Firefox 3 RC1 Out Now 473
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.
eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What was wrong with Beta 5?
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
If people have been having people's they really should be filling bug reports, there's no way its going to magically improve without being told what's wrong
Re:eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Though I am using a lot of addins, so don't know exactly who to blame.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
The behavior I've seen is this:
1. Go to a site with lots of links - such as a news site or RSS aggregator.
2. Start middle-clicking on links to open them in tabs.
Inevitably one of the early ones just doesn't load - it sits and looks like it is loading and does nothing for a minute or two. All subsequent tabs do the same thing. As soon as the first one actually does load and render the others instantly load and rendor. Obviously something is blocking the loading/rendering in all open tabs when this is happening.
Everything works just fine in konqueror, so that is what I tend to use all the time. I'd actually prefer firefox for its plugins/etc, but it just isn't reliable for me. Now the only time I use it on linux is when a page doesn't render correctly in konqueror.
I'd also like to comment that I'm very concerned with the keep-piling-on-features mentality in Firefox. I want a web browser - not an OS/desktop-in-a-window. The whole reason that firefox was born was that everybody was tired of Mozilla having 47 huge features that nobody needed. Let's stick to the basics and do them right. If they want to come out with a few other apps that can tightly integrate with firefox, that's great - but let's let the stand-alone browser be a stand-alone browser...
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:1, Insightful)
FF2 works rock solid with my machine. Why should I use something that causes aggravation with the most simple task? I think it's ridiculous that canonical should have used such a cheesy piece of crap for a browser in the first place - one more example of piling on feastures without fixing the problems first.
Anyway, I never had ff2 lock up my desktop, and it pretty much never crashes. the closest it comes to crashing is when flash locks up - and that problem was easy enough to fix by adding a KAPOW button on my tooltray that executes "killall npviewer.bin" This is an effective fix that is all but impossible using ff3 with its penchant for killing xwindows...
Re:Stalled window bug dealt with yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand some websites may make a Firefox tab crap out but it shouldn't affect the rest.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, because you system/install/whatever is shit, then it means Firefox is guilty.
Never mind that there are zillion people out there who don't have Firefox on Linux crashing at all. Must be that it's Firefox, not you.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't read that way. I'd say he implies that people should accept beta software is buggy and that using beta software and filling bugs against it it's the best way for such a software to become as buggy-free as possible when launched as stable.
"Why should I use something that causes aggravation with the most simple task? I think it's ridiculous that canonical should have used such a cheesy piece of crap for a browser in the first place"
That's quite a different assumption from the grandparent's poster and I have to say I do agree with both of them: specially when talking about open source software, betatesting and filling bugs is the best way to improve software quality for a non-developer but it's ridiculous and misleading shipping a quoted-to-be stable and "production-ready" OS release full of beta-quality software. Still, too many Linux distributions follow the featuritis trend instead of following strong engineering advices. Just as an example, I feel OK for Fedora to be released with beta-quality software (Fedora is aimed to be a "technology-preview" and enthusiast testing field) while I don't feel the same to be OK for Ubuntu which is told to be a production-ready, non-technical user-friendly one.
But then, I think Linux distributions not to be so different to any other "market" products: it is the consumer responsibility (within legal requirements) to practice their own "due-diligence" and see how good the *product*, not the marketroid speech, stands against their requirements.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really feel that the Ubuntu people are losing it, and the failure of their project will be a major black eye for Linux. It's a good idea, but they are screwing it up by not figuring out how to manage their initial success. One example is relying on mirrors rather than BitTorrent as the default download. Some of the mirrors must be okay--but I sure have heck finding them. Certainly not the mirrors selected by their testing procedures for the best mirror.
Overall, I'd guess that their problem is that they are trying to be too aggressive about supporting new features for too many platforms. It's not like Apple's situation, where they can control the number of supported configurations. In theory, you'd suppose that Ubuntu could offset it by better testing, but in practice, their testing is evidently quite slipshod--and the result seems to be that each new release is worse than the previous one, though it has a few new bells and whistles. In conclusion, I can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a beginner's distro, and I'm thinking about switching to something else... My own employer is basically a RHEL shop, though I've never liked it much.
Running on? (Score:5, Insightful)
I call them the "Well, its raining HERE" comments.
You need to identify the (OS::distro) and plugins in use for these "Release [ ] suxx0rs!!!" posts to have any meaning.
I generally find that if that question is answered, it's some guy running the L33tware distro in 24MB of RAM on a Transmeta Crusoe who is enraged that his opensource software crashes, and no, he hasn't logged a bug because God told him that it is destiny to always have bugless software AND will be Lord of Faerun in time.
(No offense to parent
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Updated plugins (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, I know you can hack the install to override it, but come on.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't see an incentive for a bunch of developers to get together who have that kind of very industry specific understanding to write these big, complex pieces of software just for the fun of it. I love my job because the work environment is great and so is the money but if I were given a choice of writing any piece of software I wouldn't choose writing stuff for this industry. It's not that I don't like it, it just wouldn't be my first or second choice if I could do anything and get paid just as well as I'm paid doing this and have the kind of job security that I have.
I get enjoyment from my work, but the real enjoyment comes when we close a huge deal and I cash a huge check.
Re:eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see how you don't understand that all else being equal, an open source program is going to be more screened for this stuff.
As for trusting it, well, I'd rather trust the thing I could verify, even if all I had time to check was random subsets of it, than the thing I couldn't...
Re: Industrial Software (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, high end commercial packages will be here for a while.
What the OSS movement has done well is to provide alternatives to commodity software so that the ancillaries don't smoke your budget. OSS can also provide add-ons that the mainline vendor has not built into their official package releases.
Applying what I have learned through this site, I have completely replaced IE as a browser, and because MS-Office 7 is so silly, *almost* replaced that with Open Office (the 3.0 betas are out, and can handle the new extensions.)
Now when we buy software, at least I can be satisfied when it's spent on first-tier applications rather than the result of a 25-year old weasel deal in Seattle.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless, you send all of your information over the network - even your e-mail address! - despite not being able to see the code on the other end?
Fact of the matter is, you should trust Opera more than any web site. Breaking into a poorly-maintained server (or even a well-maintained server with a 0-day exploit) is often not as hard as you'd think. Once you're in, it's a trivial matter to dump the database, or even just modify the code to redirect information.
Do you really know who's behind every website you visit? Not 100%, not all the time. But you know who's behind Opera, and you can track where it tries to connect and how. That's more reassuring than anything.
Any 'closed-source is the boogeyman' individuals should honestly stop and think about things like the recent exploit in the Thai (?) language pack for Firefox, or the huge SSL bug that Debian developer introduced way back when. Just because many eyes *can* look at it doesn't mean they will.
Re: Coding like a ... (car commercial slogan) (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd opine that it is more important; promoting "alternative" software to the management types requires a tricky blend of eye-candy and stability. Most of my discussions went easier when you can say "This software does _____"
I'm seeing a lot of remarks about flash, and if a particular important reference site you you just happens to have that magic combination of elements to take you down, it's a tough initial impression to erase.
Re:eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a website crashes the browser it is always the browser's problem. NO EXCEPTIONS. Nothing a website can do should crash the browser. If it does the browser is broken.
If a website doesn't work correctly, then it could be either the browser or the website's fault, depending on the website's code.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a little like with airbags or fastened seat belts. They tend to work. But if you drive more recklessly as a result the net effect is zero if not negative.
Mind you, I reckon the more people switch to Linux the fewer will bother to even check the checksums of the files they download and install. Let alone look into the source code of their Firefox.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case I prefer to use some software that has been working perfectly fine for years and has been extensively copied in almost all features by others.
And by copied, I don't mean perfect copies. Mouse gestures in FF still sucks after you have used Opera mouse gestures for more than a week. And middle-button scrolling. All others have middle-button scrolling, but I just can't have pixel perfect accuracy with FF as I can with Opera. You see, you talk about hypothetic stuff (but valid, nonetheless) and I talk about actual experience (because all else is not really equal).
Having said that, I expect that FF copies Opera excellent SVG support as soon as possible.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm surprised to hear this. I had the impression that Firefox 3 was much heavier on improvements (speed, memory, security, stability, OS integration) and lighter on new features than any other recent version, despite the long development cycle.
Even the 40 or so "new features" I listed in my unofficial changelog [squarefree.com] are mostly replacements for, or subtle enhancements to, existing features. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of speed and memory improvements and over 16000 total bug fixes.
Are there any new features that you think are especially "bloaty" or damaging to the user experience, or any aspects of quality that you feel have been neglected?
Re:eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:eh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Undecidability is a bitch.
Re:Stability on Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Somehow I think we can troll each other on the internets without name calling.