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Mozilla The Internet

Firefox 1.0 Preview Release Candidates Available 88

Posted by timothy from the cutting-edge-is-the-bleeding-edge dept.
blakeross writes "The preview release of Firefox 1.0 is just around the corner, and we've now got candidate builds available. Please help us bang on these builds to ensure that the preview release is sound and ready to go, as this will be our largest and most public release to date. We're also working hard on an exciting and unprecedented grassroots campaign that will launch with the preview release, so stay tuned."
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Firefox 1.0 Preview Release Candidates Available More

Firefox 1.0 Preview Release Candidates Available

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  • Good thing, too. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:45AM (#10227052) Journal
    Would you believe that I just reloaded Slashdot in Firefox, right as this article is posted, only to have the thing turn glacial and unusable?

    You'd think we'd be farther along than this after a decade.

    Let's hope that the new Firefox RC series Doesn't Suck. (That earlier versions tended to suck less in general than other browsers does not a non-sucky browser make.)

  • Not to complain... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) * on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:46AM (#10227058) Homepage Journal

    Not just to complain..., but has the Slashdot reflow bug been fixed in 1.0? It's been known for ages, but it's recently gotten much worse in 0.9.x (In 0.8 I rarely had the problem, under 0.9.3 under three different operating systems, (and three different microarchitectures) I get it more times than not on Slashdot articles and comments.)

    Granted, I won't give up the best browser I've ever used, but it's getting to be really annoying.

    And come on, we all know that the Mozilla devs spend more time reading Slashdot than anything else, so why hasn't it been fixed yet?

    • I'm using yesterday's build and it still has the problem.

      Hard to say that it's a mozilla problem, since Slashdot's HTML is not quite up to the standard. But perhaps mozilla/firefox needs a different failure mode so that this problem doesn't happen.

      • Re:Not to complain... (Score:5, Informative)

        by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @09:52AM (#10227316) Journal
        It is definitely a Gecko bug (the rendering component of Mozilla and Firefox) relating to incremental reflow, not a problem with Slashcode. It's not something to be glossed over. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, it's fixed in Gecko -- just the fix hasn't been rolled into Firefox.

        In the meantime, you could try disabling incremental rendering (at the cost of potentially greater delay until a web page is in a readable state) and see if that works around the problem: go to about:config and add a boolean value for content.notify.ontimer and set it to false.

        There's some random Firefox-related discussion on a forum here [divx.com]. While these people don't really know what they're talking about, they do nicely list the incremental reflow prefs that you can play with. You might be able to come up with a reasonable workaround until the fix gets rolled in.

        Remember to set the prefs back when you update Firefox to a fixed version -- you don't want to be either burning CPU time like mad or waiting longer than you need to to be reading pages.
        • and add a boolean value for content.notify.ontimer and set it to false

          Because this topic of about:config has popped up here, I want to ask: where is there a *definitive* list of *all* the possible about:config keys? For example, how did you find the setting you suggested? Thanks.

        • It is definitely a Gecko bug (the rendering component of Mozilla and Firefox) relating to incremental reflow, not a problem with Slashcode.

          I'm not going to try questioning that statement because I don't know enough to prove or disprove it.

          But the funny thing is, I personally have only seen this bug in Firefox 0.9.x (both OS X and Linux) while I have not seen it in Mozilla 1.7.x on the same platforms.

          Is there any chance threre is something weird about Firefox itself that is causing this rather than Geck

    • Re:Not to complain... (Score:5, Informative)

      by colinramsay ( 603167 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:58AM (#10227101) Homepage
      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527

      That's the bug. It's fixed on the main trunk but not on the Firefox 1.0 branch... yet.

    • Re:Not to complain... (Score:3, Informative)

      by jilles ( 20976 )
      http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217527 , according to this, it has been fixed. I'm running the release candidate now and everything looks ok. It never really bothered me anyway.
      • "The problem is fixed on the trunk, which is why the status says "fixed". It is known not to be fixed on the Firefox 1.0 branch or Mozilla 1.7 branch (which is clear if you read the previous comments)."

        From Michael Lefevre in the bug comments. It's marked FIXED for the trunk, not the aviary branch.

      • Re:Not to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cymen ( 8178 )
        I managed to trigger it on the main page after 3 reloads.

        Anyone find updates for disabled extensions? Going to hunt down Adblock, SessionSaver, and BugMeNot updates.
        • "Hunt down updates"?

          You can just use the Tools->Extensions->Update feature.

          • Re:Not to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by cymen ( 8178 )
            "You can just use the Tools->Extensions->Update feature."

            I wish. It never works here. For example, Adblock with the update detected an updated version but couldn't install it. All the other extensions weren't recognized as being updated but in fact did have updates.

            Has it these feature *ever* worked for you?

            BugMetNot 0.60 here: extensions.roachfiend.com [roachfiend.com] (mozdev still has 0.50 version that is incompatible)

            SessionSaver & Adblock from mozdev worked.

            • Re:Not to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)

              by 0x0d0a ( 568518 )
              Has it these feature *ever* worked for you?

              I think I picked up one update at one point.

              The only problems I've had with updating plugins, really, came when I tried to update a very old version of AdBlock to a newer version and the update really screwed up rendering (a known bug), requiring a lot of hair-pulling and eventually a prefs.js deletion.

              I'm not running into problems ATM, but then I plan to wait to update Firefox until Fedora packages and ships the next version, nicely tested and all.

            • Re:Not to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)

              by _xeno_ ( 155264 )
              I wrote my own extension, so yes, the update feature has worked for me in Firefox 0.9.3.

              However, it's never displayed as an "Update Available" in the status bar like it's supposed to. If you double click on the "Update" area to make Firefox search for new updates now, it doesn't work either. In fact, the only way it does work is to go to Tools -> Extensions, specifically select my extension, and then choose "Update."

              After that, it worked fine.

              So... yes, it works. Sorta.

            • With the overhaul of update.mozilla.org combined with a recent build, extension updates actually *work* for me. My biggest issue is that u.m.o frequently takes a while to get the most recent stuff.

              Also, I don't like the new toolbar button for update notification instead of the statusbar item, partially because I can't figure out how it works. It seems to have 3 states -- blue (which I think means there are updates), green, and completely nonexistent. By "nonexistent" I mean it takes up no space on the t

    • Re:Not to complain... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Homology ( 639438 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @10:05AM (#10227366)
      Not just to complain..., but has the Slashdot reflow bug been fixed in 1.0? It's been known for ages, but it's recently gotten much worse in 0.9.x

      Security-wise, the 0.9 series are worse as well. Enough so that the port maintainers at OpenBSD will not yet upgrade from 0.8 to 0.9.x until later. OpenBSD will mark the port as broken [neohapsis.com] rather than upgrade.

      • "Security-wise, the 0.9 series are worse as well. Enough so that the port maintainers at OpenBSD will not yet upgrade from 0.8 to 0.9.x until later."

        Now that's just crazy! Seriously. Security didn't regress in 0.9, many existing issues were discovered in 0.9 and fixed in 0.9.1, 0.9.2. 0.9.3. thanks to our great testing community and the increased press (not to mention the bug bounty). Not moving from 0.8 to 0.9.3 is a serious disservice to OpenBSD users.

        Who at OpenBSD should I be talking with. I can't be
        • Who at OpenBSD should I be talking with.

          In the link in the post thre is the e-mail adress of the one who made it : robert AT openbsd DOT org

          I would be nice to find that I misread the post regarding the security issues, and that the lack of upgrading was due to other issues.

          • Maybe the post [neohapsis.com] meant "0.9 must be ported, or I will mark Firefox (0.8) as broken due to security issues". I'm not familiar with the process and jargon surrounding distributions, so I can't be sure.
      • > > No chance firefox 0.9 for 3.5 patch branch? Yes. And it must be. Or I will mark it as broken due to numerous security issues.

        I am pretty sure this means "if FireFox 0.9 doesn't get into OpenBSD 3.5 then I will have to mark FireFox as broken because earlier versions have numerous security issues."
    • Happens to more oftenly happen whilst logged in. Infact, refreshing it 3 times doesn't work for me on the frontpage. Seems to depend on the first part downloaded by Gecko. Sounds like being a coward has a good side after all!
    • It is fixed [mozilla.org].
      Squarefree [squarefree.com] has a good summary [squarefree.com] of the changes in 1.0, along with the releases. Another major improvement i love is the find as you type toolbar that appears everytime you do a search. The behaviour is like opera, but much more user-friendly since the toolbar is dynamic, appears at the bottom and allows you to highlight the searched text.

      The only thing i complain is, there should be a CTL [opengroup.org] and Pango enabled binaries available for linux for people viewing indian language sites(UTF-8 encoded).

  • Change log? (Score:2, Informative)

    by julie-h ( 530222 )
    Have anyone found the ChangeLog from 0.9.3 to 1.0rc ? It isn't in the tar.gz =(

  • Meta RC (Score:5, Funny)

    by reignbow ( 699038 ) <{a.m.steffen} {at} {web.de}> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:54AM (#10227084)
    So this is the candidate for the preview release for the final release? What is this called? Release Candidate Candidate?

    • Re:Meta RC (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arcade ( 16638 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @09:08AM (#10227150) Homepage
      So this is the candidate for the preview release for the final release? What is this called? Release Candidate Candidate?

      Personally I think the entire concept of "Release Candidate" has been abused severly in many Open Source projects. A Release Candidate should be released, and if no showstoppers is found it in - it should become the FINAL release.

      I shuddered when KDE had both "RC1" and "RC2" in their release schedule long before they had actually reached that stage. An RC2 should never - in my opinion - be planned on beforehand.

      Anyways. "Final Beta" would probably be a nice name for it. ;)

      • Re:Meta RC (Score:3, Funny)

        by cymen ( 8178 )
        I agree. We should move to SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4, SP5, and maybe SP6 instead of RC1 and RC2. These SP releases convey a stronger message to the consumer that "their problems are our #1 goal" than such driveling things like RC1 and RC2 that they will never download and use. Why wait for a well-tested release when you can always service pack your problems away!
        • Uh? What relevance does this has to do with what I'm saying?

          The definition of a release candidate is something you THINK is free of release-critical bugs. There may of course be more than one - but when you release the first, you should not have the second in your thoughts yet. It should ONLY arrive if show-stoppers are found in the first.

          If no show-stoppers are found, the release candidate should be retagged to be the final release.

          In other words - having "RC2" in the plans for the beginning shows th
          • I actually agree that it is nonsensical to have 2 release candidates scheduled but many open source projects lament the fact that good beta testers are few and fair between. Getting people to actually try the browser isn't an easy feat. With a complex application like Firefox, the odds that there are release-critical bugs are fairly high. So scheduling two release candidates is a good idea because Firefox gets more testers of the potential release, there is a bit of extra buffer in the release schedule, and
          • Hmmm ... where I work, we plan for a "final build" and then it's a month before we plan on actually shipping anything. It's merely saying that we know this will not be actually final, but we need to put hard dates down, or we'll never ship.

            I would think that this is the same thing. It's sorta like NHL playoffs - "Game 5 (if needed)" is scheduled on TV.
      • And once you fix the bugs in RC1, you cant just assume its flawless and push out 1.0, so you move it to RC2. Repeat until no bugs are found.
      • For what it's worth, this is how recent Mozilla releases have worked pretty much; put out a build, and if there's no showstoppers, it gets renamed to Final. And yes, I agree that it is completely nonsensical to schedule more than one "release candidate" :).
      • That's precisely why there are preview releases. They don't claim to be candidates for release as 1.0. This is an actual candidate to become a preview release. If no bugs are found in this version it will be relabeled as preview release 1 (PR1) and released. Then more bugs will be fixed, candidates for PR2 will be released until one is acceptable as PR2. Same process again, candidate, bug fixes, candidate, etc. until... version 1.0.
    • We are going to have our Firefox 1.0 Preview Release early this week, probably Tuesday. These builds are candidates for that release. We don't expect to take further changes into Firefox between now and 1.0 PR unless we find major regressions or new problems in these candidate builds.

      --Asa

  • Mozilla still rules for me (Score:1, Informative)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    Last week I tried Firefox and Thunderbird on the Mac to see if they were good for replacement of the Mozilla suite, but I was disappointed. The Mozilla browser has a few features that I missed in Firefox (not too much though because I can't even remember which), but I was really disappointed to see that I couldn't even import my e-mail in Firefox. Yes I know that you can copy some vague directory to some other place and have ALL mozilla mail and preferences copied but a few buttons in a configuration window

  • What I hate about Mozilla Firefox for Windows... (Score:3, Informative)

    by fluor2 ( 242824 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @09:15AM (#10227179)
    is that pages with lots of pictures scroll VERY slow. it's much faster in IE.

  • Lets... (Score:3)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @09:35AM (#10227261) Homepage
    ... See if they can stop it prompting me twice for everything!

  • Yay! The bug [mozilla.org] annoying me the most is apparently fixed. (Well, A quick tried showed that it works for me...)

    Boo, The web developer extension doesn't work anymore :( .

    Nevertheless, mozilla/firefox team: you rule.

    • Re:One Yay and one Boo (Score:2, Informative)

      by hsoft ( 742011 )
      Oh wait, web developer DOES work. I thought it wouldn't work because I had a warning that Web developer doesn't work with the new version... But having tried is quickly, it works!

      Which means: Only Yays for Firefox 1.0!
  • It would be neat to have one with Mozilla Firefox (also with Macromedia Flash, Java and so on)... I mean *msi files. They make life easier in large networks and would make adoption easier for sysadmins.

  • unprecedented grassroots campaign? (Score:5, Funny)

    by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @11:16AM (#10227699) Homepage Journal
    "unprecedented grassroots campaign"

    Read this as "we'll be posting announcements on Slashdot every day for the next month"...

  • this will be our largest and most public release to date


    Firefox is already at the top of the Mozilla.org [mozilla.org] website, taking up about 6 times as much space as the full Mozilla suite. There has been no real marketing for Netscape, Mozilla, or Firefox recently, so I am wondering how this release will be more public. Any ideas?
    • Write to the press about it. Writing is free, and if you phrase the story well and there are no new nuclear tests in Korea there is a chance that the press will bring this news ot the public.

  • Better and Better (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jefu ( 53450 )
    The new firefox looks great and seems to run great.

    Just two quibbles from me.

    Firstly the tab extensions does not seem to be a supported extension. Now I've read often enough about how it is horrible and ugly and all, but I use it for everyday browsing. I'd really like the default to be "open link in new tab" for just about everything with the middle mouse button set to "open link in this tab". The tab groups are also nice, but could be managed outside the standard tab extensions.

    Secondly, SVG does

      • Firstly the tab extensions does not seem to be a supported extension. Now I've read often enough about how it is horrible and ugly and all, but I use it for everyday browsing. I'd really like the default to be "open link in new tab" for just about everything with the middle mouse button set to "open link in this tab". The tab groups are also nice, but could be managed outside the standard tab extensions.

      If you're referring to the Tabbrowser Extensions plugin, it works, and you can install it right here [sakura.ne.jp]

    • And if you want to view SVG files with firefox, just install the adobe viewer, and copy the dlls in the plugin dir of firefox. it works here.
  • it disabled too many of the extensions i've come to rely on. i'll wait until the extensions get updated (hopefully they will and soon).

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