Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 Released

Dave writes "The Mozilla Foundation has just made available interim releases of Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1. Apparently: 'These releases are designed to address early issues found in the new extension manager and automatic upgrade system as well as making changes to the new Firefox theme based on initial feedback.'"

Firefox doesn't know it's been upgraded

[Tanami]

I've upgraded to 0.9.1, and I still get notification that new updates are available.

Anybody else getting this, or have I bodged something?

holding off on upgrading

[mabu]

When I upgraded from 0.8 to 0.9 a bunch of things stopped working; the browser would spawn new windows whenever I clicked on a URL regardless of the config settings, popup-blocking was less-reliable, sometimes the download manager wouldn't close itself after a download was complete, and other weirdness. I think I'm going to hold off this time on promptly upgrading because 0.9 was not an improvement over 0.8.

Disappointed

[Pedrito]

I didn't start using Firefox until 0.8. For the most part, I loved it. The only problems I had were occasional page layout issues. Sometimes those required me to fall back on IE, which was a bit of a pain. Usually it had to do with certain web forms with multi-line text boxes that it showed way too small to be useful for writing lots of text.

Then I upgraded to the 0.9rc and something got totally hosed. Some dialog boxes would pop up with no text in them (like the download dialog). It also seemed to hose a few other things as well.

I tried uninstalling it and re-installing, but to no avail. So, for the moment, I'm sticking with IE, which is kind of sad. I mean, I loved some of the things in Firefox like the search plugins that let me search IMDB, dictionaries, and so forth. That's a cool feature. But I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why things aren't working.

Maybe when 1.0 comes out I'll give it another shot. And hopefully they'll improve the install. I particularly hate the fact that I can't just type in an install directory name, but have to go browse the directory. It defaults to C:\Program Files\Firefox and I just want to change the C: to a D: Why does that have to be so difficult?

New theme

[Sunspire]

I was really skeptical of the new winstripe theme in Firefox 0.9, the new changes introduced in 0.9.1 however makes it a LOT better in my opinion. I just wish Thunderbird would now work to unify its theme with Firefox.

It's the small things that makes the browser for me, the look and feel. It's hard to explain it in detail. Going back to IE after using Firefox for a long time just doesn't feel right. For example, there's all these little half-second pauses in IE when the controls and scrolling are unresponsive, times when the right-click context menu won't show up when it's still loading. Sometimes the window stops redrawing for a second or two (especially while running Windows Update, but otherwise too) etc. All these little glitches drive me crazy when I have to use IE.

A few random thoughts...

[NeoGeo64]

It's interesting to see how when releases of Firefox are made its only to fix minor bugs and add new features.

However, when updates to Internet Explorer are made, its for massive security holes and exploits, of course, this is only after two weeks of Microsoft saying that a patch is not needed and to not click links [microsoft.com].

Why are people still using IE6? Back in the old days of the Internet, people weren't interested in using inferior browsers, I wish that same mentality still existed today.

Firefox and Thunderbird are great, however, I switched to Linux and use both applications (Firefox and Thunderbird) and a bunch of other cool Linux apps (Audicity rules!). It's great, because now I don't feel like I'm playing Russian Roulette every time I use my computer, hoping I don't get infested with adware or some random virus everytime I go to a webpage that I haven't been to before.

new paradigm...succinct.

[cabazorro]

Netscape lost it's battle trying to follow IExplorer
(jack-of-all-trades) app scheme. It became bloatware. Nobody cared that it could manage email, instant messages and newsgroups when all we wanted is to browse the damn web.
Then came firefox.
small, cute and F*A*S*T.
Yep, Firefox is fast. Just like Google..whatever
you are going to give, give it pronto.
I did make Firefox my default browser. That is a lot to say after 5 years waiting for a viable alternative. Sure company services DEMAND to see
IExplorer in the client info to support us. But at home...I built the net, there I'M GOD!

Adjusting my tinfoil hat

[LondonLawyer]

Does anyone know if this was a planned release?

It just seems to follow very neatly on the recent IE/hacked websites business. I wonder if there was some extra pressure to get this out the door at a time when it would be able to cash in and if so, if it's likely to have been tested as well as previous releases.

Re:Adblock...

[Threni]

I think what he meant was that adblock became incompatible as of 0.9 and could not be installed

It's working fine on my 0.9.

I don't really care if it's included or not, given that installing it only takes 1 minute.

What stopped working was MouseGestures, so I'm using the AllInOne thing instead, although I'd be happier with just MouseGestures, as the `hold the mouse gestures mouse button and twiddle the scroll-wheel to navigate between tabs` feature is different there, and I prefer dots to lines as mouse trails (they're faster).

While i'm talking to an at least partially Firefox-savvy crowd, is there any reason why I can't add a new gesture to go to a given URL? I want to make the letter `g` (L,D,R,U,D,L) go to www.google.com but I don't see any way of doing this. I can trap the mouse movement, but that's about it. Any ideas?

Re:Adblock...

[lavaforge]

Do you have a direct link to the recommended ruleset? I couldn't find it.

Re:Adblock...

[cdrudge]

The defeats the purpose that Firefox is working towards. Create a very extensible browser and only include the minimum. Firefox comes in at about 1/3 the size of it's big brother Mozilla.

Then you can easily add the features and extensions that you want. AdBlock isn't a required feature for the browser to work so it rightfully shouldn't be included.

Doesn't work

[boojit]

I did that right away. I still get the little icon in the lower-right telling me there are updates available.

DaC

Fire****?!

[alchemistkevin]

I have 3 machines with different versions of Fire****

IMHO, FireBird 0.7 is the best release of FireFox(?!)ever. (I can use it without installing!i.e: carry it on a USB disk and use it in any machine at anytime!!!-handy!)0.8 was okey and 0.9 on my new machine is a bit flaky, I have the same kind of experience like the other users here, I like the Fire*** stuff but the only thing is that: It has to be good at what it does, which unfortunately,at-present, it isn't!
So I end up switching in between IE and Fire(something) on all the 3 machines!!!

Also, does someone know when will 1.0 be out and what will it be called ;) :p

Donate to the forums!

[Anonymous Coward]

With all this traffic lately (read, slashdot). The forums can barely function anymore and they are a great resource. The mozilla site has been listed on slashdot like 5 times in the past month or so and the poor forum server can not keep up. So if you like the project go over to the site and click that donate button.

Re:Poor GUI design at places

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that's poor GUI design? It simply avoids duplication of a button that's already there in a more familiar form. In fact, I would call leaving off the "Close" button good design, since including one would stir up the old OK/Apply/Cancel/Close doubts, and the user would lose confidence that their changes were going to stick. You'd have to include OK, Cancel, and Apply just to get by that, thus adding a row of meaningless buttons to the window, and considerable complication to the code (since the user could add several extensions, remove others, then cancel the whole thing.)

The idiom of the new dialogs, like the themes and extensions ones, is a container; you open the container, drag in an item to install it, then close the container again. Including the standard OK etc. would just dilute that.

A real poor design would be a window manager with no close function.

screenshot of the new theme

[Tribbin]

So we know what we are talking about without having to download firefox:

http://tribbin.no-ip.org/pub/firefox-0.9.1.png

Re:Hurry up already!!!

[ptlis]

Do what I did for my family; remove all references to IE, took away the links from the start menu and quicklaunch tray, used TweakUI to remove the IE link from the desktop and then configure Windows to use Firefox (I did if for Opera but that's jsut personal preference) as teh default browser. I then chose a skin which was similar in appearance to the UI for IE so that the differences are minimal and imported all their bookmarks. Sure it still took a little bit of time to get used to but they've both familiarised themselves with it enough that they don't want to go back.

Re:Good job for the Theme complaints, folks

[jesser]

Stephen Horlander and Kevin Gerich, the creators of Winstripe, blogged [kmgerich.com] about the improvements to Winstripe in 0.9.1. I'm impressed with their openness.

(It might be that only one of them wrote that blog post. I'm confused because it's attributed to Horlander but is on Gerich's blog.)

Re:New theme

[Gr8Apes]

I believe those little pauses et al are a direct result of the original monolithic GDI, of which vestiges still run rampant through MS code.

If you don't believe this, then try doing anything in an MS app while Outlook is grabbing a 50 or 100MB file from an exchange server. It's gotten better, but still not good. Now, to prove that this is solely a code problem on MS's part, download PMMail2000, and do any large file manipulations with it. The differences in system performance are astounding.

Why something obscure like PMMail2000? Well, PMMail2000 was ported from PMMail, an OS/2 app, which has a properly threaded UI model. OS/2 encouraged proper threading practices for it's UI components, and evidently those practices hold true for MS OSes as well, although they are rarely practiced. The complete deduction is left as an exercise for the reader.

One question:

[MsGeek]

Did they fix the memory leak in FireFox 0.9 for Linux?

Planned Feature: ActiveX installer - WTF??

[lucas teh geek]

had a look at the roadmap [mozilla.org] and in 1.0b Greenlane a planned feature is an ActiveX installer

now hold on just a second... whats going on here? isnt ActiveX the root of most of IE's vulnerabilities?

*dons tinfoil hat*

Re:Hurry up already!!!

[rlowe69]

Come on guys. I need 1.0 pronto .... Version 1.0 would be nice ASAP.

What's with the obsession with version numbers? Firefox has been terrific for months and has been getting great reviews from the press and guys like Joel Spolsky.

This is something the Mozilla guys have to convey to the public a little better: Don't wait for 1.0, switch now!

Problems rendering slashdot

[JWW]

Has anyone had problems with /. rendering in mozilla.

When the main page comes up with a banner ad on the side of the page it mangles the text in the column on the left and the main stories column?

I thought 0.9.1 might fix this but no dice. Also it worked fine in 0.8.