Firefox 3 RC1 Out Now

Jay writes "Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now. If yours didn't auto-update, then get it while it's hot! The release came a bit early, with Computer World noting: 'As recently as last Saturday, Mozilla's chief engineer said that although the company had locked down RC1's code, it was planning to publicly launch the build in "late May."'" My copy just downloaded — restarting after I save this story. God I hope it's better than the last beta.

Comment from story

[by Anonymous Coward]

"So simple a grandmother can use it"

This is offensive. I am a grandmother, and a C programmer.

Re:Comment from story

[by Anonymous Coward]

"So simple a C programmer can use it"
by a C++ Programmer ;-)

Re: Memes

[TaoPhoenix (980487)]

I, for one, welcome my C-Coding grandmotherly overlords.

eh?

[aerthling (796790)]

God I hope it's better than the last beta.

What was wrong with Beta 5?

Re:eh?

[diskis (221264)]

Beta 5 was quite unstable for me, so bad infact that I downgraded to beta 3.
Though I am using a lot of addins, so don't know exactly who to blame.

Re:

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

dont suppose it being a beta and all you bothered filling bug reports and then checking if they got fixed?

Re:eh?

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

Chances are, Flash. Adobe's support for Linux has been pathetic at best, with newer versions eating up tons of CPU just viewing a banner ad. I even downgraded mine so YouTube would be at least somewhat usable. And with Flash being closed-source I highly doubt that we will see improvements made quickly and Gnash the free flash player is barely usable though it is improving.

Running on?

[slyborg (524607)]

After like 10 years I'm still reading the "works on my machine" posts with no mention of the machine type.

I call them the "Well, its raining HERE" comments.

You need to identify the (OS::distro) and plugins in use for these "Release [ ] suxx0rs!!!" posts to have any meaning.

I generally find that if that question is answered, it's some guy running the L33tware distro in 24MB of RAM on a Transmeta Crusoe who is enraged that his opensource software crashes, and no, he hasn't logged a bug because God told him that it is destiny to always have bugless software AND will be Lord of Faerun in time.

(No offense to parent ;)

Re:eh?

[ceroklis (1083863)]

I have used beta 5 on ubuntu hardy for several weeks. The problems are:

• After a while, 100% CPU usage.
• Crash if you open too many tabs. I routinely opened bookmark folders of 50+ tabs with firefox 2. With beta5 this operation crashes systematically.
• Random crashes. Happens systematically on certain sites. Even sites that do not use flash. Difficult to identify the cause.

This has been so frustrating I reverted to firefox 2. You know something is wrong when you are pleasantly surprised to see 20 tabs open without crashing.

Re:eh?

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

The worst coded ajax site on the web crashes browsers, news at 11.

Re:eh?

[WD (96061)]

It doesn't matter how poorly the web site is coded. A browser should never crash when rendering a page!

Re:eh?

[pherthyl (445706)]

You're confusing two issues. Whether a website works or not is completely different than whether it crashes the browser.

If a website crashes the browser it is always the browser's problem. NO EXCEPTIONS. Nothing a website can do should crash the browser. If it does the browser is broken.

If a website doesn't work correctly, then it could be either the browser or the website's fault, depending on the website's code.

Re:eh?

[amRadioHed (463061)]

The browser's responsibility is to display content properly

Right, and if the webmaster has broken content on their page the browser should display it in all it's broken glory. If the webmaster wants their page to display right they need to put the right content up to begin with.

Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[rikkards (98006)]

For the last year, I have consistently seen on the Windows version an annoying bug. If one tab takes forever to load, any other tab will not load a new page either. I find Ebay is one of the worst to bring it out. If you switch to using IE in a tab, that tab will show about:blank.

I can understand some websites may make a Firefox tab crap out but it shouldn't affect the rest.

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[debrain (29228)]

A bug similar (if not identical) to the complaint here, was filed back in May of 2000: Bug 40848 (thread) - each docshell should run on its own thread (one thread per frame) [mozilla.org].

I'm sure they'd appreciate it, though, if no-one spammed this bug. It's closed for valid (or at least not-invalid) technical/philosophical reasons- threads are evil (you can find links supporting that assertion from the bug's comments). You can also follow it to its successor meta-bug: Bug 384323 - UI responsiveness - core/platform - meta bug [mozilla.org] and its quasi-sister: Bug 91351 - UI/App responsiveness issues [mozilla.org].

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[dotancohen (1015143)]

How does one do that?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi [mozilla.org]

Test Results

[xpro42 (1234496)]

After installing FF3/RC1 I ran the Acid 3 test [acidtests.org] and the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark [webkit.org]. RC1 scored a 71, the same as Beta 5. The SunSpider test came up 4698.6ms for RC1. On Beta 5 it was 4757.2ms. Not really much of a difference as far as tests go. I was hoping for some better results, but overall RC1 seems responsive and stable.

Re:Test Results

[n0-0p (325773)]

Your comment leads me to believe you've never done any significant software development work. Consider that the Acid3 test was released at the tail end of the Gecko development cycle. This puts Mozilla in a bad position, because they were already at feature freeze and didn't want to further delay the final release. So, shooting for Acid3 compliance at this point would be the height of stupidity.

The Acid3 test is also a bit controversial in its own right. Acid1 and Acid2 addressed broad compatibility with several core web standards, without regard for any particular browser. In contrast, Acid3 covers an odd mix of quirks chosen to intentionally highlight bugs in different browsers. Acid3 also includes a random mix of features from things like SMIL and SVG, which are enormously complex standards not supported in their entirety by any major browser. That also means that Acid3 can be gamed by simply implementing just enough of a feature to pass the test, but not enough to be genuinely useful in practice.

Simply put, Acid3 is a much less useful test than the previous versions. I have no doubt that Mozilla will eventually pass, but they won't delay the Firefox 3.0 release and have made it clear that they won't play the partial implementation game to beat the test.

Re:Test Results

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

Especially as passing the ACID test for the sake of it will not actually improve the user experience.

ACID 3 passes should come naturally, there shouldn't be the webkit style rush to pass because its only improved the browser as a side-effect instead of passing the test as a side-effect.Its like learning the answer's to a test instead of actually learning the material, sure you'll pass the test but when you go out to do some real world work/browsing, it wont of helped.

This all combined with the fact that ACID doesn't test standards compliance, as a firefox user I'm glad they're not wasting their time on it.

Way Better

[DigitalisAkujin (846133)]

I've been running this build now for 4 days straight going to countless sites that use every which plugins for movies and flash and javascript and so far considering it hasn't crashed on me in windows I'd say it's pretty solid.

Although I am running a Q6600 with 4GB. But Beta 5 used to crash on me every 2 hours.

Now to business,
Firebug Official for FF3 Please :)

Re:Stability on Linux?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I've never had firefox 3 crash on Linux with my beta 5. Nor FF2 for that matter, I'm not sure what you're talking about. My friend's had some instability problems with a 64bit processor and flash, is that it?

Re:Stability on Linux?

[AmaDaden (794446)]

FF3b5 has a strange JavaScript issue where if you go to a page that runs some kind of combination of JavaScript the entire browser, all running windows of it, will close, no warning and no recovery when you start it again. I saw it happen on a few pages but mostly with gmail. Trying to reply in gmail was almost a certain way to trigger it.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[liquidpele (663430)]

I've got a better one. While watching youtube sometimes, my just freezes. Can't kill it. Even downloaded process explorer and tried to pause the process and kill it that way, but it refused to go away. I actually had to reboot the machine to get firefox to die.

Not to mention when you start a download or a new page loads, the entire browser stops functioning until that job is done. It's like the thing doesn't know about threads? Not sure if 3 is any better in that respect, maybe...

Oh ya, and is there a way to close a site that pops up javascript popups one after the other yet? It's really annoying having to kill firefox.exe when that happens and closing all my tabs. Yes, I was looking for porn when this happened, but the site wanted me to install a codec, and wouldn't take no for an answer!

Re:Stability on Linux?

[garbletext (669861)]

I had a similar problem. The solution was to right click on any flash applet, and "disable hardware acceleration"

Re:Stability

[kryptkpr (180196)]

I block nothing, and have been running ff3b5 (on x86_64) since the day after Hardy came out without any significant issues, although there was a problem (now resolved) with it crashing on some web pages, but this was actually a bug in ubuntu's nvidia-glx-new package that ff just happened to trigger.

Installed extensions:

- Popup ALT attribute (for web comics)
- Chatzilla (for grabbing XBMC binaries)
- Greasemonkey (for added functionality on my Digg and Facebook)
- Smoothwheel (for sexyness, the built-in smooth scroll is not as nice)
- Ubuntu Firefox Mods (for great justice? this came pre-installed)

Almost makes me wonder, are the people having trouble running with ATI or nVidia graphics cards? Firefox can be kinda tough on the drivers..

Re:Stability

[kryptkpr (180196)]

Can you reproduce the crash on demand? Try launching firefox under gdb ("gdb firefox" from a console, then "run" at the prompt) then making it crash. The console you launched it from should give the gdb> prompt again, where you can do a backtrace ("bt full") to see the exactly where the crash was as well as the sequence of function calls that lead up to it.

Your firefox will be likely dying inside some library, and once you figure out which library that is (based on the backtrace) you can download it's -dbg package and repeat the process to isolate the specific function causing the crash.

This is basically what apport tries to do after the fact, but it's often works better if gdb is attached right from the start.

On a related note, I just looked in synaptec and firefox-3 itself does not have a -dbg package, only firefox-2 does.. I'm hoping this means they've left debug symbols in the binary itself.

FireFox 2 on Eee PC /Xandros

[blind biker (1066130)]

Seems to work flawlessly here on my Eee PC 701. I never installed XP on my Eee so I can't compare it to that, only to the FF I have installed on my desktop, and the stability is the same - no complaints, no crashes so far.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

Yeah i dont get the comment in the summary Firefox3 beta 5 has been quite stable for most people, it still crashes with flash though (in fact last night using flash 10 it took out my xorg) but when not using flash i've not had any problems. I've been using it consistently since beta 3 because its been so much more stable than firefox 2

If people have been having people's they really should be filling bug reports, there's no way its going to magically improve without being told what's wrong

Re:Stability on Linux?

[aredubya74 (266988)]

The issue I've seen with Flash isn't a crash, but that if one lingers on a page with a lot of Flash content (say, Youtube) and leaves the page up while browsing in other tabs, CPU eventually spikes to 99% usage, requiring the browser to be shut down.

Unfortunately, this isn't a Firefox problem, but a problem with the Flash plugin. The workaround I found (thanks to other Slashdot users) was to install the addon Flashblock [mozdev.org]. Now, instead of having the Flash content sitting and waiting, it's replaced by a little clickable object to load it. Since installing it, I have not experienced the CPU spike behavior, when it used to be a daily issue. Hope this helps folks.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[RiotingPacifist (1228016)]

You imply people should accept using buggy software.

where do I say that? perhaps your FF2 isnt rendering fonts right becasue all i said was that if your using beta software and it crashes it need bug reports to improve. filing bug reports is the exact opposite of accepting buggy software, sitting around bitching about it is pretty much accepting it.

This is an effective fix that is all but impossible using ff3 with its penchant for killing xwindows...

Why not simply use a button to killall firefox (debian logo OFC), I have that relic left over from beta3 and use it when flash 10 (beta) locks stuff up.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[zippthorne (748122)]

"You imply people should accept using buggy software."

Well ..a clearly labeled beta that you have to go through some hoops to deliberately download? Yeah, you should accept a few bugs. And also report them, so they won't be there in the final release.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[notamisfit (995619)]

By hoops, I take it you mean "install the default web browser from the Ubuntu 8.04 CD". Granted, it's about as stable as everything else in the distribution.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[zippthorne (748122)]

That is certainly not Mozilla's fault.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[linuxrocks123 (905424)]

If Firefox "takes out" Xorg, that implies a bug in Xorg, not necessarily one in Firefox. In fact, the Xorg bug could conceivably be a security issue, so that's more severe.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[turbidostato (878842)]

"You imply people should accept using buggy software."

I didn't read that way. I'd say he implies that people should accept beta software is buggy and that using beta software and filling bugs against it it's the best way for such a software to become as buggy-free as possible when launched as stable.

"Why should I use something that causes aggravation with the most simple task? I think it's ridiculous that canonical should have used such a cheesy piece of crap for a browser in the first place"

That's quite a different assumption from the grandparent's poster and I have to say I do agree with both of them: specially when talking about open source software, betatesting and filling bugs is the best way to improve software quality for a non-developer but it's ridiculous and misleading shipping a quoted-to-be stable and "production-ready" OS release full of beta-quality software. Still, too many Linux distributions follow the featuritis trend instead of following strong engineering advices. Just as an example, I feel OK for Fedora to be released with beta-quality software (Fedora is aimed to be a "technology-preview" and enthusiast testing field) while I don't feel the same to be OK for Ubuntu which is told to be a production-ready, non-technical user-friendly one.

But then, I think Linux distributions not to be so different to any other "market" products: it is the consumer responsibility (within legal requirements) to practice their own "due-diligence" and see how good the *product*, not the marketroid speech, stands against their requirements.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Rich0 (548339)]

I haven't had too many problems with crashes, but I still don't run firefox on linux. The biggest issue I've had with it is a tendency for tabs to just take a VERY long time to load.

The behavior I've seen is this:

1. Go to a site with lots of links - such as a news site or RSS aggregator.
2. Start middle-clicking on links to open them in tabs.

Inevitably one of the early ones just doesn't load - it sits and looks like it is loading and does nothing for a minute or two. All subsequent tabs do the same thing. As soon as the first one actually does load and render the others instantly load and rendor. Obviously something is blocking the loading/rendering in all open tabs when this is happening.

Everything works just fine in konqueror, so that is what I tend to use all the time. I'd actually prefer firefox for its plugins/etc, but it just isn't reliable for me. Now the only time I use it on linux is when a page doesn't render correctly in konqueror.

I'd also like to comment that I'm very concerned with the keep-piling-on-features mentality in Firefox. I want a web browser - not an OS/desktop-in-a-window. The whole reason that firefox was born was that everybody was tired of Mozilla having 47 huge features that nobody needed. Let's stick to the basics and do them right. If they want to come out with a few other apps that can tightly integrate with firefox, that's great - but let's let the stand-alone browser be a stand-alone browser...

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser. Now, I'm not RMS and I do use some proprietary software, for example Flash is installed on all my Linux boxes and I have a few proprietary games I play via WINE and some non-free Linux software such as Google Earth too. But when you think of all the information you enter on a web browser (credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc.) I just can't bring myself to use a non-free browser. It also doesn't help that Opera used to be Adware and that also makes me hesitant to use Opera as a full time browser. I don't hate Opera (in fact I use it on non-personal sites on the Wii all the time) but I just don't trust a proprietary browser when there are several good free alternatives around (Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Etc.). If Opera ever comes out with a free version of their browser (As in open-source free) I will be one of the first to download it, but until then Opera is mostly restricted to browser-testing and the Wii.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Luscious868 (679143)]

The open source idea is great but open source is not the be all end all. It just isn't. There are too many industry specific applications that are so highly tailored to particular industry and there is simply no open source alternative. I work in the construction software industry. There are several job cost accounting, project management, estimating and document imaging packages made by several vendors that are specifically tailored to this industry. I highly doubt there will ever be open source alternatives to these kinds of pieces of software that can all integrate together as seamlessly as the propriety alternatives. Forget integrating together, I doubt we will ever see open source alternatives for any of these in the first place. Writing that kind of software can be tedious and you have to understand the specifics of the industry and the kinds of business processes that small, medium and large companies have and you have to understand the different kinds of contractors that are out there (general contractors, electrical contractors, heavy highway, etc) and their various requirements.

I just don't see an incentive for a bunch of developers to get together who have that kind of very industry specific understanding to write these big, complex pieces of software just for the fun of it. I love my job because the work environment is great and so is the money but if I were given a choice of writing any piece of software I wouldn't choose writing stuff for this industry. It's not that I don't like it, it just wouldn't be my first or second choice if I could do anything and get paid just as well as I'm paid doing this and have the kind of job security that I have.

I get enjoyment from my work, but the real enjoyment comes when we close a huge deal and I cash a huge check.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Sentry21 (8183)]

Odd, I've never entered my 'social security number' (or Canadian equivalent, my SIN) or a credit card into a web browser. If I need to buy something online, I get one of those pre-paid credit cards from wherever and use those.

Regardless, you send all of your information over the network - even your e-mail address! - despite not being able to see the code on the other end?

Fact of the matter is, you should trust Opera more than any web site. Breaking into a poorly-maintained server (or even a well-maintained server with a 0-day exploit) is often not as hard as you'd think. Once you're in, it's a trivial matter to dump the database, or even just modify the code to redirect information.

Do you really know who's behind every website you visit? Not 100%, not all the time. But you know who's behind Opera, and you can track where it tries to connect and how. That's more reassuring than anything.

Any 'closed-source is the boogeyman' individuals should honestly stop and think about things like the recent exploit in the Thai (?) language pack for Firefox, or the huge SSL bug that Debian developer introduced way back when. Just because many eyes *can* look at it doesn't mean they will.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[WNight (23683)]

A lot more people read open source than closed. Maybe only 200+ people outside of the Mozilla project have read Firefox, but how many external developers have read IE7? 0?

I can't see how you don't understand that all else being equal, an open source program is going to be more screened for this stuff.

As for trusting it, well, I'd rather trust the thing I could verify, even if all I had time to check was random subsets of it, than the thing I couldn't...

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Nicolay77 (258497)]

That's your opinion. A perfectly valid one.

In my case I prefer to use some software that has been working perfectly fine for years and has been extensively copied in almost all features by others.

And by copied, I don't mean perfect copies. Mouse gestures in FF still sucks after you have used Opera mouse gestures for more than a week. And middle-button scrolling. All others have middle-button scrolling, but I just can't have pixel perfect accuracy with FF as I can with Opera. You see, you talk about hypothetic stuff (but valid, nonetheless) and I talk about actual experience (because all else is not really equal).

Having said that, I expect that FF copies Opera excellent SVG support as soon as possible.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[HappySmileMan (1088123)]

Don't know who the hell modded you as troll, but if anyone reads this please note that parent was most likely being deadly serious, in fact up until 3.0-beta4 I always used Opera over Firefox on Linux.
To GP, in my experience Firefox3 is much more stable than FF2 on Linux, I'm using Kubuntu 8.l04 KDE4 edition.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Shatrat (855151)]

In my experience 90% of 'firefox' issues on linux are actually Flash issues.
Flashblock and noscript sorts most of that out and makes the internet usable again to boot.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[shutdown -p now (807394)]

Er, what? Opera provides binaries for x86, x86_64 (in the most recent beta build only), PowerPC and SPARC, and all of the above come in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. You can explore the relevant [opera.com] parts [opera.com] of their FTP site for yourself if you want to check.

Re:What problems?

[dotancohen (1015143)]

The only problem I saw on Linux was the growth of the "urlclassifier3.sqlite" file. When it grew over 20 MB, it was necessary to delete it.

Were there other problems? Because apart from the above, I used the last beta every day on Ubuntu, MS Windows, and OS X and had no problems.

It is the Phishing protection database. After you erase that file, disable Phishing protection. If you feel confident enough in yourself to identify phishing sites yourself, that is. I leave it enabled for the mother in law.

Re:

[FoolsGold (1139759)]

The only changes I've noticed so far are visual, such as extra gradients in certain areas, color changes in the AwesomeBar, and etc (running in Vista btw). There's probably technical improvements elsewhere but I couldn't find a reference anywhere for what they might be.

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

[dbcooper_nz (782764)]

Some changes are summarised here: http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/05/firefox-3-release-candidate-1-is-here/ [mozillalinks.org] . A new version of Cairo (1.6) is used under the hood.

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

[DigitalisAkujin (846133)]

What has changed since beta5? Grannies might not be interested, but geeks are...

Basically the Mozilla foundation keeps track of so called "blocker" bugs which essentially means that they are blocking release. In the past month they took care of approx 250 blockers which essentially means that for the past month they've been coding this browser to be built like a rock. It's not always a visual thing but just as important.

Re:Changelog compared to beta5?

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge [squarefree.com]

Re:Respect

[Phyrexicaid (1176935)]

Slashdot posts don't include swearing in the story summaries, so why is it acceptable to use the word 'God' as an expletive? I find it very offensive and it reflects poorly on a site which I have enjoyed for a long time.

He wasn't swearing, he was praying.
Plus, it wasn't directed at your god anyway, it was meant for the God of Opensource.