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Software Mozilla Releases Firefox 2.0 RC3
Brandon Hill (Blog) - October 17, 2006 9:33 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 43 comment(s) - last by Hare.. on Oct 19 at 8:03 AM
Mozilla Foundation proclaims that RC3 is good enough to be a final release product

Mozilla has released Firefox 2.0 RC3 to the public. This is the last developmental milestone for Firefox 2.0 and work has already commenced on Firefox 3.0. The Mozilla Foundation is confident of the quality of this RC3 according to comments made by the company's VP for engineering, Mike Schroepfer. "If there are no showstoppers, RC3 will be it," said Schroepfer.

Firefox 2.0 offers a wealth of new features compared to its 1.5.0.x predecessors. Changes include an updated user interface, built-in anti-phishing, inline spell checking, improved tabbed browsing and search capabilities, browser session recovery, and an updated add-ons/extensions manager.

Now that Firefox 2.0 is done, the developers are turning their eyes towards Firefox 3.0. The Mozilla Foundation is taking suggestions from community members on what features to add to the next iteration of the browser. "Anybody who has a good idea and wants to participate can enter their comments on the wiki page. We're just looking for as wide a range of feedback as people want to give. We've generally tried to solicit ideas in the past. It's part of how we work in general," said Schroepfer.

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Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Spivonious on 10/17/2006 10:12:03 AM , Rating: 3
Share your thoughts.

I think it will take a huge chunk of Firefox's userbase away. The main reason I used Firefox was the tabbed browsing and the built-in search bar. The extensions are nice, especially the ad-blocking one, but lately FF 1.5 was very slow. What do others think?




RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 10/17/2006 10:16:00 AM , Rating: 3
I'm using Firefox 2.0 RC3 right now and it's VERY fast and the in-line spell checking should stop the commenters here from yelling about not having an edit feature :)


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Laitainion on 10/17/2006 10:28:30 AM , Rating: 3
I haven't been able to test the in-line spelling majig myself, either it's not enabled (and I can't see how to turn it on), or simply not working because it's beta software...

As for IE7, while it is very nice and a vast improvement, there will still be those that use Firefox instead. Right now, I'm undecided whether I'll stick with Firefox or revert to IE. Only future will tell.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By RobbieMc on 10/17/2006 10:47:30 AM , Rating: 3
The spell checker works fine for me. I find it rather annoying at times, but it does work. Any word on if Mozilla is going to fix their memory consumption problem with v3.0? Right now RC3 is taking nearly 40 megs.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Merry on 10/17/2006 10:45:21 AM , Rating: 2
I'm using it now and i'm really quite impressed.

Especially with the spell checking feature. I have no idea why this wasn't introduced years ago! Looks like I'll be sticking with FF for the near future then.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Merry on 10/17/2006 1:31:41 PM , Rating: 2
Hmm i may take it back. I've been having trouble every no and again where Firefox suddenly hogs the CPU and wont change tabs. I have to close it and open it again

and ideas on whats up with it? (i use google browser sync by the way)


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By otispunkmeyer on 10/17/2006 1:43:27 PM , Rating: 2
the U3 version of FF does the same

it freezes for about 10 seconds...every now and then


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Merry on 10/17/2006 3:03:11 PM , Rating: 2
yeah, i thinking that its the google browser sync, but i find it really useful to open all the tabs i had open before i closed FF.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By FITCamaro on 10/17/2006 11:16:58 AM , Rating: 1
I agree. The built in spell check of Firefox 2.0 is very nice to have and will maybe help cut down on how crappy people spell in online forums. Its pretty sad when you can't even spell a word like "should" correctly.

But I will admit, IE7 is also extremely nice in how it now supports tabbed browsing and also runs at a lower privilege level to help protect your computer.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Hare on 10/17/2006 10:26:19 AM , Rating: 5
For me the biggest reason to use firefox is the support for extensions. I could not live without addblock or web developer tools etc. There are tons of brilliant extensions that make the whole www-experience a lot better and fun (forecastfox, linkification, bbcode-support etc)

Another big reason is the CSS support which is way ahead of IE7 (I'm a web developer).

I don't think IE7 will take many users away from FF or Opera. But I'm extremely thankful that IE6 will be wiped away by auto-update.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 12:18:30 PM , Rating: 2
Can you provide a few CSS samples which demonstrate how FF2.0 is "way ahead" of IE7?

The box model still remains different, but this certainly is not putting FireFox ahead in any way as it does not provide additional functionality to the browser (both render correctly according to their specifications).

What is IE7 lacking that puts it behind FF? Or are you simply repeating the previous argument that was used against IE6?


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 12:38:53 PM , Rating: 2
Here you go: http://www.wien-systems.no/test/.

That's a page I'm working on, pre IE hackage. Every browser I've tried renders that more or less correctly (And that includes the one on my $60 Sony Ericsson), except IE. IE 7 is a step in the right direction, but the others are miles ahead still.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 2:25:19 PM , Rating: 2
That page even further proves my point. If you actually took the time and LOOKED at the CSS, you would see that there is special code in there for firefox ONLY, and NOT for IE. Therefore, they put in CSS hacks to fix it for FireFox, and NOT for IE.

Using sites which are hacked to work for FireFox and not for IE, and coming up with the conclusion that FireFox is better at CSS than IE... that's completely flawed logic.

There are a ton of sites which are basically hacked to work for IE and they do not render properly on FF. By your logic, if I provided a link to one of those sites, IE comes out "far ahead" of FF.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 2:28:36 PM , Rating: 2
And since you obviously don't want to look at the CSS, here is a comment from inside:

quote:
Firefox needs this when serving page as application/xhtml+xml (body seems to shrink- wrap around it's content instead of filling the viewport. Maybe it's supposed to do that, I dunno


Try removing that and see how "correctly" firefox displays the page.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 2:41:44 PM , Rating: 2
It's not served as application/xhtml+xml right now, so that's beside the point. And if I did serve as application/xhtml+xml, IE would kindly offer to download the html instead of displaying it, since it doesn't support the XHTML standards either.

And just for the record, if I DID remove that hack, and serve at text/html, it still renders correctly.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 2:37:10 PM , Rating: 2
Heh, I not only LOOKED at the CSS. I wrote it. :)

There are no hacks for any specific browser in that code. It's all written to the standards. Yes, it uses features IE doesn't support ("display : table-*" and the :after pseudo class among other things), but that is the entire point isn't it? Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Epiphany etc. all support these features, and render the page correctly. IE6/7 doesn't.

That means IE is behind which ever way you put it.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 3:00:42 PM , Rating: 1
Then why put specific fixes for FireFox? You could have just as easily put in specific fixes for IE and had the page rendered correctly, yet you didn't do so.

Even though your fix is a part of the standards (there is certainly nothing FF specific about it), it forces the browser to render the page in a different way, which is NOT supposed to happen, at least according to the standards. It illustrates a flaw in the rendering of CSS in FF.

You could have just as well used other display modes (run-in, compact, inline-block) which are a part of the standard and had the page fail miseraly on firefox. Yet you chose to only use display styles which IE does not support yet FF supports (hey, even better, ever heard of display: inline-moz-inline-box).

Certainly most web developers know how to make the rendering of a page fail in IE. Just as many developers know how to make a page fail in FF. Claiming that FF is way ahead of IE because you chose to make IE fail does not prove that FF is ahead of IE. The same can be done to prove that IE is ahead of FF.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 3:10:20 PM , Rating: 2
Oops, it wasn't your claim that firefox is way ahead, but I just associated it with you since you were arguing his point.

I've used both IE and Firefox, as has any other web developer. It will really take something huge and NOT deliberate when it comes to CSS to make me start believing that IE7 is still behind FF when it comes to CSS, as both browsers do not follow the standard. IE6 was far from the standard, both in recognition of standards and just the overall page rendering (hell, doubt there's any real developers out there who haven't had to hide a select out of view when expanding a hidden div), and I think we all know it. But this is the past now, competition has forced MS to change. Using the same argument as was used against IE6 and stating that IE7 is behind FF is just not accurate anymore. Throw JavaScript support into the mix and IE actually starts coming up on top of FF in terms of the humber of "bugs" encountered.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 3:53:42 PM , Rating: 2
Well, in my experience IE7 still has some ways to go before I would say it's as good as FF when it comes to rendering. Gecko certainly has its issues, but I just don't come across them as often as I do problems in IE.

Now, I'll admit I get into trouble on IE mainly because I insist on using semantic markup for content, and then using CSS for layout, instead of coding layout with HTML like the rest of the internet. Is that my fault? Possibly, but I firmly believe that way better in to long run (At some point Microsoft has to get it right.), and it is most certainly better for when you consider printing, handhelds, disabled people, search engines, bandwidth usage etc.

But since you seem to have a different experience than me, may I ask how you generally code your pages? (Do you use tables for layout?) Not for finger-pointing or anything like that, just out of general curiosity.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 3:56:02 PM , Rating: 2
Or in other words: "...I firmly believe that way is better in the long run..." :)


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/17/2006 5:24:21 PM , Rating: 3
When I write HTML (extremely rarely) I of course use tables. As fun as it seems, I can't really spend hours to fix layout on different browsers.

Generally, and this touches on your accessability issues, all code that I write is in c#. The beauty of .net is that it formats (well, its supposed to format, I haven't actually tested it so I don't know for sure) the page based on the media type that accesses it. So, when you create a table (System.Web.UI.WebControls.Table), it is the server's responsibility to determine the media type and render the code appropriately. When a browser accesses the site, the rendering is done via a HTML table. When a cell would access the site, the rendering would be different. How different I don't know, since I don't use a cell to access our products :)

I'm sure that, if you, for example, would start using javascript to create all of your pages' content and layout, you would find that FF is next to impossible to write for. Since you're doing it with CSS, and you're not following the MS 'standard' (yes, I call it a standard as more than 80% of the computers in the world use that), then you're seeing the problems you are. Overall, however, there is now extremely little difference when developing for FF or IE7. So little, in fact, that any attempt to use that as an excuse to use one browser over another is funny.

If people really wanted to use browser/website compatibility as an excuse, I'm sure we all know which browser would come out on top.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 6:14:36 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
When I write HTML (extremely rarely) I of course use tables. As fun as it seems, I can't really spend hours to fix layout on different browsers.
That's just it! If every browser followed the standards, you wouldn't have to fix anything. It would just work. (Without resorting to lagacy solutions like table based layouts.) That's why IE is bothering me as much as it does. It doesn't have to be this way.
quote:
Since you're doing it with CSS, and you're not following the MS 'standard' (yes, I call it a standard as more than 80% of the computers in the world use that), then you're seeing the problems you are.
You may call it a standard, but since there is no published and documented MS-HTML standard, the only standard there is as far as I'm concerned is the one published by the w3c. (Of which Microsoft is a member BTW) How am I supposed to code to the MS "standard" if I can't look it up anywhere?
quote:
If people really wanted to use browser/website compatibility as an excuse, I'm sure we all know which browser would come out on top.
Sure, it would be IE, but that is ONLY because developers hack their sites or plain old don't care about anything but IE. It is NOT, by any stretch of the mind, because IE has superior CSS/HTML support, which is what we're talking about here. (Well, at least what I am talking about.)

Oh, and that WebControls.Table control you mentioned is just a thin wrapper around a normal HTML table, and as such it should really only be used to display tabular data. ASP.NET can't just convert it to display linearly on a cell because it can't possibly know that you really was using it to do layout instead presenting tabular data. I know most people don't give a flying about issues like that, but they really should as it's extremely important for accessibility. (Try a screen-reader/cellphone on a table-based page. It's an eye opener.)


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Hare on 10/18/2006 8:59:50 AM , Rating: 2
I would definately bump your rating if I hadn't commented before and lost my votes. You sir are absolutely right.

The only standard is the one defined by the W3C. If MS would just use the only standard with their browser, every page would just work. (Isn't it funny how Opera, FF, Safari etc all work so well but IE doesn't). That's because IE6 is a terrible product and MS refused to fix it. That's why most people are still using table-layouts and legacy markup. Why didn't MS fix IE6?

Because when MS had the biggest browser share they used it to leverage their other products that would produce "ie-code". Their own standard catered to 95% of web users (people using IE). That way they made it more difficult for other software companies to produce pages that would render properly in the "faulty" IE.

It's great that IE7 will be an automated update but it'll take ages before we are truly rid of IE6 and it's "special" requirements for hacks.

Few examples of IE behaviour:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Murst on 10/18/2006 9:33:03 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
If every browser followed the standards


That is a big 'if'. As far as I know, only one browser follows standards, and its not IE or FF. Therefore, if you follow the 'official' standard, you will render correct only probably like 1% of the computers out there, if not less. That just isn't an option unless you work in a compnay that doesn't care about its customers. Most of us, however, need to keep that in mind.

quote:
How am I supposed to code to the MS "standard" if I can't look it up anywhere?


That's a pretty lame excuse. Go to www.google.com and you'll *easily* find all the special things for not just IE, but firefox as well. Do you really go home and read through the W3C site? I find that hard to believe, but hey, I suppose there has to be someone who's actually done that.

As to the WebControls.Table, I'm very confident that, at one point in time, I had seen a solution on the MSDN somewhere where you can download extensions to Visual Studio which change the rendering methods of that exact table. In the worst case, you can always override the render method and spit out exactly what you want to.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/18/2006 10:12:48 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
That is a big 'if'. As far as I know, only one browser follows standards, and its not IE or FF. Therefore, if you follow the 'official' standard, you will render correct only probably like 1% of the computers out there, if not less.
There's a difference in degree here though. No browser I'm aware of is perfect, but in my experience IE is by far the worst of the lot. (Followed by FF, Safari and Opera, in that order.)
quote:
That just isn't an option unless you work in a compnay that doesn't care about its customers. Most of us, however, need to keep that in mind.
I care very much about my customers, and that is why I take pride in providing them with solutions that work across most browsers available (Including screen-readers, cellphones and Internet Explorer). Customers shouldn't have to ask specifically for accessibility. That should be a given with any web solution. (Here in Norway I'm even required by law to make the web-solutions I develop accessible, and that is entirely a good thing.) Furthermore, most customers will (in my experience) be impressed by stuff like good accessibility if you actually take the time to show them what it's all about.
quote:
That's a pretty lame excuse. Go to www.google.com and you'll *easily* find all the special things for not just IE, but firefox as well.
Sure, it's possible to read up on it, but it's ALL based on guesswork by developers like us. There is no official documentation provided by Microsoft. Furthermore, to many of the bugs in IE there is no known solution. (Note: I'm talking about IE6 here, IE7 has far less bugs, but still lacks severely in features)
quote:
Do you really go home and read through the W3C site?
Actually, yeah. I do look up things through the w3c site when I'm stuck at something. You should try if some time.
quote:
As to the WebControls.Table, I'm very confident that, at one point in time, I had seen a solution on the MSDN somewhere where you can download extensions to Visual Studio which change the rendering methods of that exact table. In the worst case, you can always override the render method and spit out exactly what you want to.
But how is any of that easier than <div style="display : table-cell">Your table layout</div>? Why do we have to jump through so many hoops because Microsoft can't be arsed to update their browser?


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By Hare on 10/19/2006 8:03:05 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
That's a pretty lame excuse. Go to www.google.com and you'll *easily* find all the special things for not just IE, but firefox as well. Do you really go home and read through the W3C site? I find that hard to believe, but hey

That's just stupid. I can use xHTML and CSS to whip up a really advanced GUI to any PHP-solution but the problem is that the same code works with everything else BUT IE. Every single hour I waste with google trying to find which bug it's this time that causes double padding or floats wreaking havoc. Every single hour costs more to the customer.
quote:
--If every browser followed the standards
That is a big 'if'. As far as I know, only one browser follows standards, and its not IE or FF. Therefore, if you follow the 'official' standard, you will render correct only probably like 1% of the computers out there, if not less.

No browser is perfect but I don't have to use google to find out what's wrong with FF, Safari, Opera etc. They just do basic CSS very well. Who cares if a browser doesn't pass the acid test as long as it can do all the basic stuff well. IE can't handle even basic CSS. Even CSS-menus with hovers are not possible without javascript.

IE doesn't have a standard. It has a host of bugs that you can exploit to fix other bugs. Thank God IE7 is a lot better and can manage basic CSS. That's enough for me for now. I hope MS would have fixed IE6 sooner, but better now than never.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By wien on 10/17/2006 3:17:34 PM , Rating: 2
That specific FF fix is setting the background color of the html element when serving with a content-type that is currently unused. Hardly a hardcore hack, and nothing that impacs other browsers in any way. (That's why it's in the main stylesheet, and not a browser-specific one.)

I fully intend to have this page working in IE, but that is NEVER my primary concern. First I develop the page the way it should be done (What you see now), and then I hack it for IE. (Which I haven't gotten around to yet.) I refuse to create non-semantic/non-accessible HTML (Read: a table based layout) just because it's easier when using IE.

And yeah, I could use run-in, compact or inline-block, but why on earth would I when the design requires the table mode? As I said, table based layouts are not an option.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By othercents on 10/17/06, Rating: 0
RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By othercents on 10/17/06, Rating: -1
RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By othercents on 10/17/2006 11:06:16 AM , Rating: 1
Oh one more thing. IE7 does not work on Windows 2000, or at least Microsoft isn't listing Windows 2000. Most large corporate business are still using 2000 instead of upgrading to XP. (there are a bunch of reasons why) I don't think they will upgrade to XP just for IE7, but they might start using Firefox to get the features that everyone will have at home when IE7 comes out.

Other


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By cyberguyz on 10/17/2006 11:00:37 AM , Rating: 2
RC3 works just fine for me. All of my fave extensions work well and the spellcheck is MUCH better than the ispell addon for IE.

After having used both Firefox RC3 and IE 7 RC1 I'll still choose Firefox over IE - although IE 7 does reduce my usual complaints with IE.


RE: Has IE7 killed Firefox?
By hondaman on 10/17/2006 11:11:21 AM , Rating: 2
I still use FF (now using FF 2.0rc3) because:

1: ABMS
2: Extensions
3: Open Source

IE may get extensions one day, but it will NEVER be able to beat 1 and 3 on my list.


Splell Chucker
By Sunday Ironfoot on 10/17/2006 10:32:27 AM , Rating: 5
Firtfox nwe spel checket wokrs greart!




RE: Splell Chucker
By r0y on 10/17/2006 10:42:45 AM , Rating: 2
booo :P

Does anyone know if you can get back the red x-button to close a tab at the right hand side? I find it annoying having to click the close button in each indididual tab.


RE: Splell Chucker
By RobbieMc on 10/17/2006 10:54:15 AM , Rating: 3
goto "about:config", change "browser.tabs.closeButtons" to 0 for the x only on the active tab, 1 for the x on every tab, 2 for the x on no tabs, and 3 for the x on the right, as it was in v1.5


RE: Splell Chucker
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 10/17/2006 11:58:03 AM , Rating: 2
THANK YOU! You are my hero! :D


RE: Splell Chucker
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 10/17/2006 12:05:13 PM , Rating: 2
BTW, now that you have fixed that issue, is there a way to make the tabs shrink as they used to when you add more instead of making you have to scroll right to find the open tabs? That is HIGHLY annoying.


RE: Splell Chucker
By Murst on 10/17/2006 12:26:38 PM , Rating: 2
You mean: Is there a way to make the current version of FireFox beta more like the current version of IE7 beta? =p


RE: Splell Chucker
By smitty3268 on 10/17/2006 1:03:02 PM , Rating: 2
I'm pretty sure there is another about:config setting that defines the minimum size per tab, but I can't remember what it is.


RE: Splell Chucker
By smitty3268 on 10/17/2006 1:08:50 PM , Rating: 2
You should try setting browser.tabs.minTabWidth to 30 or so pixels and see if that works. I think it will, but I haven't tried it myself.


RE: Splell Chucker
By shecknoscopy on 10/17/2006 10:54:34 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Firtfox nwe spel checket wokrs greart!


In deed, its ruff two sea wear there gnu spell cheque could bee inn 'ere.

-Sheq


RE: Splell Chucker
By SilthDraeth on 10/17/2006 11:06:30 AM , Rating: 2
testing the new feature now.


FF 4 life!
By phymon on 10/17/2006 11:07:58 PM , Rating: 1
I dont think that IE7 is going to take big part in here.. cuz FF is doing some subtle changes on their product.. remember that IE was never to be trusted (bugs, viruses, trojans, keyloggers etc), that why Im going to still using FF or Mozilla until there is some other good option.




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