A Look at the Newly Released Mozilla Firefox 0.9 799
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."
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:2, Interesting)
Firefox is great (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mozilla Blues (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyways, long live the Phoenix, I mean the Firebird, I mean Firefox, damnit!
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mozilla is Dying (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to use Netscape all of the time. Not because it was a good browser, it actually felt too big, but because it wasn't IE. When firefox came out, I rejoiced at a small browser that didn't have all the crap that Netscape had built in. Firefox is the answer that I think many of us had been waiting for. Once it becomes more stable, more and more people will be switching over to it.
So... no, Mozilla is not dead.
Why (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:5, Interesting)
We all have to click on the Microsoft Ads (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a simple way for us to get rid of or at least reduce the impact of thoughs stupid get the facts adds. CLIC ON THEM. This will cost microsoft money and if we feal like the extra effort we might as well ask for the free stuff that they are willing to send.
Re:It's not light-years ahead of IE (Score:2, Interesting)
bottom up growth pattern of FireFox (Score:3, Interesting)
This sort of behaviour pattern is similar to what happened back in the early-mid 90's when MS Office started to errode the dominance of WordPerfect and Lotus (and also Netscape).
Already my aging father has gone forth and converted at least a dozen of his own friends from IE to FireFox... and thus the chain reaction starts
Firefox and tabs (Score:3, Interesting)
So I now use the Mozilla browser most of the time because it works well with the tab extensions.
I wish I were in a position to toss some money at firefox to support mainstreaming the tab extensions.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
one thing should be point out, it should be a professional web developer, not the one just finshed online training of http://www.w3schools.com/ [w3schools.com], which only tell you something about IE.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
FireFox Considered Harmfull (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox Makes me have to do twice as much work. Let me explain.
Firefox is by far the best browser ever. It is fast, standards compliant, and runs on every platform i support.
The problem is when i develop in firefox. I do some web development, often on a dealine. If i make a stylesheet that looks awesome in firefox, 90% of the time it does not work in internet explorer, which, unfortunatly, is what 90% of my clients use.
So, after i think i'm done, and i test in ie, i know have to go back and fix it, which takes a while as IE is really borked. Therefore, i have to charge more, and my clients are not as happy.
I tell them to switch to firefox, but for some reason, they dont.It's to the point now that i've installed IE5.5 under wine, and i use that as my main development browser. sad but true. I use phoe^H^H^H^Hfirefox for my daily browsing, for sure, but IE to develop.
Strangely, if i make a site that works in IE, it'll usually work in ff and safari/khtml.
of course, this is all IE's fault.. my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek... but it is something that drives me nuts.
Remember, friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been in a web dev for many years, and I recognize a couple of things contrary to your post:
You must conform to IE; it's > 90% of the browser market, to "give up on IE" is to admit you create shoddy sites or intranets.
Creating websites with "making them work with Mozilla" in mind, and ignore the other 90%?
IE doesn't conform to standards? Perhaps in the strict W3C definition, but at that level of ubiquity it basically is a standard.
"Pick any web developer" OK, I just did.
Re:Firefox is great (Score:5, Interesting)
(this is in firefox
Tell me that's not "cute". Granted, it is based on google, but you could googlebomb some normal non-sites to really annoy people.
Also, i've never seen IE automatically install ANYTHING, when it's fully patched, without the user pressing "yes," and there's PLENTY of sites out there putting ad-ware XPI's out that prompt you every time you go to the site.
I'm a VERY happy firefox user (on both linux and XP), and convert all my friends and family, but FUD can come both both sides.
Re:It's not light-years ahead of IE (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, IE cannot render properly coded HTML/XHTML/CSS, and therefore webmasters make buggy pages to appear correct in IE.
This means the buggy pages appear buggy in FF, which is just how they should appear, causing many people to think FF cannot render and IE is therefore better.
Once (and if) IE is booted off the top spot, you will see a vast majority of webmasters changing their crappy code for something which actually works right.
IE is paticularly bad for CSS (especailly CSS3) - This [quirksmode.org] confirms that, Although FF isnt on the list, check out the Mozilla column compared to IE.. see what I mean?
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no point in using Camino anymore. Firefox looks and works excellently.. and doesn't feel like a foreign app anymore.
Re:Firefox and tabs (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefox is a great browser and is constantly improving. Although the developers aren't implementing all of TBE's features due to fear of bloat, they are listening. We got the confirmation dialog for closing a window with multiple tabs and we may just see a single tabbed window option one day (first step = open external links in tabs, bug 172962 [mozilla.org] recently marked blocking1.0+ by Ben Goodger).
Re:Mozilla Blues (Score:3, Interesting)
just a thought
Re:Mozilla Blues (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternate browsers have a difficult battle ahead. IMO the browser developers really need to push major websites to take advantage of features that IE may not impliment currently and are part of official specifications. These sites could then provide a link to get the alternate browser. Unfortunately though, most major sites will likely not do this as their customer base primarily uses IE.
The Internet "buzz" outside of slashdot and mozillazine hasn't been very positive.
Likely the non-technical (MS user masses) are not reading the other technical publications as well. Probably the only close to technical article you might see the average MS user reading is glancing an article off the front page of CNN, WashingtonPost, NY Times, etc.... Maybe a blurb about browser alternatives near the top of the latest MS IE flaw article would give users a clue about alternatives, but the masses will still stick with what was provided by the OS.
Here's whats REALLY NEEDED (Score:4, Interesting)
Install Firefox
Install User-Agent Switcher with some pretty buttons
(plus tutorial)
Remove IE Icon
Automatically set all email url links to go to firefox.
Import the bookmarks, in the main folder.
i.e. make it mother-in-law proof.
Steven Vallarian>
Re:Mozilla Blues (Score:3, Interesting)
No, if non-IE browsers gain too much market share, more and more web sites will be standards compliant, but with lots of hacks to look fine on IE as well. IE will never (in the forseeable future) fall into such a marginal market share that it would be ignored by developers. Even if it were suddenly 50/50 overnight, or 75/25 in favor of FF, sites would still make IE-compliant pages, because nobody can affort to write off 25% of the market.
Re:Superior Quality != Market Dominance (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
You must conform to IE; it's > 90% of the browser market, to "give up on IE" is to admit you create shoddy sites or intranets.
Is a 100% W3C-compliant site shoddy if it doesn't render properly in IE, or is IE shoddy? I agree with you that for commercial websites, they have to render properly in IE because of its overwhelming market share, but IE, and least in the days when I was last a web developer, was well-known to break W3C compliance all over the place. I would be pretty surprised if anything has changed. To call a site shoddy because it won't render in IE even if it's clearly the browser's fault because the site is just wrong thinking.
Sadly, Netscape/Mozilla in those days wasn't fully W3C-compliant either, but it did a much better job than IE. To make a site really perfect for both required (and probably still requires) some Javascript magic to serve up a page that is broken in the right ways for the target browser. This can be necessary on a commercial site, for obvious reasons.
However, on a site that is your own personal page, it is perfectly justified (and I have done this) to just put up a notice that says "This site is 100% W3C-compliant; if it doesn't look right in your browser, get a better browser." That's telling it like it is, and you have no obligation to do anything else on your personal site.
IE doesn't conform to standards?
Well, since Microsoft has been a W3C member for years, then it's about time they get off their asses and fix their browser. That doesn't mean it can't also render MSHTML (that horrid, crufty mess), but as a starting point, it must render W3C-compliant sites correctly. To do less is to just admit they created (and continue to release) a shoddy browser.
Re:bottom up growth pattern of FireFox (Score:3, Interesting)
We are getting close (Score:5, Interesting)
So, part of our reason for seriously considering moving is that we've had a number of trojans on those machines exploiting IE holes. This combined with the pain of downloading MS patches on dial-ups is leading the IT department to lean toward a FireFox standard. One of the things that had been holding us back was problems with the iNotes client in FireFox 0.8. It works in 0.6, not 0.8. Well, it is working again in 0.9.
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:1, Interesting)
Or just surf to some shady "ROMs" and "anime" pages.
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:5, Interesting)
People are now doing XPI versions of the dreaded ActiveX "Do you want to install Weatherbug" type things. Thankfully, there's a whitelist now, but we'll see how far it stays put.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be very convenient to have several IE versions to view web content in at once.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
The site is.
We always make sacrifices "to the tools" in web/software dev; I apply hotfixes all the time to my platform/IDE--yet it's the toolset I've chosen and I must live with many idiosyncrasies to get my products to market.
While you also make good points, I think it's wise to lean in favor of pragmatic technology choices rather than dogmatism in favor of "one side of the other".
Emotionally, I'd make each decision in favor of F/OSS.
Rationally, I know that isn't always in the best interest of my clients.
And what about spoofing? (Score:2, Interesting)
More than 90%? And what about spoofing?
Shouldn't that give some unreliable results?
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/userage
It's just too bad I have to use that extension.
rendering problem (Score:3, Interesting)
sometimes (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but things don't always go that way before 1.0. In general odd numbered releases are for new features and are not as stable as even numbered releases. I'm not sure if the Mozilla people follow all of those rules or not, but it's good to let current firebird users know that they won't be punished for moving up.
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:5, Interesting)
I helped push the use of Firefox on the vast majority of machines where I work. The amount of malware finding its way onto the systems of users who don't know any better has been substantially reduced.
I found it harder to push the use of Mozilla on users (just for testing) than it was to push FireFox when we decided to go with that browser. Users seemed to be put off that Mozilla looked different enough to "scare" them where Firefox looks more modern and has more similarities to IE which helped ease the transition. In fact not a single person complained once FireFox fired up.
This isn't to say Mozilla is a poor browser but to users who don't have an understanding of why using an alternate browser to IE is a good thing, superficial changes seem to matter much more than any functional feature.
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Enlightened someone a few days ago.. (Score:2, Interesting)
My work cares (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, the whole complaint of entering your password again is tiny compared to the risks of IE. It's the *same* password that people use to log in. It's not like they have to remember a *new* password which is understandably a much bigger complaint.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully Apple did do a good job and making sure the look was very clean without any bad pixel/widgets that you wouldn't expect to be that way. For example, whenever I theme anything else (whether it be windows, gnome, kde, whatever) I always end up with some application with a weird looking widget.
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The sites average around 100,000 uniques a month all together, 4 of which are business sites and 3 of which are "fun" sites. I can tell you that IE has averaged between 90% and 96% per month for the last 12 months. Let me know if you want more detailed stats.
Re:Reently installed, uninstalled FireFox (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I was severely disappointed. It didn't do what I can do with IE. Look, you may remember that MS got in some hot water for "integrating" the browser into the OS. We all said how evil that was. But, you know what? I've taken advantage of it!
Here's a breif list of the things I like about IE over FireFox (and if I'm wrong about being able to do these in FireFox, please correct me):
1. I can re-arrange the toolbars to my satisfaction.
2. I can cleverly size my toolbars such that extra items are hidden behind a pop-out button so I can effectively make quick 1-click menues.
3. The unbeatable *real* Google Toolbar
4. The Favorites are arranged as files & folders so I can manipulate them easily (i.e. but them as pop-outs on my taskbar, make hard-links to subfolders in them in other logical locations)
5. I can embed HTML in my TaskBar to accomplish all sorts of useful things (wallet-size photoalbum, dictuinary, phone number lookup, etc.)
My browser is not just a browser. It bleeds into my operating system and vice-versa. I'm not blindly pro-Microsoft, I just happen to take advantage of the integration Microsoft chose to thrust upon us.
Honestly, I wish the "browser-integration" API were documented so Mozilla couled wholly replace the IE integration in XP. But to not have it at all is a big hole -- at least to someone who has become accustomed to the convenience it offers.
Simlpe HTML example (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I installed FireFox just a few days ago, wne to SlashDot and comapred it to IE. A little different. Odd, I thought. The greeen header displaying my username was contacting the greenpart of the top-most article. Then I increased my font-size one notch with the scrool-wheel and it was now separated by the gap I'm accustomed to. Then I reduced my font-size back down one notch to try and reproduce it. But the gap was still there. Did I scroll too far? I closed FireFox and started again from scratch. Again, no-gap then the gap and then the gap stays.
Is *that* part of the standard???
Milestone names? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg to differ. It is a royal pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to support different versions of IE.
Hardly! IE barely renders straight HTML fine, and heaven forbid if you want to do anything as advanced as -- GASP! -- DHTML.
The biggest consumer for IE -- the biggest, most inflexible consumer for IE -- is corporate ... and who the hell is developing web pages without CSS or Javascript anymore? Not corporations, that's for sure. They can barely get by without rendering each page entirely in Flash -- mostly, because IE is so broken and it is such a pain in the ass to write pages for that it is easier to use Flash.
Much of what CSS IE doesn't outright ignore, it renders incorrectly, and it can't handle much of the Javascript DOM API consistently. It'd be one thing if it was at least broken consistently, but it isn't. Javascript is enough of a pain in the ass to develop in without IE's quirks causing more confusion.
You're serious? Read what you just wrote. You're trying to tell me that me being forced to code around bugs in IE isn't a pain in the ass? How do you define "pain in the ass", in your world?
There is simply no excuse for how poorly IE complies to W3C standards, and it isn't even funny to try.
My own little review... (Score:3, Interesting)
Installer looks nice. But an attempt to install over an older FF version brings an "overwrite or quit" dialog. NO UPGRADE OPTION????? Ok, overwrite.
Up and runnig. First thing: apply theme. Choice made, installing via web...
crash.
restart FF. Theme shows up but no preview. "Use theme" button available for the new theme. Several clicks on it but FF remains silent.
Quit FF. Restart. Original theme still in place.
Ok, let's reinstall. Selecting new theme, pressing "Uninstall" button...
Silence. No messages.
Quit FF. Restart. Theme stil there.
Deep breath.
Back to texturizer.net. Installing again. 98%, 99%, 100%!
Progress bar goes away. Silence. No messages.
No new theme in the list.
Restart FF
Still no new theme in the list.
Is this really a 0.9 RC? Seems to me that a little more quality assurance (read: careful test scripts) should help a lot.
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:3, Interesting)
I really think that firefox is the doorway for people into OSS. It's such an awesome product and so obviously objectively superior to every other product out there that it is very easy to get people to switch to it. At least that's my experience. Compared to getting people to go linux getting them on firefox is a walk in the park. Now with the installer, even better. All it needs it a nice fancy tutorial.
Re:Milestone names? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:We are getting close (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is exactly why we made the decision to go with that instead of paying MS the same amount of money to upgrade our ancient exchange server, which meant also upgrading the server OS and getting more expensive client licenses. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of a migration right now and as I said, we have users out in the field for long periods of time.
The web client is what they will use until we get their laptops set up with the Notes client. It's an easy thing to send out a CD containing Firefox, but the Notes client installs will be done in-house.
Re:Mozilla Blues (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great browser, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but what are the sites? Windows Software sites?
We're a daily newspaper, we get way more than 100k unique visitors a month. We are seeing around 80% IE. Mozilla based browsers make up the second largest (15%), with safari at 2% or so. I think it's a pretty good estimate considering we don't even do tech news, so our visitors really are john q. public.
But you can't even say that all 80% of those users use IE6, it's really only around 30%, with the other 50% using IE5.5 5.0 and 4.0(!). So even just developing for IE is a pain in the ass because you're really developing for 4 different browsers.
Re:Australian beer maths (Score:2, Interesting)
lim_{m --> infinity} SUM {from n = 1 to m} 9/10^n.
The limit of this indeed equals 1 (since you're in a "serious" maths degree, I'll leave the proof to you).
Again, this is not the limit of the sequence a_n = 9/10^n, it is the limit of the partial sums. Now, how is it that 0.9999... is NOT equal to 1? It HAS to be, because 0.9999... is EXACTLY the infinite sum of the above. That is what 0.999999... means.
It's kind of funny that blizzard posted this as an april fools joke thinking it wasn't true, but it is in fact true.
There was (is) a rather large discussion of this on sci.math. Here's a sample link: http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.0.9999.html [mathforum.org]
Notice it cites:
R.V. Churchill and J.W. Brown. Complex Variables and Applications. 0.9999... = 1 ed., McGraw-Hill, 1990.
and
W. Rudin. Principles of Mathematical Analysis. McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Rudin is a serious mathematician and he knows what he's talking about-- not that an argument from authority means anything
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a very large multinational corporation that may or may not go by the name "AT&T Wireless". We (those of us in the Customer Care call center anyway) use XP/2K boxes with Citrix to connect to a main server, and we can only use Internet Explorer.
I've tried to install firefox, but it just won't run. I've tried everything, no matter what the
It always seems inefficient to me because every computer in the building is a pentium 4 and all they ever run is citrix. They're the fattest "thin clients" I've ever seen. I can't imagine how beefy the Citrix server would have to be. LTSP would save them so much money, but I don't really care as long as I get paid.
Re:Reently installed, uninstalled FireFox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You most certainly are (wrong) (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a lot easier to make one file read only and lock down the browser than screw around for hours with registry hacks that don't even work
Spyware is almost none existent
Users have repeatedly asked me how I got web browsing to run so smoothly at work and how do they get this "Mozilla thingy" at home :-)
Re:the greatest misfeature ever (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the vast majority of net denizens are tired of Internet advertising. We have good reason to be. It has been forced on us (pop ups, adware, "you must experience/read this before you continue" pages), we are constantly made to suffer through the contextually innapropriate (ads for trips when we're thinking about software, ads for porn sites when we're looking for fluffy bunnies, etc.) Random, and largely absurd, advertising pollutes our inboxes and has gone a long way towards ruining the great utility email offers.
But... I rather welcome advertising on Google's text model - non intrusive, contextually appropriate (or as nearly so as they can manage - at least they try to make is appropriate.) I have found many interesting and useful things as a direct result of Google's text ads.
But please, don't tar and feather a media format because some advertisers have misused it. Animation is no more responsible for bad advertising than email is. Morons are responsible for bad advertising - and email spam. So hate the morons. In other words, write your congresscritter about the evils of popups and spam, not MNG developers about the evils of multiple image frames. :)
Advertising itself isn't inherently evil either. There are responsible advertisers. My company tries to toe that line. We don't use email except in the ways you'd want it to be used - if you write us, we write you back (specifically, a person writes you back.) I had an opportunity here to "drop" our company name. I didn't do it. I've had other opportunities here, and on other community websites. Didn't do it then, either. I figure if someone here is interested, they'll find us. But we do use contextually targeted advertising. For instance, if you search for certain very strongly related keywords on some search engine sites, we'll show up as a sponsored link. Likewise, some searches on graphics sites will get you a Google text ad. No images, consequently no animations, either. :) We face the same issues any significant business does: We need the people who could use our products to be aware that our products exist; further, we'd like them to be aware of what differentiates our product from the next one over on the virtual shelf. I honestly believe that advertising can be a reasonable mechanism. But pissing off people never is. The trick is to find out how to do the former, without doing the latter.