Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Released 267
Anonymous Cow writes "Almost a month after the release of Firefox 1.5 beta 1, the second beta of Firefox 1.5 has been released. Firefox 1.5b2 can be downloaded from Mozilla.org. A changelog outlining the changes in this release is also available. The official announcement is over at MozillaZine." From the announcement: " This release does not contain any major new features since Beta 1. Improvements to automated update system, Web site rendering and performance, along with several security fixes are included in this release. Beta 1 users that want to help test software update, should wait for the automatic update to be triggered sometime in the next few days. The incremental update from Beta 1 to Beta 2 is 700K bytes."
Killing Karma... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Firefox does get "Standards" in place, what really makes them good at all? This point is not made out of ignorance, but true question.
Firefox proposes that everyone adhere to the Standards of the W3, but say Safari and IE decide, "Ok, let's do it." Then what really sets any of them apart (other than Safari being Mac only)?
Because if it just comes down to a secure and fast browser, MS has much more money and resources to make this come true than FF, I believe, let me know where I'm wrong.
And furthermore, not even FF adheres only to the standards, as outlined in the paragraph that speaks of the w3 (do a find for 'w3') ---> Standards? [mozilla.org]
My favorite quote on there is: "Keep in mind that this is not yet part of any W3C or other official standard. At this time it is necessary to bend the rules in order to have full keyboard accessibility."
But isn't this what MS did long ago to make the better browser experience over NS?
Anyway, I don't mean to trash on FF at all, but I just wonder, who really wants the Standards implemented (I actually do), and then what happens after that? How do we get better dev tools and code to use in our web-apps (the w3 doesn't seem on top of new tech)?
Re:So what's new (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm a regular FF v1.0.7 user - do I "upgrade" or not?
No. Well, it depends. You might want to test 1.5 to support development, or because it's got features (eg. SVG) which 1.0.7 doesn't have. But if none of these appeal - stick with what you've got.
Incidentally, I'm using 1.5b1, and it seems to work well. But I'm a serial upgrader ;-)
Re:Killing Karma... (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think users were best off in the Netscape 4.x days when there was healthy competition in the browsers, and none of this fancy flash/pop-up/floating box crap. The web was all about content (or lack thereof). Ah, well, the almighty dollar...
Re:Killing Karma... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Killing Karma... (Score:4, Insightful)
What would then differentiate Web browsers from one another would be their interface and feature set; e.g., some would have tabbed browsing while some wouldn't, some would offer BitTorrent integration, some wouldn't, etc.
Crahes...alot (Score:1, Insightful)
Does anyone remember how in the old Netscape 6/7, you could tweak the memory and the disk cache? That's something I've missed since Firefox has been out. I think that would've helped in debugging the crashes.
Re:Killing Karma... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Firefox does get "Standards" in place, what really makes them good at all?
If televison makers could adhere to a standard so one could see any thing broadcasted in any tv then what's the point of having several tv makers?
Don't forget SVG (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox 1.5 will offer integrated support for at least a subset of the SVG standard. So, no longer will you have to download a plugin to see svg content and it will be viewable inline with html content on a web page. To me this is an often unheralded addition to Firefox 1.5 which could really be a market differentiator. So in this case, being one of the first to adopt an open standard that has the potential to add so much functionality can be of real benefit to both the product and user.
Re:Nice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not make it configurable, then if an extension breaks I can manually disable it.
Or at least give me the option of a context menu on a disabled extension to let me manually re-enable one that was auto-disabled.
It's freaking annoying right now.
Re:newsreader? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Copy & Paste sorted? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is actually one of the reasons I loathe using Windows now. I can't believe people would put up with its absolutely horrible cut 'n paste support.
A funny point of note is that I, like many people, complained about the Linux clipboard when I was going through the steps of switching away from Windows. It was foreign and didn't act as I expected a clipboard should. But that quickly faded away once I figured out how it works and realized how much better it is.
The only annoying thing is you can't cut and paste between X and pure console mode without using something like xclip [debian.org]. But since Windows can't even do pure console mode (while at the same time doing graphical mode) this isn't realy a point against Linux cut 'n paste.
Anyway... all you've got to do is wrap your head around the fact that X has two (or more) cut and paste modes (depending on what WM / desktop system you use). The standard mode allows selection of text and immediate pasting of text using the middle mouse button. This is so much more convenient than Windows cut 'n paste for most things!
The second mode is basically an exact copy of how Windows cut 'n paste works. Highlight, use the copy command, then use the paste command. This is useful for situations where you want to paste over some text that needs to be highlighted (which obviously thwarts the first cut 'n paste mode).
Also note that having two separate modes is also a god send. Sometimes it's very useful to have two selection buffers.
Some WM's have an implementation of their own cut 'n paste method too. KDE has klipper which is a great tool. It can be configured to work a number of different ways, but essentially it keeps a history of your copy commands so you have access to many of them at any given time.
It's been a long time since Windows had a leg up on Unix style clipboards.
I can't speak for OSX since I've never really used it, but I assume it has some handy things that are either on par with or better than a standard *nix/*BSD setup.
Re:Once again (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, wait, I'm posting this using Opera [opera.com].
A BitTorrent client built into a browser? That's a great idea!