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.

Comment from story

"So simple a grandmother can use it"

This is offensive. I am a grandmother, and a C programmer.

eh?

God I hope it's better than the last beta.

What was wrong with Beta 5?

Re:eh?

Beta 5 was quite unstable for me, so bad infact that I downgraded to beta 3.
Though I am using a lot of addins, so don't know exactly who to blame.

Re:eh?

Chances are, Flash. Adobe's support for Linux has been pathetic at best, with newer versions eating up tons of CPU just viewing a banner ad. I even downgraded mine so YouTube would be at least somewhat usable. And with Flash being closed-source I highly doubt that we will see improvements made quickly and Gnash the free flash player is barely usable though it is improving.

Re:eh?

The worst coded ajax site on the web crashes browsers, news at 11.

Stalled window bug dealt with yet?

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.

Test Results

After installing FF3/RC1 I ran the Acid 3 test [acidtests.org] and the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark [webkit.org]. RC1 scored a 71, the same as Beta 5. The SunSpider test came up 4698.6ms for RC1. On Beta 5 it was 4757.2ms. Not really much of a difference as far as tests go. I was hoping for some better results, but overall RC1 seems responsive and stable.

Re:Test Results

Especially as passing the ACID test for the sake of it will not actually improve the user experience.

ACID 3 passes should come naturally, there shouldn't be the webkit style rush to pass because its only improved the browser as a side-effect instead of passing the test as a side-effect.Its like learning the answer's to a test instead of actually learning the material, sure you'll pass the test but when you go out to do some real world work/browsing, it wont of helped.

This all combined with the fact that ACID doesn't test standards compliance, as a firefox user I'm glad they're not wasting their time on it.

Way Better

I've been running this build now for 4 days straight going to countless sites that use every which plugins for movies and flash and javascript and so far considering it hasn't crashed on me in windows I'd say it's pretty solid.

Although I am running a Q6600 with 4GB. But Beta 5 used to crash on me every 2 hours.

Now to business,
Firebug Official for FF3 Please :)

Re:Stability on Linux?

I've never had firefox 3 crash on Linux with my beta 5. Nor FF2 for that matter, I'm not sure what you're talking about. My friend's had some instability problems with a 64bit processor and flash, is that it?

Re:Stability on Linux?

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:Stability on Linux?

I've got a better one. While watching youtube sometimes, my just freezes. Can't kill it. Even downloaded process explorer and tried to pause the process and kill it that way, but it refused to go away. I actually had to reboot the machine to get firefox to die.

Not to mention when you start a download or a new page loads, the entire browser stops functioning until that job is done. It's like the thing doesn't know about threads? Not sure if 3 is any better in that respect, maybe...

Oh ya, and is there a way to close a site that pops up javascript popups one after the other yet? It's really annoying having to kill firefox.exe when that happens and closing all my tabs. Yes, I was looking for porn when this happened, but the site wanted me to install a codec, and wouldn't take no for an answer!

Re:Stability on Linux?

Yeah i dont get the comment in the summary Firefox3 beta 5 has been quite stable for most people, it still crashes with flash though (in fact last night using flash 10 it took out my xorg) but when not using flash i've not had any problems. I've been using it consistently since beta 3 because its been so much more stable than firefox 2

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:Stability on Linux?

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.

Re:Stability on Linux?

You imply people should accept using buggy software.

where do I say that? perhaps your FF2 isnt rendering fonts right becasue all i said was that if your using beta software and it crashes it need bug reports to improve. filing bug reports is the exact opposite of accepting buggy software, sitting around bitching about it is pretty much accepting it.

This is an effective fix that is all but impossible using ff3 with its penchant for killing xwindows...

Why not simply use a button to killall firefox (debian logo OFC), I have that relic left over from beta3 and use it when flash 10 (beta) locks stuff up.

Re:Stability on Linux?

"You imply people should accept using buggy software."

Well ..a clearly labeled beta that you have to go through some hoops to deliberately download? Yeah, you should accept a few bugs. And also report them, so they won't be there in the final release.

Re:Stability on Linux?

By hoops, I take it you mean "install the default web browser from the Ubuntu 8.04 CD". Granted, it's about as stable as everything else in the distribution.

Re:Stability on Linux?

If Firefox "takes out" Xorg, that implies a bug in Xorg, not necessarily one in Firefox. In fact, the Xorg bug could conceivably be a security issue, so that's more severe.

Re:Stability on Linux?

"You imply people should accept using buggy software."

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?

I haven't had too many problems with crashes, but I still don't run firefox on linux. The biggest issue I've had with it is a tendency for tabs to just take a VERY long time to load.

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?

I would use Opera but I just can't bring myself to use a proprietary browser. Now, I'm not RMS and I do use some proprietary software, for example Flash is installed on all my Linux boxes and I have a few proprietary games I play via WINE and some non-free Linux software such as Google Earth too. But when you think of all the information you enter on a web browser (credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc.) I just can't bring myself to use a non-free browser. It also doesn't help that Opera used to be Adware and that also makes me hesitant to use Opera as a full time browser. I don't hate Opera (in fact I use it on non-personal sites on the Wii all the time) but I just don't trust a proprietary browser when there are several good free alternatives around (Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Etc.). If Opera ever comes out with a free version of their browser (As in open-source free) I will be one of the first to download it, but until then Opera is mostly restricted to browser-testing and the Wii.

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

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.

Re:Changes since Beta 5?

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:Changelog compared to beta5?

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

Re:Respect

Slashdot posts don't include swearing in the story summaries, so why is it acceptable to use the word 'God' as an expletive? I find it very offensive and it reflects poorly on a site which I have enjoyed for a long time.

He wasn't swearing, he was praying.
Plus, it wasn't directed at your god anyway, it was meant for the God of Opensource.