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Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Arrives
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Aug 31, 2006 03:37 PM
from the enjoy-the-pretty dept.
from the enjoy-the-pretty dept.
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."
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One question before I try this out... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One question before I try this out... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I realise the app exists in its own place, but the profile is more important.
Re:One question before I try this out... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:One question before I try this out... (Score:5, Funny)
*sorry*
Parent
Re:One question before I try this out... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm going to jump out on a limb here and say that you are quite mistaken. You will need to update several extensions... thats always how FF updates go. Are you annoyed that Adblock has not released an updated version for an unreleased product??
Re:One question before I try this out... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: Question Answered (Score:3, Informative)
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 i
Firefox 2? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Firefox 2? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:SoaF (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Portable version (Score:5, Informative)
Portable version also available (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox Shakespear (Score:5, Funny)
This alone makes it worth it (Score:5, Funny)
FINALLY!
Re:Even better... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Rant: Access keys and Wikipedia. (Score:3, Funny)
Warning: Rant coming on.
And if you want to feel incoherent rage, type "Alt-F(file-menu),C(close tab)" for a year and then go to Wikipedia and try to close the page. Oops. You can't, because some dumb fuck decided it sho
Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And now that I think of it I'll try to find a way to disable that red cross on the right you like so much
Re:Tabs will be broken (Score:4, Informative)
(and moreso should be too words)
Parent
Re:Solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about a difference of perhaps a tenth of a second, but of such microscopic units of time are human-factors decisions made. Interfaces are all about developing habits, and things that make it hard to form habits interfere with smooth operation. Maybe the new interface would make different and better habits; maybe not. I didn't think so, but YMMV.
Parent
Re:Tabs will be broken (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
greetings from the year 3000 (Score:5, Funny)
But will this detect antiquated Elglish, such as when people use "ask" instead of "ax"?
Re:greetings from the year 3000 (Score:4, Funny)
I guess if I were using Firefox 2 I'd be all set.
Parent
NSIS (Score:4, Interesting)
Was the old installer Mozilla-specific code?
Either way, the switch sounds like a good idea. The old installer had its issues, and focusing on the browser and improving an existing (and already quite reasonable) installer is a great idea.
Does it still hog memory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a web programmer and we run a site that supports opera 7+, IE5+, anything Gecko, Safari 1.2+. Opera is a bitch when it comes to writing javascript. Let me count the problems (BTW this is for the latest version):
1. Opera hates innnerHTML. So generating options for a select list and then setting it using innerHTML means opera doesn't work.
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 y
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Do you know that the innerHTML property is Microso
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, no memory leak bug or reimplemented widget controls (I have an operating system that provides those natively, thanks).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That'd be nice if not for the fact that isn't true, and very very obviously isn't true on OS X. Run through this checklist:
More like opera? (Score:3, Insightful)
On some level, it's nice, but the one thing I prefer about extensions is that their feature/fix rate is fairly more frequent than Firefox's. It will be interesting to see where Firefox is 5 years from now.
One of the improvements (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of ftp.mozilla.org, try the mirror page [mozilla.org] – currently it seems to list beta 1, but you should be able to modify the download URL to get the en-US beta 2 [mozilla.com].
One small area that has had a reasonable amount of improvement in Firefox 2 is canvas [whatwg.org] support – I've been working on a canvas-based FPS engine [lazyilluminati.com] and get about 50% better performance in FF2 than in FF1.5, as well as lots of fixed bugs and memory leaks.
Most major changes (like the new graphics infrastructure that'll help provide hardware accelerated rendering, full-page zooming, HTML inside SVG [mozillazine.org], better printing, etc) are being left for Firefox 3, but FF2 seems like a solid improvement over the previous version.
The canvas is actually a nice example of progress on the web. After too many years with very little going on, the major modern browsers developers (Mozilla, Opera, Apple) are working in the WHATWG [whatwg.org] to add new features – it's a balance between proprietary extensions and W3C-style specifications, with browsers implementing features at the same time as the spec is being written and guiding its development. There's room for competition between browsers in terms of feature support, and we don't have to wait years for the standards to be completed first – but it's hopefully without the old problems of those features being proprietary and poorly designed. For example, Opera 9 supports much of Web Forms 2.0 [whatwg.org] and the Mozilla developers are just starting work on it too; and it's also designed to be backward-compatible, so the new forms are still usable in all browsers and can be emulated in some (e.g. IE) with JavaScript. Firefox 2 seems to be the first browser with client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org], but web sites written to benefit from that feature will be able to immediately work with future versions of e.g. Opera that support it too.
With the popularity of trends like AJAX encouraging people to think about new ways to interact with users over the web, and browsers adding features to expand the possibilities open to web developers, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.
Seems a bit more responsive (Score:3, Interesting)
The new tabs look nicer. I hate the "go" button and haven't figured how to turn it off, but I'm sure someone will create a theme without it.
This is INCORRECT (Score:5, Informative)
- Asa
Re:This is INCORRECT (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Phishing Protection (Score:4, Funny)
WARNING:
The man you are about to converse with is not really a high ranking General in the Nigerian army, he does not really have a rich uncle who died tragically in a plane crash in Siberia, and he absolutely DOES NOT have $53.4 million dollars to smuggle out of Nigeria for his uncle's poor orphaned children. You will not get 30%. Trust us.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?
+----+ +--------+
| OK | | CANCEL |
+----+ +--------+
Scrolling tabs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid and counter-productive idea? When was the last time you (the population of
I like the idea of having more tabs than window space, but fer cryin' out loud, two scroll buttons are not the way to handle it. How about multiple rows of tabs? Or right click + drag to scroll back and forth? Or a drop down menu of tabs?
I thought we all agreed that Flash applications that break scrolling are a Bad Thing (tm).
Re:Scrolling tabs? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Linux builds (Score:4, Interesting)
It's sad watching FF on a dual boot system run significantly slower under linux than under window on the same machine. Especially when other linux applications fly.
And it's not even just DNS lookups. Simply switching tabs can take up to a second (?!) under linux whereas under windows it's 0.2 seconds (the perceived direct interaction threshold for most people).
I keep asking ... (Score:3, Insightful)
(Yes, 'Gah.' I went there.)
More features? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope they improved the reliability (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Testing? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The spec states [whatwg.org]:
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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Dual boot? Why would you install Windows to run Konqueror?