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Firefox 3 Release On Tuesday

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Jun 12, 2008 10:54 AM
from the let's-get-ready-to-downlooooooad dept.
Mozilla The Internet
unkgoon writes "The Mozilla Developer News blog is reporting Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you're invited to the party! From the website: 'After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.'" Update: 06/12 17:44 GMT by T : Dan100 was among several readers to write with news that, rather than just being announced, "Opera 9.5 has been released today after nearly two years of development. New features include increased speed (particularly in the Javascript engine), Opera Link (browser synchronisation), and a 'sharp' new theme." Dan100 also links to a full changelog from 9.27.
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Submission: Firefox 3 release on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 by unkgoon (1306227)
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  • opera is faster (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2008, @10:57AM (#23765127)
    it was released today
    • I don't know why this was modded troll, Opera is faster and it was released today. "Faster" is a value judgment I suppose, but can I mod the article troll because it called Firefox "the best browser, period"?

      • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Insightful)

        by immcintosh (1089551) <slashdotNO@SPAMianmcintosh.org> on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:49AM (#23766127) Homepage
        The problem is, "faster" is absolutely not a value judgment. It's testable and quantifiable, and the claim that Opera is "faster," at least according to one benchmark [zdnet.com.au], doesn't seem to be true. I won't even go into memory usage. I personally think we should reserve judgment until we can test final releases against eachother, but I think a troll mod is perfectly appropriate.

        • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2008, @12:03PM (#23766409)

          The problem is, "faster" is absolutely not a value judgment. It's testable and quantifiable, and the claim that Opera is "faster," at least according to one benchmark, doesn't seem to be true.
          In context, I think maybe he meant "faster to the market" ... in that they got their update out "faster" than the Mozilla foundation did...

          -AC

        • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Informative)

          by bishiraver (707931) on Thursday June 12 2008, @12:23PM (#23766765) Homepage
          That's the HTML rendering engine. That only happens when:
          • The page is loaded
          • The DOM structure is changed
          • A previously visible element is hidden, or vice versa
          • Size of an element changes
          The more important benchmark, especially for applications like google docs and other pseudo-application applications is the rewritten JavaScript engine in Opera 9.5, which is indeed extremely fast.

        • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sulfur (1008327) on Thursday June 12 2008, @01:04PM (#23767497)
          I am typing this from a 600 MHz / 256 MB machine that is running KDE, and I assure you that Opera is the fastest browser I tried - not even KDE-native Konqueror can match it (I've been using Opera since version 6). Websites that make heavy use of Javascript (digg, google apps, etc) are absolutely unusable in Firefox (3 had some improvements over 2, but it's still slow). While I do use Firefox on my home computer, there is no match for Opera on older machines. I wish Opera developers found a way to port AdBlock and Flashblock plugins - these are "killer" plugins that prevent me from switching to Opera completely.

          I am amazed how a closed-source app like Opera can outperform open source browsers that can supposedly integrate into the enviroment much better by such a high margin.

          • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Interesting)

            by JOrgePeixoto (853808) on Thursday June 12 2008, @01:29PM (#23767931)

            I am amazed how a closed-source app like Opera can outperform open source browsers that can supposedly integrate into the enviroment much better by such a high margin.
            I am not sure Firefox developers even *care* enough about speed. Unfortunately, most developers have this attitude that "I can make code as slow as I want, and Moore's law will take care of it". Optimization is seen as a waste of time.

            • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Interesting)

              by fireboy1919 (257783) <rustyp@@@freeshell...org> on Thursday June 12 2008, @04:05PM (#23770389) Homepage Journal
              Minimo [mozilla.org] (based on the ff3 tree) is faster, supports more javascript, and has a smaller memory footprint than Opera does on my 400Mhz Nokia N800. Minimo runs flash better, too.

              Firefox 3 is a tipping point. It is the point at which Opera's claim of greater speed is quite arguable if not entirely unfounded. Considering that speed and portability are essentially the only things that Opera has going for it, the latest version of Firefox may actually destroy Opera's market.

              • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Interesting)

                by JOrgePeixoto (853808) on Thursday June 12 2008, @02:53PM (#23769329)

                Or they realise that aslong as it works, nobody outside of slashdot cares if it renders pages in 100ms or 200.
                Years ago I saw an Opera ad and thought "Ridiculous. Internet browsing is obviously IO-bound. Having a faster browser obviously cannot improve it". When I actually tried Opera though, I was proven wrong. I then realized that other browsers were so frickin slow that yes, Opera could make internet browsing far more pleasant. I later realized that the whole "IO-bound" meme is often just an excuse for slow software... If you actually optimize the software, you find that yes, it can be made much faster.

                Mind you, I nowadays don't use Opera because it is not Free Software. I use Firefox.

                • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Insightful)

                  by Krishnoid (984597) on Thursday June 12 2008, @04:03PM (#23770353) Journal
                  Mind you, I nowadays don't use Opera because it is not Free Software. I use Firefox.

                  Well, it's good of you to admit that Opera is better than Free alternatives. But based on that, a non-Free product is competing with Free alternatives and succeeding (at least in the performance arena) on its own merits and providing a good, perhaps even better quality product without acting unethically. RMS himself in his early essays would describe why Free produced better software, at least for some areas (TurboTax and its ilk is IMHO a counterexample to the Free is better argument). Where Free doesn't produce better software for one's use, shouldn't one use the best (ethically-produced) tool for the job -- I mean, it's a piece of software, not a human rights issue, right?

                  • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Insightful)

                    by JOrgePeixoto (853808) on Thursday June 12 2008, @04:47PM (#23770929)
                    I believe Free Software is indeed about freedom. And I believe that Open Source does tend to produce the best technical results, but of course there are exceptions. Specially in areas where Open Source is not (at least yet) mature enough, possibly due to presently having too little momentum. Perhaps one example would be 3D FPS gaming, but I cannot comment because I currently rarely play games.
                    I do believe that by stimulating free software I am stimulating both superior technology, economic efficiency and issues like
                    1) The freedom of access to information
                    2) The independence of people, including in foreign countries, from a particular corporation *
                    3) Power to the people, including from repressive governments
                    4) The framework (free, good quality compilers and libraries for software makers; free and good image editing tools for image makers; etc) for people to learn something, or, after learning, to express their potential

                    And there is no doubt that by merely using Firefox, I help them. It is called network-effect. The network effect in software is so strong that a scientific study has found that, if not for piracy (which allows people who otherwise would use Linux to use Windows), Microsoft would undoubtedly lose to Linux. With piracy, the study found that the future is uncertain, and no winner can be predicted (and maybe there won't even be a clear winner). The reason is that each person that uses Windows (even if without paying) is one less Linux user. One more person in the market for Windows software. One more person for a windows user to turn for help. One more reason for hardware companies to develop Windows drivers. So yes, network effect is so strong that Windows has a *net benefit* from piracy.

                    So I do help Free Software by merely using it, and even more when I advocate my friends to use it too, and when I help people in the forums, report bugs, etc.
                    And I am always honest: I only advocate Firefox because I know that, while being (possibly) worse than Opera, it is good enough, and I don't claim it to be the best. I just claim it is very good, and much better than IE.

                    * Really. I'm not the usual moon-landing 9/11 JFK conspiracy retard, but it is scary that our whole country, including the armed forces, depend on Microsoft. It is not like the USA has not deliberately leaked booby-trapped technology to the Soviets before**... There is a real-world possibility that the US government has made Microsoft put traps on Windows
                    ** And, by the way, it was good. I am not your usual Soviet Union panderer either. I thank God that the Soviets are gone, and I hope the Chinese dictatorship goes away as well. Unfortunately, the reality is currently different from that, and the future seems worrisome, specially for us in Latin America...

      • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Funny)

        by Nerdposeur (910128) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:30AM (#23765725) Journal

        Opera is faster, but my computer is so fast that you really can't tell the difference much...

        Yeah? Well my computer is so fast that it loads pages before I request them.

        Oh, who am I kidding? [sobs]

            • Re:opera is faster (Score:5, Interesting)

              by CastrTroy (595695) on Thursday June 12 2008, @01:23PM (#23767841) Homepage
              I personally suspect (although I have no proof) that is must have to do with some specific extension that a lot of people use. I've ran Firefox for weeks at a time, and only had the memory go up to about 200MB, but that's with about 15 tabs open, spread between various windows. Since so many people experience it, it must be a popular plugin. But there's enough people who experience no problems at all, that it can't be something built into the browser by default.

  • Zoom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Frosty Piss (770223) on Thursday June 12 2008, @10:57AM (#23765153)
    I've been using the RC, and must say the memory issues that the Mozilla developers have tried to claim never existed, are almost nonexistent now. The only tiny thing I don't like is the Text Size function which is now called "zoom", and is sucky.

    • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Informative)

      by Derek Pomery (2028) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:01AM (#23765215)
      View->Zoom
      Check off "text zoom only"

      • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:33AM (#23765781)
        Check off: We are looking for Nuclear wessels...

    • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:02AM (#23765231)
      That's because now it really acts as zoom: it doesn't resize only the text, but the images too (though this can be configured), as opposed in FF2 where only the text would change size, and thus the "Text size" terminology made more sense.

      • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Funny)

        by pubjames (468013) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:36AM (#23765841)
        Yes. Apparently it's especially annoying when you are demonstrating something to a client and they get to see all the websites you were exploring the night before...

        • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Richard_at_work (517087) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [ecirpdrahcir]> on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:16AM (#23765489)

          I just wish there was a way to revert the 'Awesome Bar' to the standard address bar that FF2 had (with no automatic searching, just url matching), because I hate the new functionality.
          Of course there's a way. There's an extension. :) [mozilla.org]
          From that page:

          Note that the underlying autocomplete algorithm is the Firefox 3 algorithm, not the Firefox 2 algorithm. oldbar only affects the presentation of the results.
          Its the algorithm that I want to disable completely.

        • Re:Zoom (Score:5, Informative)

          by SEMW (967629) on Thursday June 12 2008, @12:23PM (#23766775)

          IE7 had it first.
          Actually, I think you'll find that Opera had it several years before either IE7 or Firefox.

  • speaking of releases (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:00AM (#23765209)
    I just released a brown trout in the 3rd floor men's room. The toilet seems to be broken (or "beta" as us googlers call it), so you might want to avoid the middle stall.
  • Will it be fixed in 3.0, or will I have to wait for 3.1? See, I use Linux and my partitions are ext3. The fsync issue affects me.

  • I'm waiting. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oliverthered (187439) <oliverthered@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:10AM (#23765379)
    I'm waiting until flash is ready and all of my addons work with Firefox 3, it's only half a browser without them

    • Re:I'm waiting. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rurik (113882) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:24AM (#23765611)
      Don't wait, contact the developers! Each add-on developer works independently from the rest of the system. I assumed my extension worked fine in 3.0 and was going to wait until FF3 became finalized, but I received enough comments and issues from beta users that I went and updated mine and continued to update the versions so that it would work with all of the betas and RCs. If there's an extension you need, email the authors and hound them to update it asap.

  • Firefox has severe problems with IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Omnifarious (11933) on Thursday June 12 2008, @12:10PM (#23766541) Homepage Journal

    Firefox basically can't do SOCKS proxying and connect to IPv6 sites [mozilla.org], even if you configure a SOCKS5 proxy which can handle IPv6.

    • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hatta (162192) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:04AM (#23765293) Journal
      So what do you want? A cookie?

    • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:05AM (#23765305)
      Firefox is the best browser out there and it is the only one I will ever allow in my house

      I don't, it sheds hair all over the couch and chases my pet firehen.

        • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

          by Dmala (752610) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:35AM (#23765823)
          It was originally called Firebird, a reference to the Phoenix [wikipedia.org] and the idea that the app was born from the ashes of Netscape. They changed it after receiving complaints from the Firebird database [firebirdsql.org] people, keeping the "fire" and swapping out the animal. I assume the fox was chosen for the alliteration and for the image of the fox as being scrappy and independent. Fireslug just doesn't have the same ring...

        • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Informative)

          by nuzak (959558) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:35AM (#23765833) Journal
          > I wonder how they came up with the name Firefox?

          It used to be called Phoenix, which was to evoke the whole "rising from the ashes" imagery WRT the (at the time) moribund Mozilla project. The BIOS people didn't like that and asked them to change it, so they renamed it Firebird, which the database people weren't keen on. So finally they came up with Firefox, and it stuck. Better name anyway.

        • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

          by yuriyg (926419) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:42AM (#23765977)
          Me: Oh the great, all-knowing wikipedia, please enlighten me on the reason Mozilla Firefox chose such a glorious name!
          Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: It was first named "Phoenix", because it arose from the ashes of Netscape. Then (due to international copyright laws and conflict with Phoenix Technologies) they chose to rename the great product as "Firebird," and all rejoiced! Alas, the great joy did not last long, as the wicked Firebird Database Server users started to complain. The great creators then finally settled on the name that is heard throughout the land: FIREFOX!

          I did have to sacrifice a goat though...

    • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rurik (113882) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:15AM (#23765463)
      If you thought it was so good, wouldn't you have upgraded to the release candidate weeks ago instead of continuing to use the beta? :)

    • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

      by pak9rabid (1011935) on Thursday June 12 2008, @11:20AM (#23765549)

      Firefox is the best browser out there and it is the only one I will ever allow in my house and I even have the thumb drive version.
      This is when a 'fanboi' mod would come in handy.

      • Re:I have firefox 3.0 beta (Score:5, Funny)

        by TClevenger (252206) on Thursday June 12 2008, @12:28PM (#23766861)

        Firefox is the best browser out there and it is the only one I will ever allow in my house and I even have the thumb drive version.

        This is when a 'fanboi' mod would come in handy.

        It sounds even better when you say it in a Ralph Wiggum voice.

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