Mozilla Firefox 1.5 RC3 Released

Jasper Bryant-Greene writes "It doesn't look like the official website has updated yet, but Firefox 1.5 RC3 has been just been released. MozillaZine has the scoop."

Update now popup is too forceful

[LiquidCoooled]

I was in the middle of typing a posting and this thing popped up taking away focus.
Didn't have full time to check, but hitting return would/could have started the update process off without informed consent.

I realise they want to get it updated, but I think the new regime is just a bit too forceful - it should be on application startup and not checking whilst I'm browsing.

Why do we care?

[TheZeusJuice]

Not to be a troll or anything, but why does slashdot deam every minor release of Firefox to be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other OSS. And also, anyone who uses Firefox would notice and know what the little green upward-pointing arrow on the upper-right-hand corner means.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[kalirion]

Some people never shut down Firefox, though I couldn't do that since it's memory usage seems to constantly increase during use.

Re:This Is Was On Digg.com Yesterday

[Bullfish]

So, this happens on sites all over the net. News is disseminated instantly over a large number of sites instantaneously. What makes slashdot good are the users who make good comments. You want a better site, quit whining and do that. The commentary is why I come here and digg's is not that good. Tech news I can get almost anywhere.

As for politics, more and more it is impacting the nerds of world due to nervous politicians and evil content companies pressuring them. We would be remiss to ignore it.

This thread is for FF RC3. I got mine automatically yesterday with no hitches. Considering how the last time I got an upgrade message it flopped about four times, this was an improvement.

Re:Why do we care?

[squoozer]

It is a little different to every other piece of OSS in one really important way - loads of people use it. It is the one real shining jewel of the OSS community so we should give it plenty of column inches.

Before I get flamed out of existance I am not saying that there aren't other good pieces of OSS - there are plenty - but Firefox / Mozilla is the _only_ one that a good number of non-geeks use (although I imagine Azureus comes close but that's a bit hard to promote).

Re:Why do we care?

[TubeSteak]

Actually, I never noticed a green arrow

As for why /. considers FF updates to be important, it might have something to do with the fact that FireFox seems to be one of the few (only?) reasons MS is bothering to add features to Internet Explorer.

Or it could just be that /nerds like to keep, one of the few pieces of software they interact with constantly, updated. I'm sure once MS starts cracking out Windows updates we'll see more "Critical Update" articles and that trend is vulnerable to the exact same criticism: why does slashdot deam every minor update of windows to be worthy of a story? Its no different from any other commercial software.*

*I might be stretching that one a bit, but you get the point. When all else fails, most nerds like the default setting to include as much information as possible. Which is worse: losing a few seconds of your life scanning and dismissing /. articles you don't care about or never seeing an article you might find important because someone else (/. editors) didn't think it was anything special? /end

Re:Yea but...

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, the main reason why I am expecting within the first two weeks in December for final release is that this coming week is Thanksgiving holiday week in the USA, and a lot of testers might be out on vacation. I hope the Mozilla Foundation folks account for this and aim for a early December release.

Re:Update now popup is too forceful

[Omestes]

Better solution, don't steel focus, EVER. A program does not need my immediate attention, EVER. Even if it is a terrible virus that will kill my hard drive, or a new version of FF that is SO much better than the previous, it can wait until I finish answering that email, or typing that /. response.

I have enough distractions on my computer taking my productivity away, that I don't need one more. Steeling focus is a design flaw, period. There is no reason for it. It is bad usability, in that programs in the back ground are there for a reason, I don't need to be reminded that they exist. As for FF, I really don't need it to check for updates, and it really doesn't have to ruin my work-flow (/. reading?) for a silly update.

I like how OS X does it in theory, by bouncing a dock icon. Tasteful, subtle, and not to attention grabbing. Windows does it all wrong, though I've noticed a move on some Mac developers to do the "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!!! NOW!" thing to.

Re:Unknown upgrade

[FCon4]

My firefox prompted me a few hours ago about an "important upgrade", which I did. But it didn't say what this upgrade was about, and therefore I don't know if I'm running RC3 or not. It would be nice to know what has been downloaded.

If you really want to know what is about to be downloaded, I believe the proper time for such thoughts would be before agreeing to receive it. But that's just me.

Re:Why do we care?

[RicktheBrick]

I upgraded to the first rc of version 1.5 only to find that most of my extension would not work. I will wait at least a month after the final version is released so that everyone will have time to update their extensions.

Way ahead of you!

[hkmwbz]

If they are wondering what Firefox will be implementing, they might as well look here [opera.com] ;-)

Re:CPU hogging bug is much worse in RC2

[An Onerous Coward]

To say the Mozilla people "have been refusing to investigate this bug for 2 1/2 years now" is a gross mischaracterization. It was right for them to mark this bug as invalid because it's not a bug. What it is is a collection of symptoms running the gamut from crashes to extreme memory usage to cpu hogging.

The folks at mozilla are fixing these sorts of bugs all the time. But since the report is too vague to let the Mozilla coders know when the bug that caused the crash is actually fixed, it could never be marked fixed.

In short, it's "not being investigated" because it's vague, unreproducable, and simply duplicates a large number of more specific bugs.