Firefox 1.1 Boasts New Features 479
Distro Jockey writes "The Fedora Core Blog gives a review of the features we can expect from Firefox 1.1. Many uses have been running the latest trunk builds and seeing dramatic improvements in page rendering, managing many tabs quickly, and the much-anticipated fix for the /. layout bug. From the article: 'One major new feature in Firefox 1.1 is the "Sanitize" feature. This enables secure browsing with much more ease. Select the "Sanitize" option in the preferences and Firefox will scrub your profile of sensitive information (which you select in the preferences).'"
What I'm curious about (Score:5, Interesting)
(2) Does it finally start to reverse the recent trend for firefox to become a huge RAM hog, or does it continue this trend?
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Informative)
While it's true that the "Mem Usage" in task manager can easily show much more memory than the program is actually using, an minimizing a program will make this number drop, the number it drops to is still not the accurate memory usage figure. You really want to go to View/Select Columns and look at VM Size, not Mem Usage.
VM Size is the actual amount of memory the program thinks it has, between whats swapped out and what is actually being used. Mem Usage can be higher than VM Size if memory was freed but not yet flushed by the OS, or it can be lower than VM Size if some memory hasn't been touched in a while and is swapped out to disk. Minimizing an application just gives Windows a hint that it should flush freed memory and swap out pages that have not been touched recently, which is why the Mem Usage figure drops when you do that.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:4, Interesting)
You have that complete bass ackwards. Memory usage shows how much physical memory (something which is usually somewhat limited) is currently allocated to the process, while VM Size shows the virtual memory (something which is practically limitless).
If a process starts up, allocates 100MB, and then never touches it, the VM Size will be significantly larger than the real memory usage, and in the real world this makes a big difference - having some seldom-used space in a paging file set aside for a task is a lot less relevant than having a block of physical memory set aside. If, on the other hand, a process allocates 100MB and then perpetually scans through it looking for Waldo, it won't be paged out and it'll consume real physical memory.
Of course memory usage can include shared memory blocks, but overall it is the best indicator of the real, practical memory usage of an application. No one cares how many new statements exist in the code - they care how much finite physical memory is practically used by the app.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Interesting)
You are just making that up. Look at the commit charge on the performance tab, which corresponds to the memory graph. Commit charge is the sum of all processes VM Size, not memory usage. VM Size is the amount of memory the process has allocated in memory and swap combined. Mem Usage is like RSS (resident set size) under top/ps, which is the amount of physical RAM being used, which is meaningless because of the fact that the amount of RAM being used is NOT the amount of memory the process has allocated,
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Interesting)
Another example of why people should be looking at VM Size instead of Mem Usage is that many people run a program, open something then close it, and repeat a few times, and expect that each matching close operation should bring the Mem Usag
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Informative)
Two windows, each with 8 open tabs, basically I started on slashdot in one window and randomly hit links for tabs, and started on my homepage in another and did the same.
So, 2 windows, a total of 16 tabs/pages, and task manager says I'm using 43M... Doesn't seem too bad to me...
If I restart firefox, 1 window and 1 tab is 23M, so you can complain about that maybe.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:3, Interesting)
Mine is presently using 229MB. Of course, my X server is presently using 303MB, which, together is more than the amount of physical RAM that I have. Does Firefox map the video RAM into its address space?
Yes. (Score:2)
X11 can use shared memory to accelerate communication between processes.
I have no idea how it's counted on which implementations though. It might be reported twice, it might not.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2)
Honestly, the only reason I ever restart Firefox (now that my extension selection has stabilized) is to free up memory. After an average day of web development at wo
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2)
I've got: .2
DOM Inspector 1.0
Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.4 (disabled)
Sessionsaver
Web Developer 0.9.3
Uh-oh (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'll see if I can send some info to the developer... It's such a useful extension. But I've never seen FF fly like this.
Re:Uh-oh (Score:3, Interesting)
If the latter ends up being true, perhaps it would be worth creating a separate profile that contains the Web
Re:Uh-oh (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally uninstalled it; I didn't want to make my test messy. I would imagine that disabling would give the same results though.
I've posted [chrispederick.com] on the Web Developer extension forum.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:2)
Once or twice a day, I'll notice the system slow to a crawl and the hard drive thrashing. A quick check of top, and sure enough, Firefox has 250+MB RAM resident on my 512MB machine. Close Firefox, open it again, and things are fine... for a while.
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I'm curious about (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I'm curious about PDF! (Score:2, Informative)
But if I launch Acrobat as a separate program and just have it sitting empty in the taskbar, Firefox goes through PDFs just fine.
A strange bug. A frustrating one. One I hope they catch.
back/forward (Score:5, Informative)
And back/forward can cache the rendered layout instead of having to re-render everything: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=
Re:back/forward (Score:5, Interesting)
YES! Finally!
Instantaneous back/forward (with mouse-rocker) navigation is one of the major killer features that has kept me using Opera as my main browser for years now. And if the tab switching and general snappiness of Firefox v1.1 has also improved to Opera's level, as some attest, then I can ditch Opera for good...
Yep. That's it. I can live without the rest of the kitchen sink.
Re:back/forward (Score:3, Informative)
Re:back/forward (Score:3, Funny)
Re:back/forward (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's about what we can expect... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If it's about what we can expect... (Score:2)
Umm Sanitize (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Umm Sanitize (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but it won't hide your posts on Slashdot from your girlfriend.
Re:Umm Sanitize (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but it won't hide your posts on Slashdot from your girlfriend.
I have a hard time believing that that will ever be a problem for anybody, anywhere, ever.
Re:Umm Sanitize (Score:5, Funny)
I know what you mean. I usually imagine them with other girls.
Re:Umm Sanitize (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Umm Sanitize (Score:5, Funny)
Does the status line work properly now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:2)
An article link? A forum link? One of the links on the right or left sides? All of these seem to work for me (FF 1.03). Got a screenshot of what you're describing?
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:2)
You must change the settings to fix this.
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:2)
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:2)
function w(link) { window.status=link; }
function c() { window.status=''; }
</script>
The code for those methods is at the top of the page.
Re:Does the status line work properly now? (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call it overwhelming Firefox (nor would I call it overhwelming Firefox). You probably have Firefox set to disable javascript from changing the status bar text. If you enable having javascript change the status bar text in options > web features > Javascript Advanced or if you completely disable javascript, the links show up fine in the status bar.
Fark formats its links like this:It uses onMouseOver to hide the click tracker from the status bar. The appropriate behavior for Firefox would be to show the actual url the link points to when you disable status bar text changing, so it's still broken.
Another "hope they fix this" post. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another "hope they fix this" post. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another "hope they fix this" post. (Score:2)
Funnyfox (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Funnyfox (Score:2)
Must have been some seriously good pr0n.
Copy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds something like the "Private Browsing" feature in Safari [apple.com].
"Private Browsing" and "Sanitize" (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure people will use these new features to protect sensitive data and whatnot... but come on... most folks will use this new browse mode to keep their filthy habits on the DL .
Kill IE7 before it gets going (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife is an exclusively Linux user, and she does business with Candle-Lite. Unfortunately, their site is rife with IE-only garbage which makes it impossible for her to submit her orders online. If more people were using standards-compliant browsers, we really wouldn't have situations like this to begin with.
-AT
erm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:erm (Score:4, Informative)
How About That Memory Leak, Fixed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool thing about OSS projects is I can ask you... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure they'd like to have as much working flawlessly as possible, so they'd probably really appreciate this kind of feedback. I'll assume you did report it (or at least verify someone else already had) and leave it at "this is the beauty of OSS" even the users have their part in the process (is IE displaying PNG's or CSS properly yet?).
Firefox also boasts remote code execution. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Firefox also boasts remote code execution. (Score:2)
Safari's builtin RSS reader and Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
There's only *one* area where Safari truly has a usabilty edge and that's RSS. The reader is *really* nice. Mozilla/Firefox could do something similar by improving Sage marginally (the article length slider is all that's missing it seems).
Is better syndication support (rss atom etc) being considered?
Will Mozilla be getting these features? (Score:2)
Remote code execution against firefox 1.0.3 (Score:2)
Doh.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like the "delete all private data" feature that Opera has had for several years.
Going down! Since this is Slashdot, I'll be modded flamebait for making an honest observation.
Ridiculous (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, Firefox 1.1 isn't even in alpha-release yet. To take some highly unstable code and to "preview" it is a bit premature right now. I would call 1.1beta a better time to 'preview' things, as hopefully by then there will be a feature freeze and things will have stabilized a bit. I'm not kidding about the unstable bit either: up until a couple days ago themes and extensions wouldn't install in the nightly builds.
In fact, an article like this does a disservice because it's misleading the
This forums post gives a better idea of the new features to be expected in 1.1 with one line sentences: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=257
Sanitize already available (Score:2)
/. Rendering (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:/. Rendering (Score:2)
The problem can be resolved with a simple delay in the rendering, so perhaps the pipeline for dealing with that URL slightly delays the rendering process for you enough to make the bug go away?
Re:/. Rendering (Score:2)
Pornzilla (Score:3, Funny)
Pornzilla lives!
A few setbacks, UI wise (Score:5, Interesting)
The new preference dialog sucks. I suspect it's design is an attempt to match what OS X users expect, since Firefox devs have this (IMHO) crazy notion that the product should look as identical as possible across OSes.
The whole thing looks much more cluttered, and it has the same bugs that the UI did in pre 1.0 where the text was rendered inside of windows all the time (Like in the toolbar customization pallete, or in the current prefs). Which makes me worry that actually it's an XUL problem. If text placement is a thing that's hard to get right in XUL, it makes me worry about it as a platform.
However, performance did increase noticably for me, and the sanitize feature could be handy. I don't offhand find it much more useful that the "Clear All" button under privacy now. But it is nicely customizable, and not loosing my login cookies is kinda nice . . .
Re:A few setbacks, UI wise (Score:2)
And not just look but feel too.. unfortunately. They keybindings are so windowzy (or gnomy, but that's almost the same thing) as to make the program totally unusable. And it isn't even easily configured. You have to hunt for the proverbial needle in the haystack to find the poorly documented function to call and then wri
The REAL news: Firefox 1.03 remote .exe execution (Score:5, Informative)
wait for the spyware slags get hold of this one
full remote execution of an exe with no user interaction
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/397747/200
catching up with MSIE
/. bug (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:/. bug (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:/. bug (Score:5, Informative)
Re:/. bug (Score:3, Informative)
Actually that's not correct, the bug is only triggered when Gecko is in quirks mode. It is a browser bug but it can be avoided by using standard code.
Thing about FireFox I don't like... (Score:4, Interesting)
1.) If I hit the middle mouse button and use auto-scrolling for something like this slashdot page, Firefox will use 30 to 40 percent CPU. And I wouldn't classify my system as slow(Athlon64 3200+ w/512Mb of RAM). Hopefully the can do something about this.
NOTE: Prior to making this post, I observed that IE holds at around 7 percent for the same action.
2.) Unexpected browser closing in v1.01 and above that wasn't present in the pre-v1.0 releases, such as when I'm holding down several keys or typing something in the browser and then switch to another page with the mouse, causing the browser to close (or crash, though I don't get an error message).
Re:Thing about FireFox I don't like... (Score:2)
What does piss me off is the memory leak that springs up from time to time in FireFox.
Make Firefox Look Like Maxthon? (Score:2, Interesting)
The big question is... (Score:5, Funny)
title tags truncated (Score:2)
URL history sort in address bar (Score:4, Interesting)
Scripting (Score:2)
Is it possible to do import the Firefox executable directly, or would you need to instantiate an HTTP server, and do everything against 127.0.0.1 ?
Firefox seems like an interesting angle on a lot of cross-platform development, or my name isn't Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus Caesar.
Some good and some bad (Score:5, Informative)
- Back/Forward Cache: Yes! Yes! Yes! This brings Firefox one step closer to the way I feel caching should be done. Back/forward should always pull pages from the cache (ignoring meta expire), and clicking links should always load the page from the server.
- Interface speedups: Great news. I love Firefox's rendering power, but the UI is slow as hell. This should help.
- Rendering errors fixed: More good news. While I can count the amount the number of times I've seen the Slashdot bug on my hands, better rendering is always a good thing.
- Focus follows mouse: One of the best changes. I've had so many issues with the focus not being where it's supposed to be. For example, I'll switch to another window or tab, but the focus is usually still in the old one. If this gets fixed, I'll jump for joy.
- Sanitise: More privacy == A Good Thing.
The Bad:
- Preferences tabs at the top: I hate having tabs at the top--I'd prefer them on the bottom (the sole reason I installed TabBrowser Extensions was to get the browser tabs to appear on the bottom), but I don't mind them on the left side. But having them on top is just horrible. It looks prettier on the left too, especially with my theme, which places an image of a gecko in the background of the left pane. I'm also worried that my theme won't work with 1.1--I've been using an old version of the theme, as the author made a change a while back that uglified the icons, defeating the purpose of the theme (the version I use only uses two colours in the icons...). Officially, my theme only supports up to 0.9, but I've hacked it to allow 1.0 to install it--if 1.1 has any major UI changes like this one, it may cause my theme to choke.
- Live preferences: I hate these things with a passion. I like to be able to dick around in the preferences and not have to worry about screwing something up. It pissed me off to no end back when I used Galeon, and it'll piss me off in Firefox too. But, hey, I can tell that the Firefox devs have an agenda to screw up the preferences dialog as much as possible. They already moved it to the Edit menu a while back (WTF?), they already flipped the OK and Cancel buttons, and now they're adding these shitty changes too. If I wanted to use a browser with Gnome's horrible HIG, I'd use Epiphany.
Re:Some good and some bad (Score:2)
Re:Some good and some bad (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I agree with the hate, but not the placement - give them to me on the left or the right, and leave more vertical real estate. But see below.
Live preferences: I hate these things with a passion... They already moved it to the Edit menu a while back (WTF?)
I'd prefer no live prefs, too.
But, the deal here is being consistent. They're trying to make the app work like other apps. So, the theory goes, even if they don't make your personal favorite UI choice, at least you know what it will do.
The Edit->Preferences thing is a long standing Mac standard from the pre-OSX days. Back then, most apps followed it. The strength of the convention was most noticable when you used a Microsoft app, which hung them off of Tools->Options. If you haven't noticed, non-OSX MacOS is where a lot (but obviously not all) of Gnome's UI sensibilities come from.
So, I generally agree with your behavioural preferences, and weirdos like you and me and always dick with the undisplayed options in the config file, fiddle with the chrome, etc.. Meanwhile, everyone else gets consistency. Which is a good thing.
Re:Some good and some bad (Score:3, Interesting)
While this may at first glance seem like a good idea, the browser absolutely must respect no-cache headers.
A trivial example is if you go to an online bookshop say, and you order a book. If you hit the 'back' button, you may get very confused if you sta
x64 version too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rendering Bug? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been using the nightlies and haven't had a problem with Slashdot for a while.
That said, if you really do feed a copy of any slashdot page to a web validator, it comes up with 100+ errors. The problem is that direct linking of Slashdot to validators have been banned by Slashdot maintainers.
Re:Rendering Bug? (Score:4, Informative)
- right click link, "Copy link location"
- paste into URL bar
- press enter
Warning: This is illegal in the United States under the DMCA.MOD PARENT UP (and another suggestion) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (and another suggestion) (Score:5, Informative)
1. Go to about:config
2. Type "referer"
3. Set network.http.sendRefererHeader to 0
Validation (Score:2)
Web Developer Extension [chrispederick.com]
Re:google maps (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:time for a new icon? (Score:2)
Re:time for a new icon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Acid2 (Score:5, Informative)
There's been lots of speculation about which browser will get Acid2 working first. I'd put my money on Safari. The problem is that we're late in the Gecko 1.8/Firefox 1.1 release cycle and there are a couple of bugs that would be quite a lot of work to fix, and introduce significant risk, and they're just not as important as other work that we have long planned for 1.8 and some other strategic work that I'll blog about soon. We will get to it in 1.9.
I'm sure some will seize on this as an opportunity to say "Gecko developers don't care about standards"
Part 2
Use about:config to modify browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete
http://mozillazine.org/misc/about:config/ [mozillazine.org]