Firefox Download Day To Start At 1 p.m. EST

boustrophedon writes "Starting at midnight in their local timezones, downloaders have been asking when Firefox 3 will be ready for Firefox Download Day, June 17, 2008. Mary announced on the Spread Firefox Forum that downloads will commence at 10 AM PST." That means 1 p.m. East Coast time, and, in Justin Mason's view, some pretty annoying times of day for many parts of the world. Reader CorinneI supplies a link to PC Magazine's (very positive) overview of the new version's features, which praises the "speedy performance, thrifty memory usage, and, in particular, the address bar that now predicts where you want to go when you start typing (what Mozilla insiders refer to as the Awesome Bar)." FF3, even in Beta and RC form, and even with the extension incompatibilities I've run into, has quickly replaced FF2 as my preferred browser — for me, the improved drop-down autocomplete behavior alone is enough to justify the switch.

Download

Download [mozilla.org]

Re:Download

Does this count towards the World Record Attempt? [spreadfirefox.com]

Re:Download

Any downloads before the time specified do not count toward the world record attempt.

Re:Download

Since not all of us use windows and want their system in english, let's decompose that link a bit:

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US [mozilla.org]

You select your version with the GET variables. So, for other OS's:

• Linux: change os=win to os=linux
• Mac: change os=win to os=osx

For other languages, you can substitute the language variable such as en-GB for British English, de for German and fr for French. Not all of them are up right now, but they will be soon.

I will not....

be downloading FF!

IE 5 is good enough for me!

Re:I will not....

IE 5 is good enough for me!

I know, but did you have to advertise it? I had just finished owning your computer; now all the other slashdotters will get on and kick me off with their own kits!

Download DAY, Justin

Why's he moaning about what time it starts at when people have a whole twenty-four hours to find a suitable time to download the thing? It's not like we all have to sprint to our computers and start it on the minute.

Don't you mean 1pm EDT?

I thought we were in Daylight Saving Time until November?

I hate the awesome bar

Here is how to get more or less the old behavior. Go to about:config and set browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true and browser.urlbar.richResults to false. Then restart.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

There's also the Oldbar [mozilla.org] extension.

Seems like the awesome bar is something that people either love or hate. Personally, I don't like it. I prefer my URL bar to do straight autocompletion, rather than search through my history and bookmarks for matches. I use the URL bar to type in URLs, and while the awesome bar adds some nifty functionality it breaks that basic feature.

Re:I hate the awesome bar

It's important to note this, from the oldbar site:

Note that the underlying autocomplete algorithm is the Firefox 3 algorithm, not the Firefox 2 algorithm. oldbar only affects the presentation of the results.

Oldbar, while nice, only changes appearance, not functionality.

Im with you guys, though. I despise the awesome bar, and dont understand why there isnt an easier/obvious way to get the old, URL based behavior. A URL bar that works based on URLs?! Blasphemy!

Firefox Download Day

For those who still don't know, Mozilla is trying to enter GUINNESS
for most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Check it here:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord/ [spreadfirefox.com]

Everybody is asked to participate by downloading one single copy of
Firefox 3.0 today, June 17th!

ONLY FULL DOWNLOADS ARE CONSIDERED!
So, go to the Firefox site and get one FULL COPY!

http://www.getfirefox.com/ [getfirefox.com]

I don't think they're going to meet their goal

When I go to the site I get:

The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

And this was with FF 2.0.0.14, so they can't blame my client.

I hope they have an MSI version for windows

Otherwise all this hype will not convince corps to switch.

Why MSI?
-it's a corp standard.(STD switches, behavior)
-It's customizable without changing the original package
-It is designed from the ground up to run unattended or silent regardless if it's an upgrade or a new install.

And Frontmotion (www.frontmotion.com/) != Mozilla
It's a trust issue. Corps want "warm and fuzzies" and not what they will view as a hack.
If Mozilla doesn't want to make an MSI package but still wants to entice the Corps to switch, host Frontmotion's MSI from the Mozilla site.

Having GPO support or preinstalled Addons are gravy at this point.

17th started at GMT

1. Why did this not start on GMT so it was the 17th for the whole world at the normal time. 2. Why was it so hard to find a Mozillia definition of the 17th ;-) Smart guys and gals could have made this simpler.

Timezone

Why do slashdot use obscure timezones like PST EST XST when there is a standard UTC?

Re:My findings...

I've been using the RC releases, and while I do like the new browser, the memory footprint is still a monster. Currently, it's using over 175MB of ram for the windows I have open (21 different pages) - and that seems excessive to me.

You're right, 21 pages seems excessive to me as well.

Re:My findings...

That's a PEBCAK error, not a fault with Firefox.

Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.

How much would you be complaining if you had to wait 5 seconds every time you switched tabs so it could swap in from disk?

Re:My findings...

I don't understand this obsession of ram usage, and this is from someone with a laptop with 512MB's, and primary computer of 844MB (as reported by the OS, but 1GB in the official specs). But, I want my RAM to be used (if it's going to make performance better). That's why I have it. So sure, if you have memory problems I can see the concern. But I'm comfortably running VMWare and firefox (using 172MB atm) and I probably have less RAM than you.
I guess, what's ultimate is a program that can scale its memory usage depending on availability. But I don't have any problems, so I won't complain.

Re:My findings...

I'm at 150MB with seven tabs which is fine with me. The real kicker is that Firefox has been running for at least a week now. FF2 would have slowly bloated to 400MB right about now and I would have been restarting it. I don't mind that it's using 20MB per tab as long as it's using it wisely and intelligently (for what it's worth I have 2GB at work). It has a lot of info in memory so everything is very snappy. I can reopen up to 10 closed tabs, go back in 15 pages in history on a tab that has been open since FF2 (and it has history from then too), and heck, I even like the so-called Awesome Bar. Typing just one word from the title or url has helped me out tremendously.

Re:ubuntu linux?

You can already have it in Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0

Ubuntu Hardy has it as the default Firefox browser.

Re:What is this in Euros?

Actually, at the current exchange rate 0 Euros is a few bucks or so.

Re:Time Zones

in Justin Mason's view, some pretty annoying times of day for many parts of the world

Sure, I can see lining up at my daughter's GameStop store at midnight, considering that whatever game they want may be sold out quickly.

But a download? Who cares what time of day it's available? If it's available at 1:00 AM your time, then just start the download when you wake up, or when you get home from work.

They're not going to run out of Firefoxes, you know. Relax.

Re:When will their servers die? 1:02pm?

Sure, but how much smoke do they have?

Re:I'll pick it up

According to the 'About Mozilla Firefox' menu on my Ubuntu-borne copy of FF (the very one I'm using to type this missive), it says 3.0, and AdBlock Plus works just fine on it.

HTH,

/P