Firefox 3 RC1 Out Now

Jay writes "Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now. If yours didn't auto-update, then get it while it's hot! The release came a bit early, with Computer World noting: 'As recently as last Saturday, Mozilla's chief engineer said that although the company had locked down RC1's code, it was planning to publicly launch the build in "late May."'" My copy just downloaded — restarting after I save this story. God I hope it's better than the last beta.

FireFox 2 on Eee PC /Xandros

[blind biker]

Seems to work flawlessly here on my Eee PC 701. I never installed XP on my Eee so I can't compare it to that, only to the FF I have installed on my desktop, and the stability is the same - no complaints, no crashes so far.

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

[dbcooper_nz]

Some changes are summarised here: http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/05/firefox-3-release-candidate-1-is-here/ [mozillalinks.org] . A new version of Cairo (1.6) is used under the hood.

Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[rikkards]

For the last year, I have consistently seen on the Windows version an annoying bug. If one tab takes forever to load, any other tab will not load a new page either. I find Ebay is one of the worst to bring it out. If you switch to using IE in a tab, that tab will show about:blank.

I can understand some websites may make a Firefox tab crap out but it shouldn't affect the rest.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[aredubya74]

The issue I've seen with Flash isn't a crash, but that if one lingers on a page with a lot of Flash content (say, Youtube) and leaves the page up while browsing in other tabs, CPU eventually spikes to 99% usage, requiring the browser to be shut down.

Unfortunately, this isn't a Firefox problem, but a problem with the Flash plugin. The workaround I found (thanks to other Slashdot users) was to install the addon Flashblock [mozdev.org]. Now, instead of having the Flash content sitting and waiting, it's replaced by a little clickable object to load it. Since installing it, I have not experienced the CPU spike behavior, when it used to be a daily issue. Hope this helps folks.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Changelog compared to beta5?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge [squarefree.com]

Re:EULA

[Constantine XVI]

I believe only the binary versions are under the EULA, which AFAIK has been there since FF1. The source versions (which the distros compile from) is and has been under the MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license.

Re:Not so awesome

[Jugalator]

Can you turn off the "Awesomebar"?

No?

Not interested.

Were you interested in a reply or not?

Try this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.urlbar.richResults [mozillazine.org]

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

[DigitalisAkujin]

What has changed since beta5? Grannies might not be interested, but geeks are...

Basically the Mozilla foundation keeps track of so called "blocker" bugs which essentially means that they are blocking release. In the past month they took care of approx 250 blockers which essentially means that for the past month they've been coding this browser to be built like a rock. It's not always a visual thing but just as important.

Re:Not so awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

That setting was disabled long ago. Try again.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[tepples]

Use Opera on Linux, it rocks..

It might if you have an Intel or AMD processor.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[AmaDaden]

FF3b5 has a strange JavaScript issue where if you go to a page that runs some kind of combination of JavaScript the entire browser, all running windows of it, will close, no warning and no recovery when you start it again. I saw it happen on a few pages but mostly with gmail. Trying to reply in gmail was almost a certain way to trigger it.

Re:Not so awesome

[Rhabarber]

Hmm, on the page you linked I read:

* Mozilla Firefox (nightly builds from 2007-11-29 to 2007-12-17)

Eventually it's better to look here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227 [mozilla.org]

Re:EULA

[Tweenk]

3. PROPRIETARY RIGHTS. (...) Nothing in this Agreement will be construed to limit any rights granted under the Open Source Licenses

This is the relevant bit. By the way, the main points of this EULA are:
1. You may not unbrand an official build of Firefox.
2. Using Firefox does not give you the right to use Mozilla trademarks. However, since they are legally available elsewhere, and Mozilla does not sue anybody for non-slanderous uses of the logos, this is boilerplate.
3. Any proprietary stuff that may be contained in FF is off-limits.
If I understand correctly, this was the Windows build made by Mozilla. Linux builds are made by the distros, so they would only need to comply with the source code licences.

Enable FF2 extensions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to about:config and create a new boolean entry called "extensions.checkCompatibility". Set to false.

Beware, while most of them still work fine some old extensions will most definetely kill FF3. (Google toolbar, I'm looking at you!)

Re:eh?

[RiotingPacifist]

Real smart, switch browsers instead of just turning it off.

Re:Not so awesome

[MeditationSensation]

May I know why you don't like it? I love it and find it hard to live without it now. For example, I go to IMDb.com all the time. If I want to go back to a movie that I've previously visited without searching for it on Google or IMDb, I can do it by typing in a partial title to the address bar. It's a little faster and also doesn't query the network.

Re:EULA

[Kjella]

This license does not grant you any right to use the trademarks, service marks or logos of Mozilla or its licensors.

This is the key line. The source is fully open, but the mozilla icon is protected by trademark and only offical builds can use it. I think it's always been there, it's why debian started the whole iceweasel thing (security team wouldn't be bound by upstream + doubts if it was DFSG-free). A lot of applications have that "you can fork us but don't use our name and logo" but few have formalized it like Mozilla. I don't know if the others have any legal claim to their name anyway, or if that's just a common courtesy rule.

Re:Thanks Firefox!

[iknowcss]

I'm sure you've heard of Pidgin before, but I thought I might recommend it again. The first time I used it, (it was still Gaim at the time) I hated it. I was using an old version of the AIM client and didn't want to have anything to do with messaging on Linux.

However, things have really changed drastically, and I couldn't be happier with my Pidgin installation on both my Linux and Windows installs. Pidgin supports a whole slew of protocols, including MSN. It's the only real alternative for users running anything before Windows XP, too, as they won't let you install messenger on older versions of Windows. (At least, the last time I tried to, I couldn't) If it's been a while since you tried it, give it a shot. You might be surprised.

If you're using KDE, there's something out there, I can't find it at the moment, to make Pidgin look a lot better than it does right after a default install. I think it's on Kde-look.org somewhere.

Stability

[The MAZZTer]

I'm surprised at the number of people with stability problems. I tried 3.0a1 and I had instant crashes in AJAX web apps, so I decided to wait until b1 which turned out to be a good decision, because it was much more stable. Each beta has been increasingly better. I still get a couple crashes here and there but I am betting it's due to Flash or an add-on I'm using.

On Linux I use Swiftfox [getswiftfox.com], which is a recompiled Firefox optimized for individual processors so it can be even a little faster than Firefox 3. Only problem is they occasionally push out a nightly build over their update package source thingy (I tend to prefer the public beta releases) but nothing that has been unstable yet.

If you're having stability problems, you really have no right to complain until you at least TRY to fix it since Firefox gives you the tools to do so. To use another car analogy, it's like complaining your car doesn't slow down fast enough so you need a different one but you haven't even tried using the brakes yet. Well not exactly but I needed to use a car analogy. Anyways here's some things you should try:

1. Try running Firefox in safe-mode. If the problem goes away it's very likely a bad extension.
2. Try making a new, temporary profile. If the problem goes away it might be easy to fix by migrating individual files over and skipping the one that causes the problem. Also this helps to clear out old FF2 files you don't need anymore (especially if you can figure out what the files are, not hard to do since they're mostly well named).
3. If the problem occurs on pages which utilize a specific plugin try disabling the plugin... about:plugins [about] can help you locate the dll to temporarily move it somewhere else to disable it (Firefox won't let you follow about: links so copy/paste the url). If it's a plugin you can't live without try seeing if there's updates for it.
4. Google Gears instantly crashes FF3 if sites try to use it (in b5 at least). Disable it until it gets an update.
5. Silverlight doesn't support FF3 yet and just refuses to run at all. MS is supposedly working on it.
6. Some people have reported weird slow-loading problems. I had that problem as well and traced it to the Firebug extension, or perhaps the Firecookie one... the problem is sporadic so it's difficult. However a Firebug update recently seemed to fix it. You can try disabling it if you have problems.

If you still have problems it's likely a problem with Firefox, in which case I suppose you could complain, but it would be more productive to file a bug report [mozilla.org] to increase the chances of it being fixed. To quote GLaDOS, "Thank you for helping us help you help us all."

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[rikkards]

Well it hasn't been dealt with yet. Here are the steps I took to get it to happen:
Open a new Tab
Go to www.ebay.com
Do a search and go into about a half dozen auctions, navigating back and going into the next one
Sooner or later it will slow right down and any other tabs will start experiencing the same thing

Re:Test Results

[n0-0p]

Your comment leads me to believe you've never done any significant software development work. Consider that the Acid3 test was released at the tail end of the Gecko development cycle. This puts Mozilla in a bad position, because they were already at feature freeze and didn't want to further delay the final release. So, shooting for Acid3 compliance at this point would be the height of stupidity.

The Acid3 test is also a bit controversial in its own right. Acid1 and Acid2 addressed broad compatibility with several core web standards, without regard for any particular browser. In contrast, Acid3 covers an odd mix of quirks chosen to intentionally highlight bugs in different browsers. Acid3 also includes a random mix of features from things like SMIL and SVG, which are enormously complex standards not supported in their entirety by any major browser. That also means that Acid3 can be gamed by simply implementing just enough of a feature to pass the test, but not enough to be genuinely useful in practice.

Simply put, Acid3 is a much less useful test than the previous versions. I have no doubt that Mozilla will eventually pass, but they won't delay the Firefox 3.0 release and have made it clear that they won't play the partial implementation game to beat the test.

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[debrain]

A bug similar (if not identical) to the complaint here, was filed back in May of 2000: Bug 40848 (thread) - each docshell should run on its own thread (one thread per frame) [mozilla.org].

I'm sure they'd appreciate it, though, if no-one spammed this bug. It's closed for valid (or at least not-invalid) technical/philosophical reasons- threads are evil (you can find links supporting that assertion from the bug's comments). You can also follow it to its successor meta-bug: Bug 384323 - UI responsiveness - core/platform - meta bug [mozilla.org] and its quasi-sister: Bug 91351 - UI/App responsiveness issues [mozilla.org].

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[dotancohen]

How does one do that?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi [mozilla.org]

Re:What problems?

[dotancohen]

The only problem I saw on Linux was the growth of the "urlclassifier3.sqlite" file. When it grew over 20 MB, it was necessary to delete it.

Were there other problems? Because apart from the above, I used the last beta every day on Ubuntu, MS Windows, and OS X and had no problems.

It is the Phishing protection database. After you erase that file, disable Phishing protection. If you feel confident enough in yourself to identify phishing sites yourself, that is. I leave it enabled for the mother in law.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[noob749]

I had this problem too. I think I fixed it by uninstalling Firebug. There are several versions of firebug (official and otherwise) that claim to run with ff3, but i don't think any do.

Re:Way Better

[julesh]

Now to business,
Firebug Official for FF3 Please :)

Err... firebug 1.1 supports FF3 just fine. No need to hack around with it like so many other addons require...

Re:Stability on Linux?

[HappySmileMan]

Don't know who the hell modded you as troll, but if anyone reads this please note that parent was most likely being deadly serious, in fact up until 3.0-beta4 I always used Opera over Firefox on Linux.
To GP, in my experience Firefox3 is much more stable than FF2 on Linux, I'm using Kubuntu 8.l04 KDE4 edition.

Re:Thanks Firefox!

[Kankraka]

MSN Messenger V5.0 for Windows 95 is still available for download from microsoft.com, and it works just fine on a machine running win 95 and 98.

Firefox Add-on Flashblock 1.5.6

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget Flash which is notorious for eating CPU time. Just turn it off through a utility known as Flashblock until you need it. Then you can save CPU cycles for other more important tasks.

"Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content."

Re:Stability on Linux?

[garbletext]

I had a similar problem. The solution was to right click on any flash applet, and "disable hardware acceleration"

Broken extensions

[timothy]

Two of my favorite / most-used extensions are DownloadHelpder and TabsOpenRelative.

Both of them are broken in this new RC. I installed it (before knowing that), and at least it was kind enough to say after the update was complete that a) these extensions don't work and b) that the program would seek updates periodically to find if a new version *does* work.

Would have been a lot handier to know that up-front though; I wouldn't have done the upgrade, actually, if I'd known that.

timothy

Re:Stability on Linux?

[Shatrat]

In my experience 90% of 'firefox' issues on linux are actually Flash issues.
Flashblock and noscript sorts most of that out and makes the internet usable again to boot.

Re:eh?

[Jason Quinn]

You are completely correct. But one thing that browsers should not do is create workarounds for bugs on very popular sites that are do to non-standards compliant coding. This is something that is occasionally argued for in bug submissions to bugzilla.mozilla; and is likely what RiotingPacifist was influenced by.

Re:Stability on Linux?

[shutdown -p now]

Er, what? Opera provides binaries for x86, x86_64 (in the most recent beta build only), PowerPC and SPARC, and all of the above come in .deb, .rpm and .tar.gz. You can explore the relevant [opera.com] parts [opera.com] of their FTP site for yourself if you want to check.

Hotmail working just in classic mode?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with same problem? Windows XP plus Firefox3.0RC1

"You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies."

Re:Firefox Add-on Flashblock 1.5.6

[FLEB]

The add-on manager to FF3 actually allows you to enable and disable plugins on the fly, without a restart (I think it even does it immediately, without having to reload the page)-- it's a little less direct, but does act as a good alternative to 3rd-party "block" extensions.

Re:Stability

[kryptkpr]

Can you reproduce the crash on demand? Try launching firefox under gdb ("gdb firefox" from a console, then "run" at the prompt) then making it crash. The console you launched it from should give the gdb> prompt again, where you can do a backtrace ("bt full") to see the exactly where the crash was as well as the sequence of function calls that lead up to it.

Your firefox will be likely dying inside some library, and once you figure out which library that is (based on the backtrace) you can download it's -dbg package and repeat the process to isolate the specific function causing the crash.

This is basically what apport tries to do after the fact, but it's often works better if gdb is attached right from the start.

On a related note, I just looked in synaptec and firefox-3 itself does not have a -dbg package, only firefox-2 does.. I'm hoping this means they've left debug symbols in the binary itself.

Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

[Tumbleweed]

Is Firefox unresponsive when this problem occurs, or does it just fail to other load pages (from the same site or from other sites) quickly? If it's unresponsive, it might make sense to blame "lack of threading", but if it's just failing to load other pages quickly, it's probably a more specific problem with the networking code or the default max-connections settings.

For me, it becomes completely unresponsive until that tab is done. This has happened on every machine I've used (which is several) in FF for years now.

Re:Way Better

[Randle_Revar]

I think there is still a flash version, I know there is for gameday audio, but it still doesn't work right. I just started using mlbviewer.py - it is pretty basic, but still a much better interface than anything MLB has come up with.