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Comments: 405 +-   Firefox 2.0 Officially Released on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:14PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:14PM
mozilla
internet
Many readers wrote in to make sure we all knew that Firefox 2.0 has officially been released on Mozilla.com, unlike yesterday's early preview. Here are builds for all languages and Win/Linux/Mac, and the release notes.
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  • Needs more colours (Score:5, Informative)

    by naylor83 (836780) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:16PM (#16568218) Homepage

    Once again...

    If you find the Firefox 2 theme too bleak, I've got your fix right here [davidnaylor.org].

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Well, I was just gonna say... Firefox is much better looking than I ever expected it to be! Isn't it Opera's job to look modern? Congratulations to the people who designed this new theme. It's nothing special, but definitely a big step up from 1.5.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            Middle clicking on a tab will also close the tab without your having to nail the [X] with the pointer.
  • Hmm, so we're calling yesterday a "preview" are we? ;) We know where to go and we know how to download it. Lock and load, gentlemen.

    If you're like me and you've already been running RC3, then you've got it already.
      • Re:Hehe nice cover (Score:5, Informative)

        by Propaganda13 (312548) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @08:12PM (#16570682)
        http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterL/lockandlo ad.html [wordorigins.org]
        Lock and Load
        This imperative phrase originally referred to the operation of the M1 Garand Rifle, the standard U.S. Army rifle of WWII. Its meaning is more general now, referring to preparation for any imminent event.

        To load a Garand, the bolt would be locked to the rear and a clip of ammunition loaded into the receiver. The command lock and load was immortalized by John Wayne in the 1949 movie The Sands of Iwo Jima: "Lock and load, boy, lock and load."
        There are earlier uses of the command reversed, load and lock. This command, primarily used on firing ranges, referred to the loading of a single round into the Garand (or into another weapon). In this case, the lock referred to striking the bolt handle with the heel of the hand to ensure it was fully closed and locked into place.

        And you want to mess with something the Duke said? Shame on you. :)

          • by mysticgoat (582871) * on Wednesday October 25 2006, @01:06AM (#16572836) Journal

            My deer rifle is a 30-06 Remmington slide action. I'm a southpaw and a lefthanded bolt was more than I could afford when I got the gun (used): the slide action is ambidextrous. It has a 4 round clip. I've owned it for 31 years now. I don't use it much any more, but at one time it helped stretch the grocery budget.

            I learned to shoot from a couple guys who had grown up hunting in the 1930s and who learned to shoot all over again when in the service in World War II. Both saw more action on the Pacific islands than they would ever talk about.

            The litany they taught included these steps (done just before the first steps of the hunt)

            1. check the receiver for crud
            2. check the clip for crud and alignment of the top round
            3. check safety is on
            4. insert clip into receiver
            5. LOCK clip into place by slamming it with the heel of your hand
            6. LOAD the first round into the chamber (in my case, work the slide)
            7. check the safety is on (again)

            I doubt that either of those guys saw any of the John Wayne war movies (they liked his westerns though). But I'm pretty sure neither one would have thought "Lock and load, son" was wrong or laughable. It is the way it was done.

            Sorry about the rant. But this argument among people who have never had to worry about extracting a jammed live round from a rifle because the shooter hadn't locked the clip into place before trying to load the chamber has grown tiresome.

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                The long guns the RAF used in WWII were descendants of the .303 Lee Enfield, not the .30-06 Garand. Very different designs with different strengths and weaknesses-- I'd expect a difference in the standard operating procedure. The Lee Enfield guns were designed around working the bolt action quickly without taking your eye off the target and they excel at rapid fire accuracy. The .30-06 semi-automatics were designed for good accuracy with less training and less field maintenance.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          no, lock refers to LOCKING THE BOLT CLOSED after loading a round in the internal mag or breach.

          Pick up a bolt-action rifle [circa when "lock and load" came about]. It's a hollywoodism, see this [wordorigins.org] page about half way down.

          You "switch" fire modes, you don't lock them. And frankly I always hear it as "turn the safety on" or off, etc... not "lock the safety" because that doesn't make any sense.

          Tom
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              "I went to the park" would imply that "john and me went to the park" is incorrect. It seems that people ALWAYS use "me" in this context regardless of how it sounds.

              Tom
  • ... until the automatic update installs it for me.

    With all the fake^Wmistaken announcements, it's the only way I'll be sure it's out.

    And, of course, I'll be reasonably certain most of my extensions will work with 2.0.

  • ... but can it run the flash 9 beta without crashing? I've had no luck so far.
  • Too Many! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wellington Grey (942717) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:21PM (#16568298) Homepage Journal
    Wow! The third firefox 2.0 article in 24 hours. Boy, I can't wait to read all the insightful comments people will leave. Again.

    -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
  • 2.0? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stonefry (968479) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:23PM (#16568312)
    I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a day now. I can't really see how this warrants a 2.0 release. It seems like there should be more added features and innovation that we have come to expect from the Mozilla team to jump to 2.0. Don't get me wrong, I love the software and I have converted just about everyone I know to Firefox. This is a Solid release, but maybe a 1.6 or something.
    • Re:2.0? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OneSeventeen (867010) * on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:29PM (#16568422) Homepage Journal
      Part of me wants to agree with you, but the other part of me says the whole point of Firefox is that not all of the cool features are built in. While I would like better RSS integration, I'm glad they are leaving the major feature upgrades to the add-on developers.

      (although would it be so hard to add the cool click-and-drag margin resize features for printing that IE7 has?)
    • Re:2.0? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cyclocommuter (762131) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @06:10PM (#16569046)
      IMHO, this release warrants the 2.0 moniker. Aside from the inline spell checker, it appears the dreaded "memory usage" problem has finally been nailed. FF 2.0 does appear to reclaim memory much faster than the older version. To me, this bug fix together with the perceptible increase in launch time and page loading/rendering is a major improvement, which combined with the inline spell checker is enough to warrant the 2.o moniker. I also agree that additional features are better left to extension developers.

      Part of 2.0 release it appears is also not just contained in the browser code itself but in Mozilla's Add-ons website which gets launch when you click the "Get Extensions" link in the Add-ons dialog. Add-ons or extensions are now grouped together by functionality as opposed to being grouped together by popularity, ratings, etc.
    • Re:2.0? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jugalator (259273) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @06:27PM (#16569326) Journal
      I have been using Firefox 2.0 for a day now. I can't really see how this warrants a 2.0 release. It seems like there should be more added features and innovation that we have come to expect from the Mozilla team to jump to 2.0.

      First, Firefox 2.0 is supposed to be a "0.5" upgrade from 1.5; that is, approximately as much of a change as 1.5 was compared to 1.0.

      Now, Firefox 2.0 offers these noticeable features, among others:
      - Updated UI
      - Anti-phishing
      - Tab close undo
      - Session restore
      - Form spell checker
      - Microsummaries
      - JavaScript 1.7
      - Loads and loads of bug and stability fixes, including improved memory usage

      I'm really not sure why this couldn't be a 2.0 release? What else should it be? 1.6 would be way to minor for its features anyway. Heck, this is the scale e.g. IE 5 -> 6 was on IMHO, if not more, and then that was an incremental step of 1, not 0.5 as Firefox 2.0 is.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        IE 5 -> IE 6 included a substantial improvement in DOM and CSS support (which is a little sad when you consider how awful IE 6 is at both...) while Firefox 1.5 -> 2.0 changed virtually nothing on either front, so I would say this is nowhere near the scale of IE 5 -> IE 6 (or even IE 5.5 -> IE 6).

        Anyways, IMO even if Firefox 2.0 is, as many people have claimed, as much of an upgrade from 1.5 as 1.5 was from 1.0, than no, it doesn't deserve to be called 2.0. If they didn't think the last upgrade
        • All this two.oh talk is bunk. This is clearly more than a point level release though, so I suggest a new naming convention. We should lobby to have it named after a defunct car. This release is called Yugo. Next up is Chevette followed by the Pinto, the Nino and the Santo Maria. Oops, got off track.

          Let's just take the current system and make it fractional. This release should now be known as 1 and 5/8. No decimal notation anymore. I can't wait for 33 and 1/3!

          OK, name it whatever you want, just don't
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        A 0.5 upgrade from 1.5 would be 1.10. Compare Konqueror 3.0 to Konqueror 3.5. You'd find much more of a difference.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:23PM (#16568314)
    Firefox 1.x made a reasonable attempt at mimicking the interface of OS X using XUL. Sure, its contextual menus weren't slightly transucent and some of its metrics were slightly off, but it didn't look completely out of place on the system. Firefox 2.0 has thrown away the Aqua interface and replaced it with some generic chrome which looks rather poor per se, but is especially jarring on Mac OS X.

    I hope someone comes up with a decent Aqua skin, but it still doesn't make any sense to force users to resort to skinning just to make a program fit with the default system interface. The Mac build of Firefox should look like a Mac program by default; skinning should be for those people who want to make it look like a pink christmas tree or whatever.

    Please do not bother mentioning Camino: it lacks support for Firefox extensions, which are the only reason I have for using Firefox.
    • by Sanity (1431) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:52PM (#16568742) Homepage Journal
      The Mac build of Firefox should look like a Mac program by default;
      Agreed. It is really annoying when developers of cross-platform apps don't realize that you need to conform to what users are accustomed to on their platform by default. Even Sun figured this out with Java (eventually), when will Mozilla?
      • Near as I can tell, they've been shifting away from that philosophy and moving towards a "their way or the highway" tactic. With 1.0 they usurped the use of ctrl-u to clear a line of text, which has been a convention with unix (emacs introduced it afaik) as far back as I can remember. Now, it opens the "view page source" window.

        Disabling it requires mucking with dotfiles, and I appreciate that the capacity is there.. but that's not the point. Running firefox under a given platform should cater to that platform's conventions. I don't want it to be the same under all platforms, I want to be the same with MY platform.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          That's the problem right there. Why the hell does Mozilla creates its own UI? Every operating system already has windowing and widgets APIs in place. Heck, one of the reason I hate Firefox on OS X is because even the form widgets don't look like OS X. I feel like I'm using an old version of Windows when I see pull-down menus and radio buttons in Firefox!

  • by CyberZCat (821635) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:25PM (#16568344)
    Yesterday's "pre-release" (CRC32): 4F3CF1D7
    Today's "official" release (CRC32): 4F3CF1D7

    I guess not much has changed since RC3...
  • by asa (33102) <asa@mozilla.com> on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:25PM (#16568354) Homepage
    The auto-update system will automatically apply security and stability updates. We're planning on providing an "optional" update to Firefox 2 through this system, and that will likely happen in a few weeks. In the meantime, please do download through getfirefox.com [getfirefox.com]. As long as you do not use a direct ftp.mozilla.org or releases.mozilla.org [mozilla.org], we're pretty confident in our ability to handle demand, thanks to our volunteer mirror network.
  • Buggy Release (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hibiki_r (649814) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:25PM (#16568362)
    Am I the only one getting all kinds of bugs in the new release?

    The search engine box starts blank, and the 'get more search engines' link does nothing.

    Right clicking and selecting 'new tab' opens a blank tag that doesn't react to the location bar at all, and refuses to close by clicking on its button, right click + close, or hitting 'close all other tabs'

    It lost every single one of my bookmarks, even though it kept most extensions intact.

    I don't want to sound like a troll, but is this really the quality we want in a new release?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Same thing for me. And bookmarks were broken. I thought I'd lost them, but when I couldn't make any new ones I realized that it just wasn't doing the bookmark thing at all. Running the install a second time cleared up some things for me.

      Also got an error about not having a function in js3250.dll at one point. Reminds me very much of the pre-RC1 releases. Remember those that didn't really handle upgrades without an uninstall and install (and even that was buggy).

      Oh well, maybe we'll see 2.1 next week.
  • Best. Feaure. Ever. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Skynyrd (25155) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:29PM (#16568428) Homepage
    I just installed 2.0 on XP and it seems to be working quite well. Most of my extensions work, and I'm happy.

    Then I discovered The Feature(tm). A website popped up a window, rather than a new tab, with no ability to control the size and whatnot. I discovered a button in the upper right corner that says "open this window in default browser". Clicking it opens that window in a new tab in my open browser.

    Thanks to whoever added that feature. Brilliant idea.
    • by DragonHawk (21256) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @06:41PM (#16569522) Homepage Journal
      (Notice: Lower-case 'w' in subject.)

      Enter "about:config" in to the Address bar.

      Filter on "dom.disable_window".

      Make sure every resulting knob is set to "True".

      This prevents JavaScript-spawned windows from having their title bar, address bar, tool bar, menu bar, status bar, scroll bars, or other decorations removed/disabled. Now I can move, resize, or otherwise twiddle with all the windows in my browser, the way I should be able to.

      Me to web developers: They're my windows; get your grubby JavaScript off them!
  • by nu-gundam (999099) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:31PM (#16568458)
    Will mozilla ever release an official 64 bit version of firefox? Not that I really care that much since I am usually running the 64 bit trunk build that I compile weekly anyways. But supposedly one of the reasons that Sun won't release a 64 bit java plugin for firefox is because there is no official 64 bit firefox. I am hoping that by Mozilla releasing an official 64-bit firefox Sun will finally get a 64-bit java plugin out.
      • God knows you'll need to harness the awesome power of those extra 32 bits to browse web pages at an acceptable speed.


        We need 64-bit Firefox ASAP, how else can we open web sites with more than 4GB of content?
        • We need 64-bit Firefox ASAP, how else can we open web sites with more than 4GB of content?

          And more importantly, with that much accessible memory, this will allow us to use Firefox for four continuous hours instead of three before we need to restart it because of a leaking add-on!

          Don't hit me, I'm just kidding, I never had any memory issue with FF, I swear!

  • by Tumbleweed (3706) * on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:34PM (#16568492) Homepage
    Okay, so I had a problem where when I hovered over a tab's close button, it would disappear (though it would still when clicked). Also, when I installed the beta of the upcoming Tab Mix Plus, the main tab close button would flicker when hovered over it, and I'd have to click several times very quickly to make it work.

    The problem: a theme I had installed (which has since been updated today).

    So, if you experience any UI weirdness, you may want to switch over to the default theme and restart to see if that makes a difference.

    Now that I have my Tabs Mix Plus, I'm doin' okay with FF2.

    Shame about the non-multi-threaded UI, though. Maybe someday.
  • by Sanity (1431) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:37PM (#16568532) Homepage Journal
    I have been using RC3, which I believe is the same codebase as the actual release. For several months I have found that the Firefox 2.0 branch froze up on my Mac (10.4 MacBook Pro) several times a day. Every time a new release would come out I would try it for a day or two, then it would freeze up, and I would switch back to the stable release. I'm sorry to say that RC3 has been freezing up on me in much the same way, meaning that even with the official 2.0 release, its not stable enough for me to use it as my primary browser (and yes, I do submit bugs when the occur if I can, I have been submitting bugs to Mozilla since the project was first open sourced).
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Do you have any extensions?

      I had a similar problem earlier today and yesterday (though I don't use a Mac). I'm not prepared to say 100% that it was the cause, but at least so far, I have yet to have the freezing issue recur since disabling the official Google Toolbar extension. If you have that installed, you may want to try disabling it and seeing if you have any better luck.

  • Cookie Monster (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beardo the Bearded (321478) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:41PM (#16568588)
    You can no longer block 3rd-party cookies.
    • Re:Cookie Monster (Score:4, Informative)

      by molo (94384) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @07:22PM (#16570062) Journal
      Yeah, I was disappointed to see this gone from the UI, but it is still available via about:config . The key is network.cookie.cookieBehavior, default value is 0 (all cookies allowed). Change this to 1 (no 3rd party cookies). More info from the MozillaZine knowledgebase [mozillazine.org].

      -molo
  • Gripe #1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by no_pets (881013) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:55PM (#16568784)
    I've had v2.0 for all of 3 minutes and already have a gripe. The X tabs icon has been moved from the far right to the right of each individual tab. I rather liked the old version as I could quickly X all my tabs down to the original window that I had open. Now I must mouse around to click all tabs.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Also, can't you right-click on a tab and say, "Close Other Tabs" to close all tabs but that one? I'm not sure if that's in 2.0 - I imagine it is - but it's right here for me on 1.5 (although perhaps that's a feature added by an extension). hth
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        "Close Other Tabs" is still there in 2.0. And to answer another reply, you don't need the Tab Mix Plus extension.
    • Re:Gripe #1 (Score:5, Informative)

      by mdd4696 (1017728) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @07:25PM (#16570098)
      Two about:config settings that I changed after installing Firefox 2.0:

      browser.tabs.closeButtons
      • 0: Only show close button on currently selected tab
      • 1: Show close button on all tabs (default)
      • 2: Never show close buttons on tabs
      • 3: Show a single close button at the far right (1.5 behavior)
      browser.urlbar.hideGoButton
      • false: Show Go button next to location bar (default)
      • true: Hide Go button next to location bar
      I couldn't find anything related to the tab list drop-down button or for the magnifying glass button next to the search box.
  • Attention Mac Users (Score:3, Informative)

    by astrosmash (3561) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @06:01PM (#16568886) Journal
    OS X users should be aware of the following:
    1. Firefox 1.5 users will be happy to know that Firefox 2.0 includes numerous performance and usability improvements over v1.5 specifically for the OS X platform, bringing the Mac version closer to the Windows version in terms of quality. You'll want to upgrade immediately. If you thought that Firefox 1.5 sucked, give 2.0 a try. Big improvements on the Mac.
    2. If you're a fan of the smooth, pixel-resolution scrolling that comes with two-finger touchpad and Mighty Mouse scrolling, and you lament the lack of this smooth scrolling in Firefox, well lament no more! Smooth pixel-resolution scrolling was introduced in Firefox 2.0 Beta 2, and it rules. Unfortunately, this feature was removed because it made the bookmark manager scroll too quickly. If you're like me and do a lot of scrolling (and don't care about how the bookmark manager scrolls) you'll want to stick with Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 [mozilla.org] on OS X, like I do.
    • Re:64-bit support? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AaronW (33736) <aaron,slashdot013&doofus,org> on Tuesday October 24 2006, @05:55PM (#16568786) Homepage
      The problem I think is that a lot of browser plug-ins won't work with 64-bit support, i.e. Flash. Konqueror solved this problem by making plugins run in a separate process context than the browser, so while the browser is 64-bit, it handles 32-bit binary plugins just fine. It has an added benefit that if a plugin goes berserk it doesn't take out the browser and I can kill the plugin task without affecting the browser.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Because .exe is for windows.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        The download page picks a random mirror. Linking directly to the file would put all of the load on a single mirror.
        • Re:Woot (Score:5, Informative)

          by kv9 (697238) on Wednesday October 25 2006, @01:32AM (#16573038) Homepage

          The download page picks a random mirror. Linking directly to the file would put all of the load on a single mirror.

          no, it would not:

          # host releases.mozilla.org
          releases.mozilla.org has address 64.50.236.52
          releases.mozilla.org has address 64.50.238.52
          releases.mozilla.org has address 130.239.18.158
          releases.mozilla.org has address 130.239.18.159
          releases.mozilla.org has address 155.98.64.83
          releases.mozilla.org has address 216.165.129.134
          releases.mozilla.org has address 216.165.129.141
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