Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released

elfguygmail.com writes "Firefox 1.5 beta1 is out! It includes many new features including a new automatic update system, reworked options dialogs, faster browsing, new error pages, memory and stability updates. Get your beta at Mozilla.org."

Deer Park !!!!!!!!!!

[zymano]

Yeeeeeeah ! Faster back and forward means better performance reading messageboards . Deerpark alpha wont start on my machine. I am one those that submitted a couple of bugs on this. Good job boys!

Fp

[anaesthetica]

Posting on it now. Generally teh snappier on OS X, which I appreciate. Text handling still isn't good enough to switch from Camino. The drag n drop tabs are a very welcome addition. Also, it looks like the Slashdot bug has been cleared up. Sweet.

Classic windows

[Bob54321]

For those here that run Windows in the Classic theme, here a link to info on how to fix the menu looks http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_windows_classic [mozillazine.org]

Watch Out Extensions Break

[Blahbooboo3]

Warning, seems like most extensions won't work from 1.0x to 1.5beta1..

Deer Park Alpha 2 is great

[bahwi]

I've been running Deer Park Alpha 2 recently with no problems(SVG is kinda funky, but works great, and with the field testing it should be much better).

I hope SVG integrates with XUL ok. Gotta test out my XUL apps I have in the field for compatability too.

There's some changes Extension Authors need to check out too. Mozilla Developer News has the info [mozilla.org] and the big thing is XPCNative Wrappers [mozilla.org] will be on by default. (Yet more info on XPCNative Wrappers is available too [mozilla.org]).

Incompatible, duplicate extensions

[ReformedExCon]

There are two things I am not fond of with the current non-Beta Firefox. The first is the way it needs to download the whole installer just to update a point release. The second is how extensions with similar functionality are not coordinated.

Take the GoogleBar for example. When I first installed Firefox it didn't come with a usable search tool, so I had to find GoogleBar which approximated the functionality of Google's IE GoogleBar. Now, Google comes along and releases their GoogleBar for Firefox and I'm left having to uninstall the old toolbar and install the new one. I'd rather the two projects just work closely together so that it could be updated seamlessly in one fell swoop.

Things like these occasionally mar my Firefox experience which is otherwise very smooth.

Speaking of smooth, does anyone else get a brief (1 second) pause when loading large pages in Slashdot? It seems to load part of the page, then it freezes for a second, then renders the rest of the page. It also happens on Photo.net, but there the whole discussion page reloads itself after loading once. Just a strange thing I noticed about Firefox.

Firefox 1.5 installation directions

[mdew]

When installing Firefox 1.5

(1) Backup your old Firefox 1.0 profile
(2) Start with a clean profile, its best to use a clean profile
(3) Update your extensions [projects1.com]
(4) If the extensions still complain, try this following the directions from this link [mozillazine.org]

Re:Deer Park !!!!!!!!!!

[ayden]

I'm trying this out now on 1.5 Beta - works like a dream on slashdot!

Re:Extensions

[asa]

"I'm patient, but will all of the developers make and re-make their extensions for every version?"

No. Developers will only have to test their extensions to make sure they're not broken by the latest Firefox release. All they have to do if their extension still works is tweak a version field at addons.mozilla.org (or wherever their extension checks for updates) and Firefox will allow the extension to run.

We're still at beta and that gives developers quite a bit of time to get their extensions certified against the upcoming Firefox 1.5 release.

If the extension author was relying on Firefox application code that changed, and broke the extension, then the extension will have to be updated.

I'm hopeful that most of the popular extensions will have certified against 1.5 or made updates available by the time 1.5 final ships.

- A

Re:svg release schedule?

[cduffy]

But I'm a little dissapointed it looks like the built-in SVG support isn't in there.

Huh? It's there.

Re:svg release schedule?

[timealterer]

SVG is absolutely built into Firefox 1.5. I've been using the nightly buids for months now, and it's there (I've tested it myself.) It's possible that they may set about:config's svg.enabled to false for the final release, but I think that is highly unlikely.

See: Mozilla SVG Update [mozillazine.org] and Mozilla SVG Status [mozilla.org] for some more info.

Re:Yeah!

[ikkonoishi]

Put the following line in your current version's user.js to get rid of the popups.

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);

Re:Watch Out Extensions Break

[Kelson]

Well, it is a beta.

In theory there should be time for extension authors to update before the final is released. I've only got 6 extensions, of which one worked already, and one was updated during the day today.

Re:Extensions

[benna]

Yup, just open install.rdf and change 1.2 to 1.6a2 and most extentions will work fine. The only one that isn't working for me is bugmenot.

Re:svg release schedule?

[dtfinch]

SVG support has been working well for many months, but if you just try to reference an SVG from an IMG tag, it won't work. The embed tag should work though. Their website has many SVG examples, even some created and animated using javascript.

The e4x support looks pretty cool too, actually making XML userful and easy rather than just another burdensome technology chosen for its buzzword value.

Re:svg release schedule?

[AnamanFan]

Works for me. Here's a good page of samples for you to check out:

Croczilla SVG Samples [croczilla.com]

Re:Woohoo!

[vsimon]

you sure not from network.prefetch-next=true? all those pages take up memory.

Re:Woohoo!

[Rirath.com]

I've been using the nightly branch builds for some time now, and no... I've seen no apparent fix for the memory leak. I mean, maybe a few holes have been plugged... but it still takes more memory than one would expect. On the other hand, I don't remember them claiming it fixed.

The best feature for me is the new automatic nightly version system using Firefox's update system. No more manually downloading, unraring, and changing folder names... just a few clicks and I'm done. A very big plus, for nightly users.

And since 1.5a may break a whole lot of extensions, I recommend Nightly Tester Tools [blueprintit.co.uk], which can force an extention to work. You may also try going into about:config (type that in the URL bar) and manually making the entery:

app.extensions.version

Then setting this to a value of 1.0+. Can cause other problems though, so I'd go with Nightly Tester Tools first. Lastly, you could simply open the extension with an unzip util and modify the install.rdf, perhaps the most time consuming but failsafe method.

Re:Yeah!

[Schrade]

That pref is default under 1.5 beta 1.

Re:Flash

[thesolo]

Works just fine if you go directly to the swf, but attempting to load it in a webpage does nothing.

For example:
This swf loads [honda-eu.com].
Its containing web page shows nothing. Works in 1.0.6 [honda-eu.com]

I mean, that's why this is a beta, clearly something is wrong. Shame though, I was hoping to use this on a daily basis to QA. No flash means I can't, I do too much work in flash to not have it load.

Re:Woohoo!

[LnxAddct]

Nope, here [hp.com] is one worth reading about.
Regards,
Steve

Re:svg release schedule?

[ldpercy]

Just tried out a quick comparison of SVG rendering between FFb1 and Adobe SVG Viewer 3.02 (in IE 6) using the sample svg suite that comes with batik (1.6)

All worked okay (no crashes), but there were quite a few small differences when placed side-by-side
- Alot of font faces and sizes were different
- Some line thickness were different (fatter)
- filters and patterns don't seem to be working at all yet
Some things that are good:
- gradients look nearly identical
- Most basic line art looks really good
- the dynamically drawn 3D.svg sample file works really well and is very smooth

All up I'm bloody impressed and can't wait to see this mature further.
Congratulations to the FF team!

Re:I hate to be the one to bring up adblock but...

[pomo monster]

Yeah, it does. The adblocker's called PithHelmet [culater.net]. There's dozens of other extensions available, most of very high quality.

Re:No extensions work?

[MykeAbner]

The main point of the beta is so that extension developers can make their extenions work. Nothing is supposed to be great about it.

Re:Deer Park !!!!!!!!!!

[Dread Pirate Shanks]

If they can get it to be as fast as Opera's cached pages, they'll really have something there. Going back and forth in Opera is almost entertaining, it's so damn fast.

New error pages... a screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1562/error4js.p ng [imageshack.us]

Re:Yeah!

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

w00t! Much improved:

• Can use back button
• No messy URL in the address bar
• Better looking boxes

Re:Users need it

[Jugalator]

This, however, is solved in Firefox 1.5.

Now, when Firefox notice there's an update available, the user gets a dialog telling there's an update, asking "do you wish to close Firefox and install it now? (otherwise it'll install next time you start Firefox)"

Re:svg release schedule?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why does Mozilla show the source code instead of displaying my SVG?

There are two possible reasons for this. If there is a grey area above the source that says something like "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it", then your problem is probably that you haven't given your root tag an 'xmlns' attribute or that the value you gave it contains an error. The correct string is "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg". If you don't see a grey area above the source code then the problem is most likely that the server your SVG files are on hasn't been configured to send the correct MIME-type for files that have the file name extension ".svg" or ".svgz". Unless this has been set up, your server will probably send the value "text/plain" for the Content-Type HTTP header instead of "image/svg+xml". Mozilla quite properly respects what the server says and displays your files as text. Note that this is not a bug! Failing to respect the MIME-type sent by the server has been a source of security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla will not be changing this behaviour."

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/faq.html#sourc e [mozilla.org]

Doesn't Fix Splitting Absolutely Positioned Frames

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this still doesn't fix bug #154892: "Splitting Absolutely positioned frames not implemented - Missing second page of content when printing or print previewing this site"

This bug prevents many web sites from printing in any useful respect from Mozilla browsers.

Its existence keeps me from rolling out Firefox as the default. It probably keeps any organization that frequently prints web pages from considering Firefox.

But what really irks me is that this bug has existed since 2002!. The bug has been duplicated in dozens and dozens of bug reports. It has at least 70 votes in Bugzilla. Yet no one has fixed it, and there is NO INDICATION that it will be fixed in the foreseeable future, yet it directly affects the user's browsing experience.

The history and severity of this bug does not reflect well on the Mozilla browser or its open source development model. NOTE: I am actually, personally, quite impressed with the Mozilla project, but someone who wants an excuse to banish free software might start with something like this.

Finally, as a Firefox user, a personal plea: Somebody, please fix this! Please?

For more information:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15489 2 [mozilla.org]

Re:Improvement? Sure, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had #2 but then found out it was my settings. I run adBlock and told it to reomve the annoying ads on Yahoo!. Unfortunately if you set the filter string a bit agressively it also removed the 'drop down' arrows in the action buttins, since they are images that are then blocked by adBlock.
Setting the filter a bit more carefully solved it for me.

Seems to work for me after uninstalling AdBlock

[zero0w]

After a clean install of Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, I tried to reinstall each extension I used, only to find out that Flash stops working after installing AdBlock, so for now the solution is to uninstall it until an update version comes out.

Re:I agree

[drbill28]

The memory is still bloated. But it's clear there have been some improvements in that area. The issue is at least still under some control. But you are all correct, it is a caching issue. Memory is now usually released back to the system. As in 1.0.6 when you closed a window, the cache for the page in memory was never released. When I close a tab, I see memory drop. I just had two broswer windows open and about 4 tabs in each, took up 80Mb. After closing the other window, I'm now at 65Mb. Still too much though. At least it doesn't continue to bloat until it reaches 200Mb and crash. Oh and I've had this window open all day, so that is a plus.

Re:Users need it

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd also have to stop and restart the browser, thus losing whatever page you were on when you decided to update.

In GNU/Linux and BSD you can upgrade to a new version while Fx is running. You only have to restart Fx to load the new version.

ACID2

[Dayflowers]

Needs some more work to pass the Acid2 test [webstandards.org]

Re:Funny...

[cerberusss]

What I find even worse is that this guy wasted valuable time doing indenting when there are a gazillion programs doing it much better, like HTML Tidy [sourceforge.net].

Re:Yeah!

[masklinn]

Not in a new tab, in the current tab, and it now behaves in a sane way (no more chrome:// bullshit and no more "hey that didn't work and now you can't correct the wrongly typed URL you loser" crap).

The new error page even looks quite good.

Re:1.6a1??

[The One KEA]

That's a Firefox trunk build - much different than Firefox 1.5 beta 1, which is a Firefox branch build.

Re:Improvement? Sure, but....

[The One KEA]

1.) OS X builds of Firefox 1.5b1 are _much_ more stable than their 1.0.x cousins. If you take a look at the URL below you'll see a great big stack of bugfixes, including many for OS X.

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/1.5 b1.html [squarefree.com]

2.) That sounds like an issue with JavaScript menus - I doubt it's the browser's fault per se; it could be an issue with the way the menu is designed.

Re:Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the guy didnt know about the "View Formatted Source" Extension for firefox (Bigger shame since he is a part of the mozilla foundation). http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =3565 [extensionsmirror.nl] Enjoy. Rahul

Re:Woohoo! - Not a troll

[coolsva]

Right on the mark. I have been using FF since version 0.6 or so and spreading the word to all people I meet. At that time and all the way till version 1.0, I accepted most bugs/performance issues as beta related. But at version 1.06 if I still have random performance problems, memory hogging. Also, IMHO, I see a lot of arrogance among the developers/supporters. Personally, I want a browser that works well, is fast and supports all sites. IE also does satisfy all my needs but is full of exploits. I recently downloaded Opera to try this past month and there is no looking back. Sure, some features like adblock, flashblock, 'images from originating server' and most importantly extensions/plugins are missing, but guess what, I can live with that. All these latest greatest features we keep talking about are not really revolutionary, they have been implemented in other browsers (including opera)

Well, there goes my karma, I WILL be modded as troll for this, but had to get it out

Re:Yeah!

[Gordonjcp]

It doesn't open in a new tab, but the current tab (as you'd expect).

Have a look at this error screen [gjcp.net] for an example. I'm on XP at work, but I would think that other platforms would be similar.

Re:Users need it

[Myen]

Firefox will respawn itself and die (effectively doing the detach you mentioned) if

1. there is no old copy of Firefox around to attach to; and
   
2. • it needs to install / uninstall / update extensions; or
     
   • your XPCOM registry thing (compreg.dat/xpti.dat) is busted; or
     
   • you started with the profile manager.
     

I probably missed some situations.

Basically, it loads half way, figure out that it loaded stuff it shouldn't have (or didn't load stuff it should have), and restarts itself. Completely normal for the stuff mentioned above. This will not occur if you already have an existing Firefox window (since the new instance actually just tells the old one to open a new window, then quietly commits suicide).

As to GP's complaint about the negative download count - that actually exists in any version 1.0.x and older. Using a 32-bit number to keep track of file sizes didn't work so well with > 2GB files :) (There was also something about how the order of operations got it to overflow first - that was also fixed post-1.0.x, I think)

Re:Deer Park Alpha 2 is great

[roca]

Please file bugs in Mozilla's Bugzilla. We really want to fix as many SVG compatibility issues as we can for Firefox 1.5 and we need people with SVG content to test it in Firefox.

Re:Exactly

[LnxAddct]

I'm the GPP os the thread. Read my post and you'll see that it clearly states it wouldn't cure all of the problems but it would help and its better than nothing. I said that the developers could still work on keeping the memory footprint down, but the GC would help.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Back

[arkanes]

The current standard says that "back" should always load from cache, but for a long time it didn't directly address it and a lot of browsers did various thing. IE and Netscape both send a HEAD request for to check for a new version. Opera will unconditionally load from cache. I believe that Opera will load from cache even with a page that has no-cache set, which is wrong.

Firefox, by the way, will fall back on the cache if it's unable to get the HEAD request. I'm not sure if it will correctly fall back if the HEAD succeeds but the actual request does not. IE will crap out, though.

Precisely what the "correct" behavior is, by which I mean "what the user expects" will vary from case to case, so it's hard to have a case that everyone agrees with. Netscape and IE both implemented what they thought was right, and have retained that behavior for consistencies sake even though some of the purists in the standards bodies have changed it.

Re:UNTITLED tabs on timeout

[BestNicksRTaken]

well it appears to happen more when you open a url in another tab - that way you have no back button, no url in the url bar for some reason, and refresh just refreshes the blank page.

this is present in 1.0.6 for linux and windows.

Re:Speed issues

[cyborg_zx]

I canne' change the laws of physics Capn'.

The basic problem is that it is a big program and uses a lot of memory. The basic trick IE uses that makes its load-up times faster is that it doesn't really 'load-up' at all - its process it a permenant residence of Windows. However there is a quick start agent for Mozilla - I don't remember if they turned it off by default or something but they did have one. I'm not sure one exists for Linux either. It's all about sacraficing boot times vs. individual loading times though.

Re:Mozilla?

[CTho9305]

The "Mozilla Suite" under that name is no more... the Mozilla Foundation isn't doing any more releases (well, security updates to 1.7, but that's all). However, a community group is continuing its development under the name SeaMonkey [mozilla.org]. It contains all the core improvements that went into Firefox 1.5 (pretty error pages, svg, canvas, performance improvements) and some new features of its own. Not all changes to Firefox go into the suite - SeaMonkey doesn't aim to be exactly like Firefox.

If you're interested in it, we'll be shipping 1.0 alpha very soon now (based on the code that would have been Mozilla 1.8 beta4), and nightlies are available here [mozilla.org] (you want the -mozilla1.8 directories at the bottom). We're hoping to ship within the next week or two (it's just an installer bug that we need to fix before release).

Re:inline-block?

[SimplexO]

Bug 9458 - Implement inline-block in layout.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458 [mozilla.org]

This is one of those golden-oldy bugs with a 4-digit bug number, so chances are it's really hard to implement.

Opened: 1999-07-08 15:25 PDT
Last modified: 2005-09-06 12:46 PDT

It looks like you might be able to get away with using both of the following rules:

display:-moz-inline-box;
display:inline-block;

Re:State.

[Myen]

Yeah, you would have they would have come up with something like Cache-Control: no-cache [w3.org] by now.

Let me see if I can understand this

[LWATCDR]

Firefox and Mozilla have to deal with every quirk of IE's broken css support and none standard extensions because any website that renders in IE "correctly" but not in Firefox/Mozilla is the fault of Mozilla/Firefox?

Now you are saying that the web designers for Firefox/Mozilla must not use w3c standard code because it does not look as good in IE as it does in Firefox? So when a website that doesn't render correctly in Firefox it is Firefox's fault but when a website doesn't render in correctly in IE even if that website is COMPLETELY w3c compliant it is the website's fault....
Wow and people wonder why Microsoft is hated by so many knowledgeable computer users.

"Since the same organization that made the page makes the software, it is conceivable that people would be turned away from FireFox on the assumption that people who produce broken web pages also produce broken programs."
Unlike Microsoft that produces broken programs and websites?