A Look at the Newly Released Mozilla Firefox 0.9

SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin is one of the first to review the latest Mozilla Firefox release, numbered 0.9. According to the reviewer, there's a lot to be thankful for, as this release is far more stable than its earlier versions and sports some new features along with a new interface. My new all-time-favorite line: 'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put."

Not there yet

[ack154]

I think it should be noted that the Firefox homepage makes no mention of 0.9 yet. Though, there is a release notes [mozilla.org] page for it, the links point to 0.8 still. Also, there is nothing in the releases folder [mozilla.org] on the Mozilla.org ftp for it yet.

Text grab from server before it dies.

[john_smith_45678]

First Look at Mozilla Firefox 0.9
Last update: 06-14-2004

Submitted by Adam Doxtater

The last time we looked at Mozilla Firefox , it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they've changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition... and this is putting it mildly.

Mozilla Firefox ( release notes | roadmap ) is a completely modular browser consisting of a basic, streamlined framework upon which users can add ' extensions ', which (just as the name implies) are essentially plugins for the browser. The idea of less is more has been taken to the next level with this browser. With the default browser, you have just enough browser to do pretty much anything you can on the Internet, while more advanced, custom functionality is reserved to the extensions. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.

When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are Mozilla (of course), Opera , and Konqueror . Safari is also coming along nicely on OS X . The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality... it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under Linux (GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX, Sun Solaris SPARC/x86, Sun JDS 2003, Microsoft Windows (all versions), and IBM OS/2 , so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU ( system requirements )

The Mozilla Firefox 0.9 browser

What's new in version 0.9?
This is the last preview release before Firefox comes of age at milestone version 1.0, so what new features have been implemented? Well, at first glance all you will notice is the interface has been redesigned with an updated theme. At first I didn't quite know how to take it, but now that I've used it for a while it's grown on me. The new look is very minimalistic, clinging tightly to the focus of the browser itself. Anyway, here's a more complete listing for those of you who are skimming:

* New default theme - Like I said, it sports a new sleek skin (seen in the screenshots of this review).
* Redesigned theme/extension managers & SmartUpdate - Newly redesigned interfaces make it even easier to manage your browser, as well as keeping it up to date with smart notifications .
* Installer updates - Linux now has an installer for GTK2, and the Windows package has gotten smaller - to the tune of 4.6MB.
* Easier migration - Migrating your important information and settings from other browsers has never been easier. Firefox can now import settings from previous versions, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. This includes favorites, settings, cookies, history and saved passwords.
* Help - An updated online help system is now available. This is in addition to the wonderful Firefox Forums and existing help material .
* Linux look and feel - Much work has gone into the UI, making it adhere better to GTK2 themes. Menus now look like they belong in the desktop scheme like they were meant to be.

Not only were new features added to this release, work continues to keep bugs squashed, past and present, so the browser feels far more stable than it has in the past. Don't get me wrong, this browser has always been ahead of its time in terms of vision and scope, but it has had its fair share of bugs, but so far as I can tell by running this release constantly for the past week or so it looks pretty solid. It hasn't crashed once, and let me tell you this is a definite improveme

Re:Is it just me..

[nick0909]

If you go to the main page [mozilla.org], you can see that 0.9 RC has been released. Mozilla has a habit of updating their main page when a new firefox is out, but not updating their firefox page.

Re:Not there yet

[phalse phace]

On the Mozilla [mozilla.org] main page, there are links to download Firefox 0.9 RC.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[Anonymous Coward]

you must not run an NT authenticated intranet. The one big thing stopping us is IE can auto-authenticate. I can only imagine the uproar if I told everyone they had to logon the intranet each time they accessed it...

Re:Nice? no

[MisterP]

uh huh.

check out this: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html [google.com]

and more specifically this: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/may04_browse rs.gif [google.com]

I love it to death, even have my family converted (unknowingly... changed the big blue E to point at firefox instead) but that graph doesn't paint a nice picture.

Jesse's list of "what's new in FF 0.9"

[david_reese]

Since the release notes aren't public yet [mozilla.org]

...take a look at Jesse's more detailed and informative list [squarefree.com]

Re:Forgive the ignorance...

[j-pimp]

Firefox is Mozilla without the email client, right? It can accept the same modules/plugins and everything, right? Or am I way off?


Firefox is based on mozilla code. They created a stand alone browser that was better, smaller, faster than the mozilla one. They also want to redo the concept of mozilla proper where all the components can either be stand alone application or extensions to FireFox. Chec out the roadmap [mozilla.org] for a better explanation.

Re:Forgive the ignorance...

[chuonthis]

From the release notes:

7. Is Firefox just Mozilla with a couple UI tweaks?

Firefox is substantially different, featuring a number of exclusive features and countless refinements. Well over 120,000 lines of code have been added or changed in the browser and toolkit CVS directories since the project began.

Firefox is a web browser and does not do email. For email, use Thunderbird [mozilla.org]. Plugins for Mozilla generally work with Firefox but the extensions are usually not compatible with each other.

It's ok.

[ninti]

I have been using the 0.9rc since the day it came out. It's ok, maybe a bit better than 0.8, but hardly this amazing new day for Internet browsing. They squashed some bugs, but some long term bugs and annoyances still remain, and unfortunately it appears they have added one or two. Pesonally, it does not seem any more or less stable, but about the same. Regardless of all that, like 0.8 before it, it is still a hell of a lot better than IE.

Re:Forgive the ignorance...

[Moonshadow]

Not quite. It is only a browser, but the plugin structure and all that is different from Mozilla. Firefox is based on the Mozilla source, but it's been gutted and reworked to be leaner and meaner, and a lot of things have changed, so plugins and skins have to be Firefox-specific. However, it's tons faster than Mozilla and much smaller, too, and there are already tons of skins and plugins for it. The authoritative resource for Firefox skins/plugins is here [texturizer.net], and more are being ported every day, so chances are, if there's a plugin or skin you love for Mozilla, you can find it for Firefox.

0.9 has NOT been released.

[Futurepower(R)]

0.9 has NOT been released. Only the release candidate is available, which I've been using for the last two days, and seems okay.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[Anonymous Coward]

NTLM auth is supported by mozilla as well (source [mozillazine.org])

Re:Forgive the ignorance...

[bersl2]

OK, let's correct the previous posters on this one.

Mozilla and Firefox share plugin (Java, Flash, etc...) structure.

Mozilla and Firefox are internally different when it comes to extensions (mouse gestures, etc...) and themes.

Make Firefox Even Faster!

[john_smith_45678]

I tried these changes, and Firefox is noticeably faster:

There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to decrease the loading/rendering time of Firefox. I have tried the settings, and have noticed a mild improvement. Just wanted to share the information.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/8007.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Edit: Updated Instructions:

open about_:config (without the underscore).

1.) network.http.pipelining = true
2.) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest = true
3.) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = (the poster says 32, but suggest 8 is the limit)
4.) network.http.proxy.pipelining = true

Don't do number #5.


http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1 73568&highlight=pipelining [sitepoint.com]

Re:no installation tips: They'

[ajna]

Somehow it thought that it would be proper to import my IE favorites and cookies, overwriting my existing Firefox settings while doing so. Oh well.

Re:Not there yet

[$tefan]

The latest 0.9 Firefox binaries ARE available at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-0.9/ [mozilla.org]

Re:Great browser, but...

[Watts Martin]

I've actually very recently switched from Safari to Firefox as my Mac default. Every so often I miss SnapBack -- but all the major features are very comparable, the rendering engines seem equivalent in speed, and Firefox's typeahead link selection can really be a great thing. The bookmark importer that I found even set up the toolbar bookmarks about the same way mine were set up in Safari, so I don't notice the UI change as a dramatic difference. Once Firefox is set up as the browser default it's just as "integrated" with the OS as Safari is. And, Firefox's current iterations are quite pretty.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[dinodrac]

Firefox and mozilla support NTLM authentication on all platforms, and have done so for the past couple of releases. They don't however pick up credentials from the OS, so you have to log in seperately with firefox. This is a feature, as a browser that sends credentials before being asked to do so is a security risk.

Re:Sorry but the new theme sucks

[Patik]

You can find the "old" theme here [moztips.com].

it is changing

[cyfer2000]

see the new icons at http://cheeaun.phoenity.com/weblog/ [phoenity.com]

Re:Nice? no

[asa]

Compare March and May and you'll see that Gecko was trending up.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/mar04_brow se rs.gif
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/may0 4_browse rs.gif

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Firefox is great

[tricops]

Being fully patched isn't good enough when there are holes without patches. I've had IE install various hotbar types of junk without my permission before there's been any type of patch out. Those ones were annoying (well, it wasn't hotbar, but amazingautosearch or some junk like that, etc, gah).

Re:Great browser, but...

[Tyler Durden]

I must say it was quite a relief when I replaced Safari with Opera 7.50. This after trying Firefox, Safari and whatever the last version of Opera working with OS X was. (That one was just too crash-prone to be usable). AFAIK, only Opera handles windows/tabs the way I want it to. That is, it never creates a new window unless I specifically tell it to. If I'm browsing and a link from a site wants to open an additional page without replacing the old one, it comes in as a new tab. End of story.

I don't know what you mean by integration with the OS. I expect a browser to do just 2 things for me.
1) Browse web pages.
2) Stay the fuck out of my face.
(Unfortunately, I have to live with mail and newgroup functionality in Opera that I never use it for. Oh well.)

The only bigger relief than replacing Safari with Opera was replacing Mail with Thunderbird. But that's a different stoy.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Mozilla.org Site Not Updated Yet?

[vigilology]

...the latest Mozilla Firefox release, numbered 0.9

According to the link [mozilla.org], the latest release is 0.8...

Re:Make Firefox Even Faster!

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting "network.http.pipelining.firstrequest" is pointless - the code that handled that pref was removed some time ago. Setting .proxy.pipelining doesn't do anything unless you have a proxy configured, and if you do have a proxy configured, you'll find that most proxies don't support pipelining.

Enabling pipelining can indeed speed things up though.

Re:FireFox Considered Harmfull

[chuonthis]

Make sure you are using valid CSS [w3.org] and HTML [w3.org]. I've heard so many stories about cross-browser programming and back with IE4 and NS4, sure there was a problem...but as soon as I started using valid code, everything has shown up the same in IE and Firefox (with the exception of some paddings/margins).

Re:Great browser, but...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"I, personally have given up on making my own webpages work with IE, it's not worth the effort..."

Why would you ever be hired with that attitude?

The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.

Sure, IE has some quirks (did you know that you can turn most of these off using the proper DOCTYPE?). But it's not a "pain in the ass" to develop for.

The biggest quirk is that IE (when not in standards-compliant mode - see above) calculates "size" differently than other browsers (and the standard).

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*. I have built *tons* of web pages for both IE and Mozilla. They render exactly the same in Opera, IE, KHTML, and Mozilla, they conform to the XHTML 1.1 spec, they are lightweight, and they look pretty good.

IE's second biggest quirk is it's (semi) lack of PNG alpha. Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images. JPEG does better for photographs, anyway.

So, what's your problem with IE. Name the areas where IE doesn't conform to standards *in standards compliance mode* and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

Do Mozilla, KHTML, and Opera conform to the standard better? Yes. Does that mean that it's a "pain in the ass" to develop for IE? No.

Web developers who say that it's "not worth the effort" to develop for IE are like an engine designer who says it's "not worth the effort" to develop for 87 octane petrol.

Re:Great browser, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, only Opera handles windows/tabs the way I want it to. That is, it never creates a new window unless I specifically tell it to. If I'm browsing and a link from a site wants to open an additional page without replacing the old one, it comes in as a new tab. End of story.

Firefox can do this too, but not out of the box - you need to install the Tabbrowser Extensions extension. Which is, coincidentally, the first extension I always install.

Re:Mad Penguin misses one MAJOR regression

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

The OK and Cancel buttons being the wrong way around under KDE bugged the hell out of me, but I recently discovered this adjustment [slashdot.org] that solves that particular problem. It is a pain having to do this, but on the otherhand, at least it is fairly easy to make these changes and normally if something is bugging you, its probably bugging someone else and they've already fixed it!

HTH.

Re:Great browser, but...

[cyfer2000]

I personally don't like the metal brush interface of safari, and from my test, the CSS layout speed of safari is far behind firefox.

Re:Favorite Line

[Roguelazer]

Actually, IE's not that hard to install in Linux. WINE supports it quite well. And I hope it's days are numbered. IE's CSS support is rather scary, it's buggy, full of security holes, and slow as molassas. I remember way back when when I changed my Windows machine from IE to NS4. Since then, I haven't been back, going from NS4 to NS6 to Mozilla to Firefox.

Re:Make Firefox Even Faster!

[bconway]

Be careful, not all sites correctly support pipelining, and will leave you stuck with a half-rendered page that never finishes. I've discovered this over and over with Mozilla in the past (perhaps I just look at really shitty sites), so I leave it off for compatability's sake now. Being correct is more important to me than being fast when it comes to software.

Opera 7.51 released

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you on Opera's tab handling, I want ALL my tabs to stay in one window unless I choose otherwise. Also, if you don't use Opera's mail/newsgroups/chat features you can disable them by going tools->preferences->programs and paths->uncheck enable mail and news. You mention some stability programs so maybe you should try the new 7.51 version.

http://www.opera.com/download/ [opera.com]

Just wait a little bit...

[GarfBond]

In case it wasn't obvious to everybody else, the latest ffx release is 0.9 RC. Meaning release candidate. Meaning not yet final bits.

The RC *is* major feature complete, but (as evident with the new theme and extension work) is still needing a fair bit of work before release. 0.9 final is expected in July, 1.0 final is expected in September (at which point I'm more than happy to shove it on everybody and anybody :) ) See the Roadmap [mozilla.org] for details.

In a build I downloaded today, I even noticed that the profile importer now finally gives you the option of which profile to import from (eg IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x, etc) before actually doing the dirty work. That wasn't present in 0.9rc IIRC.

In other words, I'd wait a little bit longer before pushing 0.9RC on your friends and family. This one's for the testing folks. Of course, anything pre-1.0 is really meant for testing, but this one more so :)

Re:Great browser, but...

[chewy_2000]

I can second that. I've been using Firefox since 0.1, and I've never had any major problems until 0.9RC. First install completed, but crashed, none of my old bookmarks were imported, and some of the buttons were missing (in Help->About, IIRC) so I started from scratch, installing as a new profile. Installed OK but crashed on startup with some weird error message. I very much doubt it's my system. Just went back to a nightly 0.8 build, and it's as good as ever.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[starwed]

One solution which is already in the works: requests to install XPI's will only trigger when the user actively clicks on something. For example, right now requests can be run onload, which is annoying and has a great danger of the user reflexively clicking yes.

Re:Great browser, but...

[pvera]

I also switched from Safari to Firefox about a week ago. I am in shock with how easy it was for me to switch over and not look back. My favorite features so far are the custom search engines I can add and also the ability to hide images by host.

I also like how if you open a bunch of tabs it reports all the dead tabs one after the other instead of having to go to each dead tab to OK the error message. And it is very nice to have the "Open in Tabs" in each bookmark folder instead of as a toggle in the bookmarks manager.

Virutal PC

[onlyjoking]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[Trepalium]

Yes, but it doesn't auto-authenticate via NTLM with your currently logged in credentials as IE does. One could argue that IE's implementation is a security flaw, as it means you're sending your username (which may include organization name, location, etc), and password hash to any remote site that asks for authentication.

Re:It's not light-years ahead of IE

[polveroj]

You can't really blame MS for not supporting CSS3; the standard is just a draft now, not a recommendation. Not supporting large areas of CSS2 (and even some of CSS1), on the other hand, is totally inexcusable.

Multiple versions of IE on Windows

[darkpurpleblob]

Have a look at Multiple IE's in Windows [insert-title.com] for running multiple versions of IE side by side in Windows.

Re:Why

[Gigantic1]

<BLOCKQUOTE> As with every other Mozilla/Firefox/Firebird/Whatever-They-Call-It-Thi s-Week browser story, my question is... "So?". The review in no way mentions a single thing that makes this browser "better" or makes me want to take time to download and install a new program. Why? Give me a good, solid reason.... <BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm glad you asked because not many peiople have addressed this issue. I recently switched from IE to Firefox and this is unusual for me for I am generally pretty skeptical of the OpenSource Communiy's ability to rival MS at thier own game. However, on this one - FireFox has hit a home run. Let's start with just a few things that make FireFox Better:

#1. An integrated Pop-Up blocker: this sucker runs smooth in the background and doesn't hang for a second. It's so smooth you don't even know it's working. Simply the best.

#2. Tabular Windows: New windows may be opened as Tabs within the primary wondow. It's fast and smooth and makes flipping between loaded web pages a snap. Hey...you can actually load 2 -ro- 3 pages while reading your primary page - all without context switching. Nice!

#3. Excellent Menus! Although I've used I.E. for years, I find the Mozilla Menu more intuitive after only 2 days!!!

#4. Does not Run MS VBScript and ActiveX: theses are nothing but security holes, and for that reason, Firefox doesn't support them. I'm glad.

#5. Every Plug-in Imaginable Available: and easy to find and download!

#6 Ability to Pipeline Page Element: Makes for a much faster Web Page Load!

#7 Ability to Render While Loading: ability to render a Web Page while it is still loading - no having to wait and wait and wait!

#8. Overall Speed!!!! This SOB Firefox is fast - Very Fast compared to IE

#9 Colorful Iconized Menu Bars: Menu Bar Icons are colorful and more Intuitive than any I've seen on any browser.

Re:Great browser, but...

[Ruediger]

I forgot to use the line break tags. it should be:

Firefox can do it out of the box:

1. Type about:config in the location bar
2. Look for browser.tabs.loadInBackground
3. Set the value to true

I am not sure if you need to reload the browser or not.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[NamShubCMX]

In my case (I'm not the parent poster), it actually was the tab-based browsing.

Our web tool is much more efficient when using many open pages at once (I guess that says something about design, but anyway, it works best with mozilla)

We didn't force the upgrade (pple can still use IE...) but so far everyone who tried firefox stuck with it...

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[FLEB]

Why doesn't Mozilla ship with the Modern theme on by default (actually, it might now... I've only upgraded for so long, I don't know)? Classic is just a kludged remake of Netscape 4.x, which is enough to scare anyone away.

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just configure it to treat all cookies as session cookies. That way you don't have to confirm every damn one of them. And as long as you close the whole browser periodically, all your cookies get wiped.

Plus if there is the odd cookie that you want to stick around longer than the session, you can just turn on "accept all cookies" then hit that particular site, then switch back to session. The cookie that was set will not get converted to a session cookie.

PPC Linux version

[Castaa]

I don't see a 0.9 package for PPC Linux?

This version of Linux isn't supported?
(This isn't a flame. I just don't see it.)

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[antiMStroll]

Look here [mozdev.org].

IE has a nasty DHTML bug

[Rydain]

I'm a developer working on agricultural web applications. These rely very heavily on DHTML to provide a snappy interface no matter what the customer's connection is (many are still on dialup) and to take some load off our data-crunching servers. One particular application has a parent window that can pop up smaller child windows to view and edit data in a convenient format. To do its job efficiently, this application needs to be able to access a wide variety of setup information for the currently selected grower. Said variety of information takes several seconds to load and process even from our internal network, so I thought it would be most efficient to load it only once - when the current grower is changed in the root window - using JS arrays to store this data in sorted order. This scheme initially presented problems. When a different grower would load, the child windows' references to the master data arrays would break. I came up with what I thought was an elegant solution. I'd only store one set of references in the parent, tell the child windows where the root window was, and have them call the root window's functions to populate their interfaces as necessary.

This works as expected in Firefox. It causes IE 6 to crash and burn with a bizarre error message.

Some Googling revealed that IE refuses to allow you to use a JS function in a parent window to populate a select box in its child. If it refused to do something like this for security purposes (and if this idea is, indeed, poor security, I would like to know about it), but it shouldn't just die. I had to rip my code apart to add in an extra step to pass data to the child windows and then use their own functions to populate the interfaces, which annoyed me because I was having to load the same JS all over again.

Additionally,

[Anonymous Coward]

You just check the box that says 'Remember this password' and from there it's only a matter of clicking the 'OK' button the first time that you open Mozilla/Firefox for the day.

Re:Is there a way to escape Flash annoyance-popups

[TOCie]

Easy - first, install Flash.

Then install the Flash Block [mozdev.org] extension. It replaces the Flash applet with a button you have to click to begin the applet.

Re:Firefox is great

[Just Some Guy]

Also, i've never seen IE automatically install ANYTHING, when it's fully patched, without the user pressing "yes,"

I was helping my sister clean the malware off her computer when I got a popup asking if I wanted to install some random spyware thingy. I clicked "No". Another box popped up asking if I was sure. I almost clicked "Yes" before I read the fine print, which was along the lines of:

You have chosen not to take advantage of our great offer. If you really don't want to get these great features, click "No". If you've changed your mind and would like to install the program anyway, click "Yes".

I learned two things that day: 1) people don't necessarily install malware because they're stupid, and 2) hell ain't hot enough for some of these jerks.

Re:Great browser, but...

[Darth_Burrito]

In my experience, when people are exposed to Mozilla for a stretch of time, it rapidly becomes apparent that it is better than IE. It's just something that sells itself. Looking at some stats [w3schools.com] from January 2003 to June 2004, Mozilla usage has almost trippled going from 4% to 11.2%. Mozilla usage is up 37% this year alone. That is some serious growth anyway you look at it and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.

How to recover from a failed installation:

[Futurepower(R)]

The old installation folders are needed to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file. After searching, I found that the old files were in:

Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\

They must be copied to:

C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >

The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.

Possibly the FireFox team has some old Microsoft employees, because they sometimes promote frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.

On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.

Re:I hate to be the bearer of bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

That idea has popped into a lot of people's heads. Then they looked at the "html" used by the Explorer filemanager, help system, etc and gave up on it.

Re:Great browser, but...

[Arngautr]

I was going to respond to that PNG comment but you beat me to it, I'll just add the following: PNGs (and to a lesser extent MNGs, due mainly to their lack of support) are so great, though I really wish IE had them working properly, for non photograph like images PNGs actually compress (often much) better than JPGs, even when they are lossless and JPGs are lossy, they ussually compress better than GIFs while also offering much more color depth.

responding to your other comments CSS is very useful but unfortunately can cause things to display slightly differently in IE vs other browsers, I've used CSS but I've restricted my use to options that work in older browsers: at least NN4, IE4. CSS is quite helpful for maintaining sites easily. a decent CSS reference [w3schools.com]

Re:Just wait a little bit...

[radja]

0.9 is now available..

Re:You most certainly are (wrong)

[Cobron]

I thought "only accept cookies from the originating website" was the solution against these tracking-cookies?

Re:Great browser, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you ever be hired with that attitude? The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.

While I agree with you that one has to make pages work with IE; allow me to say that you are talking out of your ass.

IE is a pain [edwards.name] to develop for. It either doesn't [incutio.com] comply [tagsoup.com] with [css.nu] the [corecss.com] standard, completely breaks [uwplatt.edu] it, or causes weird quirks [mezzoblue.com] that make no sense.

My sites always have the proper DOCTYPE, they have to in order to validate (I validate all pages prior to posting). Sometimes _having_ a doctype makes IE show new bugs [quirksmode.org].

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*.

Your sites are obviously _very_ basic with minimal design. The moment you pass into medium complexity you start running into problems. I don't use any Javascript.

Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images.

We need 32 bit images in order to have variable alpha [freeserve.co.uk]. If you don't have variable alpha, then you can't have any image without including the background it's going to be over.

Including the background in your image completely negates the advantage of declaring colors in the CSS. Normally I could change the background of my site by changing one line, now I have to change all images as well.

There's other reasons why you might want a variable alpha, say to have transparent graphics or windows [illusionart.com] (the navigation on the left). Which are not heavy as the image is just 2 x 2 pixels and weighs in at a hundred bytes or so. In fact there are tons of creative uses that people haven't even thought of.

and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

You're missing the point entirely. The idea is to allow the designer do her thing (so I can get a beautiful unique website) and then translate that to CSS, compromising wherever needed; not just half-assedly add some design to a text document.

However, when one tries to do anything remotely interesting, Explorer completely dies on you.

The best solution I found so far is using IE conditionals and serving IE a different and sometimes strange CSS file. In the end I usually figure it out reasonably, but it takes ridiculous amounts of effort and the site is never as good as it's Safari/ Mozilla /Opera counterpart.

If you want an example you can look at my current site (I linked it above too), I've only starting the IE fixing, you can see the ugly IE file with filters: and other weird junk so that PNGs show up with alpha: here [illusionart.com]. So far it's taking a serious effort and even when finished won't look as well anyway. Look at it under both IE and then Firefox.

v

Re:Great browser, but...

[FyRE666]

Version 0.9 appears to have a bug with the location.replace function. It does not work with (for example) phpmyadmin, nor anything else that needs to use this function across frames.

No good for me - rolling back to 0.8...

Re:Great browser, but...

[FictionPimp]

I've never had any trouble making my pages render perfectly in IE and mozilla. I've had to do a few weird css things on rare occasions, but its not as bad as you think.

The bigger problem isn't IE not supporting standards. Its the extra shit IE supports. People who use the ghetto IE only things make firefox pages look stupid. Where as if you design for firefox, 99% of the time it looks just fine in IE.

FYI, the official 0.9 release is out!

[chuonthis]

It's posted at mozilla.org but Firefox's site hasn't been updated yet.

Press Release [mozilla.org]
Release Notes [mozilla.org]

Download:
Windows [mozilla.org]
Linux [mozilla.org]
Max OSX [mozilla.org]