, Opera is in front — but if it wasn't for the Mozilla project, it ouldn't be as good as it is.

 

[Sol]

I have to admit I did find the Firefox interface a little lacking to start out with and then I realised that much of the functionality I was looking for was actually there as long as you knew a few shortcuts. For example the close button which is conspicuously lacking on each tab isn't really needed once you realise middle-clicking the tab closes it, you can open new tabs with Ctrl-t and search the current page with Ctrl-f.... With a little looking around Firefox's interface doesn't seem to be missing anything I'd actually use, and as Tony has pointed out repeatedly the interface that new users are greeted with is dead simple if not entirely feature complete... As for extensions I think they're a pretty good system, I really can't see too many people who would have the same set of extensions so what functionality would you include into the core if you took them out?

That said I have to agree that there are bugs in Firefox that have been there way too long. The download manager which occasionally just stops is one that constantly bugs me. Sure you can just use flash-got and a third party manager but the one in Firefox is so close to doing everything I need if only I could trust it to download something bigger than a couple of hundred MB...

Now that I'm used to Firefox Opera just seems kind of wrong. Especially the handling of bookmarks and RSS feeds. I'm so used to just browsing through RSS feeds and opening feeds or bookmarks in new tabs from the context menu that using Opera just seems like doing everything the long way around...

 

[ddrueding]

If anything, I wish a barebones firefox installation was simpler. Some people may like having the bookmarks as a toolbar, I don't. If it was only the simplest of browsers and supported the extension system (which is right up there with sliced bread) I would be a more happy camper.

 

[time]

Opera, in contrast, needs only two things that I can think of: adding an "are you sure you want to close all tabs" function that's the same as the Mozilla/Firefox one (Opera's present one is considerably less useful), and providing the option to have an individial dialogue box instead of the stupid Firefox-style download manager.

Can you clarify what you mean? If you want to automatically close all tabs when you exit Opera, just change the startup options, eg: 'Show start-up dialog' gives you the choice of starting from scratch or re-opening tabs from the last session. If you just want to close all tabs, right-click on any tab and select one of the 'Close all' options.

I also don't uderstand what you want with the download manager. Can you give me an example of "an individual dialogue box"? Is it the foreground window that you don't like?

 

[Sol]

I think the two things Tony are after are; the confirmation dialog when you close a window which contains multiple tabs to ensure that you realise you closing a heap of tabs instead of just one window, and a download manager kind of like IE instead of Firefox, i.e. one window for each download in progress.

 

[Sol]

Hmm proof reading... Tony are after... What the hell was I thinking...

 

[Tea]

the confirmation dialog when you close a window which contains multiple tabs to ensure that you realise you closing a heap of tabs instead of just one window, and a download manager kind of like IE instead of Firefox, i.e. one window for each download in progress.

Spot on, Sir Sol. That's exactly what I meant. Err .. except I wouldn't have said "like IE", because I'd forgotten that IE did it that way (why on earth would I use IE to download something when I always have one or more of the modern browsers handy?) I'd have said "kind of like Netscape" (which is what IE copied it from back around when Navigator 2.x was the go) or "kind of like Mozilla" which continues to maintain that style (as one of three different options) to this day.

Opera does offer a "confirm on close" function, but it only applies when you close the last Opera window, which is, borrowing one of Mercutio's terms here, just broken. If you have two windows open, with (say) 20 tabs open in one, and 2 in the other, all you have to do to wipe out the 20 tabs (for e.g.) is click a few mm too far right when you are resizing the window. "Broken" is an entirely appopriate term for that behaviour.

I don't do it very often, but it can hurt. The Mozilla method (since ported over to Firefox as well) is far superior. Opera should copy it - lord knows, the Gecko browsers have copied enough stuff from Opera over the years, turn about seems like fair play to me.

 

[Tea]

Hmm proof reading... Tony are after... What the hell was I thinking...

Speaking of us in the plural seems perfectly normal to me, Sol.

 

[Mercutio]

Firefox as a class:

I get to teach a 15 hour class on Firefox starting today. It'll be attended by all of my co-workers, which I suppose means that the pressure to make it a good class will be somewhat higher than normal. I'm not exactly sure how I'll fill up 15 hours talking about a web browser, but given that the technology instructors I work with aren't even aware of how IE's security zones work (note: neither does anyone else), I know that at least the first several hours of classroom time will be something of a revelation.

My end goal is to have a long-form document similar to the one I made for dealing with spyware.

Yes, the point of the class is in large part to evangelize the Firefox browser, but I do plan to address issues regarding RAM use and page compatibility. I also plan to spend at least some time talking about other alternative software like Opera and Maxathon.

Should be interesting.

 

[Sol]

how IE's security zones work

You mean they do?

 

[Mercutio]

I've observed them to work well enough with Server 2003's Enhanced Secuirty Configuration, but that doesn't appear to be installable on other versions of Windows.

 

[Handruin]

I'm curious to see your doc if/when your done. I try to convert people but never have enough on-hand evidence despite my best efforts to describe why they should switch. And 15 hours is a long time for a single web browser discussion. Good luck with it though, let us know how it goes.

 

[Sol]

That's true Mercutio, I have enjoyed watching programs have minor strokes when they try to use IE instead of my default browser in server 2003. Sonys online game launcher does it and just dies half the time due to security restirctions... It's nice to know that if you can't remove IE without trouble at least you can render it relatively inert.

Of course it would be better if companies just hired programmers with a clue on how to handle those sorts of situations...

 

[ddrueding]

This might address one of Tannin's complaints.

 

[Gilbo]

Ya, that sync feature is exactly what the doctor ordered.

 

[Tannin]

Not actually what I was complaining about, David, but certainly a handy tool. I doubt I'd use it myself, as it's not the synching of bookmarks & etc. that I have a problem with (hey, mostly I don't use bookmarks too much anyway, I just remember the URL a lot of the time and type it in - mostly you only need the first few letters) and in any case I mainly surf on the laptop now. No, it's the buggerising around with settings and plugins and stuff that I refuse to waste my day on. I can set Mozilla exactly the way I want it in around 20 seconds (less on a fast machine); Opera to rough-enough standard in 5 seconds, to almost perfect standard in a minute or so. How long would it take on a per-machine basis to do that in the Fox? By the time you do all the plugin crap, half an hour? Simply, Firefox is not worth the trouble.

I see that the tool requires a Google account. I don't have one, as I've never seen any purpose to it thus far. And now, let's say in the last six months or so, I've started to place Google in the same sort of evil category that Microsoft belongs to - that business where they traded the lives of some Chinese customers for a little commercial advantage was unforgivable, and I am now very reluctant indeed to place any personal information with the firm.

 

[Mercutio]

It takes me about two minutes to set Firefox up properly if I'm sitting at a machine where I have to use the extensions site.

1. Install Firefox.
2. Go to tools > options > tabs, set "Force all tabs to open in a new window"
3. Go to tools > options > downloads, set the default download directory to c:\downloads (or to not use a default download directory, if the user is smart enough to deal with that).
4. Go to the Firefox Addons site. Search for Adblock. Open Adblock+ and Filterset.G Updater in tabs (install them while other pages/tabs are loading), search for linky, install it, search for IE Tab (takes a second, 'cause it doesn't come up on the first page of results), install it, go to magpie.lockfile.org - give it permission then install magpie. Depending on who I'm installing it for, I may also throw in ForecastFox and/or DictionarySearch, which would increase my install time all the way to, oh, two and a half minutes.
5. Restart Firefox, agree to Adblock's license, and Filterset.G's license.
6. Go to Tools > Extensions > Linky > Options and set the "Tabs only" and minimum pages for notification to 50.
Done.

At that point, everything is as it should be. Hardly a half hour, but I will say that a half-hour spent on the Firefox Extensions site can be incredibly rewarding.

 

[Bozo]

IE7 in Vista blocks the Firefox download. You can get around it, but I thought it was funny.

Bozo :mrgrn: