Firefox 3.1 Alpha "Shiretoko" Released

Just as you were getting used to 3.0, those Mozilla guys have announced 3.1's Alpha release. FTA "Built on the pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, Shiretoko includes a variety of new features. Called an 'early developer milestone,' the release includes bug fixes, improved Web standards support, Text API for the Canvas Element, support for border images and JavaScript query selectors, and improvements to the tab-switching function and the Smart Location Bar." You can download it if you dare.

For those that don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiretoko = Longbottom Leaf

1420 was a great year!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The awesome bar works a bit like google pagerank, by creating associations between your partial input and the page you choose from the menu. If you write the initial letter of the desired URL and then click on the page you want to visit, it will (very) soon behave like the old URL bar.

woohoo!

[lucas teh geek]

it's only taken 6 years [mozilla.org], but finally Firefox has the option to use the Mac OS X System specified proxy. here's hoping it actually works

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[ShieldW0lf]

I feel the same way. But it looks like they've made an effort:

If you prefer the results to always restrict to history and match only in the URL, you can go to about:config and change the corresponding preferences to nothing (edit the value and delete the special character). This way you can always be only searching your visited history and not worry about matching in the title.

The Javascript Query Selectors looks very interesting... I could really use that for unit testing.

The "border image" stuff has been a long time coming too... when I think of how many unnecessary nested tables I've had to build just because some suit wanted rounded corners of a certain color on everything, it makes me want to puke.

Re:Codename?

[hansamurai]

Shiretoko Peninsula is pretty much the most northeastern point of Japan on the island of Hokkaido. It's an Ainu word that means earth's end or something similar (the Ainu are an indigenous people that still live there).

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rik Sweeney]

Seriously, here goes:

I *hate* having to type stuff into the address bar. I only have about 20 entries in the browser history, but when I put FF3 on, most of those suddenly vanished and the only way I could get back to Slashdot was to type it in.

I don't want to type it in everytime I want to go there, why can't I just click on the fucking drop down arrow and look for it there, instead of typing in s.l.a.s until it finally comes up, then having to press the down arrow and hitting return. I could have found slashdot in 2 clicks and perhaps one scroll of the mousewheel.

I don't want to type in scummvm and get back 20 results of random pages containing the word scummvm but not a single one pointing to the main site.

In defence of the Awesome bar, I only used it for about an hour before dismissing it, but I reckon 1 hour is enough...

Posting this from Shiretoko...

[Doug Neal]

The rendering seems faster (not that it was slow in 3.0.1). Still doesn't pass Acid3, though ;)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

That worked just fine in FF2. Now when I type s I get "eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices". I bought something online recently. God only knows how long it will take their ridiculous 'frecency' algorithm to realize I only go to eBay once in a while. Nothing like unpredictable, unreliable behavior to make a feature suck. Thanks, awesomebar!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Randle_Revar]

The awesomebar learns, and if you use it for a while, the sites you use most will move up the list.

Anyway, if you had about 20 entries you used in the dropdown list, why not use bookmarks on the toolbar? Keep the titles short, and you can fit in a fair number, and a folder or two goes a long way. If sites have recognizable favicons, you could even remove the titles and fit in a lot more.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Mattsson]

There's an easy tweak that at least make the 'Awesome Bar' less annoying.

Go to 'about:config'
Change 'browser.urlbar.maxRichResults' to 1 (Or 0, but I've found 1 to work well for me)

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[spinkham]

If you only have 20 places you want to go, that's what the bookmarks toolbar is for. It has a "most visited" dropdown by default, and room for at least 15 or so one click launches if you keen the names short.

Re:Canvas Element / API

[kevin_conaway]

I don't think I'm understanding what this is. What W3C specification exists for a Javascript drawing API?

HTML 5 [w3.org]

I don't want Firefox embracing and extending web protocols. The other changes are in line with W3C specs, but this sounds like a cool whizzbang thing that developers might like. I don't want that stuff in there. If you want a drawing API, use Flash, or Java, or something else.

Thankfully, we don't have uninformed luddites like yourself on the development staff

Re:Canvas Element / API

[bunratty]

Canvas is part of HTML5, which was created by WHATWG. WHATWG is now part of the W3C, so canvas is a specification coming from the W3C. If you don't want canvas in web browsers, take it up with WHATWG and W3C, not Mozilla developers.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[zenslug]

One hour is not enough. If you can stick with it for a few days it will learn what sites/pages you go to when typing s.l.a... For me, I was checking the iPhone availability page on Apple's website. Now, when I type in the letter 'a' it gives me the right link the first line.

Because it also looks at the title of the page, when I type in "amazon" it shows me the link to the email in my Gmail account that has the link to track my Amazon order. That's useful. I was about to head to Amazon's site and drill into my account, but instead I was only a click or two away from seeing the tracking info. If I want amazon.com I can instead hold down the control key and hit enter. I see it as more fast options in front of me.

I say you should give it some time first. It does take an adjustment, but it seems to pay off in the end.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't have your awesomebar disabled. You can't disable the awesomebar.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[SnEptUne]

Use Internet Explorer!

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Rolgar]

If there are items you want to eliminate from the Awesome Bar results, scroll down and hit delete.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[jorgevillalobos]

a large part of which does not like this behavior

Reference, please.

FWIW, they are planning to allow the option to bring back the old behavior. It's already in the trunk [squarefree.com], so it will probably make it to 3.1.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[compro01]

You might try setting browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped in about:config to true. I believe that makes it do what you desire.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Richard_at_work]

No it doesn't, all that setting does is remove from the results your bookmarks and links you have clicked on (I think) - it still searches the titles of pages you have entered the URL for.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[Drathos]

For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit and allowing me to search for these sites by keywords in the url or title of the webpage.

Um... No it isn't.

The "Awesome Bar" (terrible name, IMHO) uses both the bookmarks you create and the browser history. If you wipe out the history and haven't bookmarked anything yourself, the Awesome Bar has nothing to reference.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[nekozid]

You know you actually have to teach it, right?

Hit s, scroll to the thing you DO want, pick that.
As long as you haven't taught it that s really does mean ebay it should adapt within a few goes, done.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[nabsltd]

I didn't use Firefox 2, so I don't know the exact functionality, but I don't think it takes much to get the "Awesome Bar" like people seem to want (matches only at the beginning of URL, no match on titles).

First install the Hide Unvisited extension [mozilla.org]. Next, set "browser.urlbar.search.chunkSize = 0" in about:config [about]. Last, add the following to your "userChrome.css" file:

.autocomplete-richlistitem spacer,.autocomplete-richlistitemlabel{display:none}
.ac-title description{font-size:11px!important}
.autocomplete-richlistitem{border:none!important}
.ac-title{margin:-4px 4px 0px 0px!important;display:none}
.ac-url{margin:-19px 0px 0px 20px!important}
.ac-url description{color:MenuText!important}
.ac-url description[selected="true"]{color:White!important}

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[afidel]

Old location bar [mozilla.org] brings back about 90% of the functionality of the 2.0 bar. I think most of what it does can be done through prefs, but it's a convenient way to make it just work.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[afidel]

You CAN'T turn off the awsomebar, that's the freaking point! There is one addon that mostly neuters it, but I shouldn't need an addon to get deterministic functionality. If I want a semi-random search I will use Google, at least IT is generally correct at guessing what I want, and it's only an Alt-Home away =)

Re:The Numbers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, to be fair, here are the numbers for the same machine (Sunspider results vary with the system used). Note, the OS in this case is WinXP.

IE 7

• Acid 3 - 12/100
• Sunspider - 178587 (yeah, that's right, wow!)

IE 8 beta

• Acid 3 - 17/100
• Sunspider - 15651

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mrand]

There are now more ways to configure the Smart Location (Awesome Bar) functionality which should make most complaints go away:

http://ed.agadak.net/2008/07/firefox-31-restricts-matches-keywords [agadak.net]

I'm sure that this reply will get lost in the noise of all the other "I hate Awesome Bar" replies.

Re:Hmm, not sure about this

[LiquidFire_HK]

About time applications started catching up. Nothing more stupid than having 5 tabs open and to go to the previous one you had open you need to rotate through all of them.

You could already do that - Ctrl+Shift+Tab goes back one tab. Just as Alt+Shift+Tab goes back when switching windows.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[mrdoogee]

Unless you use Stumbleupon. If you do, every page you give a "Thumbs Up" to goes in a new folder in the "tags" section of your bookmarks. Which is fine, except the Awesome Bar indexes them too, so even if you dump your History and clear all private data, SU and the Awesome Bar will still list all your "thumbs up"ed pages.

Re:Awesome bar disable?

[daniel_newton]

you can restrict to only the url in FF3.1 alpha by using "@"

see => http://ed.agadak.net/2008/07/firefox-31-restricts-matches-keywords [agadak.net]

For Alpha 1, you can restrict the search to your history by typing "^", or bookmarks with "*", or tagged pages with "+". To make what you've typed match only in the URL type "@", and for title/tags only use "#".