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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..." :)