A new version of Mozilla’s popular Firefox Web browser is ready for download with improved security and memory use as the tiny company takes a stab at Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer. The program’s creators told Reuters on Thursday that the privately-held company’s trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development.
If it’s ready for prime-time, why do we have to wait til June?
While it may be of release Kuality, apparently they do not feel that it is yet of release quality.
Edited 2008-03-21 22:43 UTC
Oh puh-leeze! Put your Klaws away!
They are creating the buzz for making the release a success while they are fixing the last bugs, I suppose.
I am currently FF 3b4. It’s is fast and very stable, so I think it will be successful.
There’s also this little thing they do where they try to get all the localized versions built and tested, and all the various platforms built and tested before they do the official launch… or at least, that’s my impression.
Edit: nevermind – i see they’ve already built all the localized versions
Edited 2008-03-21 23:21 UTC
In other words, it’s not ready for prime time. Fix the bugs … and then you’re ready.
If you’re going to wait until every last bug is fixed you’ll never be ready. At some point you simply have to call it good enough.
Because of marketing. Fault tolerance is the virus from Redmond.
Yeah, I like this:
If it’s ready for prime time, then release the final version already. Otherwise, it’s still just for developers and testers.
Personally, I’m waiting for 3.01 .. they should have most of the kinks worked out by then
The article was not very clear. I believe that what it is trying to say is that FF3 is ready for everyday use by web developers who want to familiarize themselves with the new browser without a lot of pain. FF3 is still only on the “Developers” page at mozilla.com, and that is where the changed description of FF3’s status will be. There is no link to it from the front page *except* through the “developers” link.
One problem that I have noted that many projects face is how to attract an appropriate number of testers for the final phases of development and release QA. Some seem to think that people will “just know” when to become testers. Some chant “The latest mightlies are awesome!” throughout the entire development cycle. Some do alpha/beta sequences. Others resort to elaborate deceptions, releasing a “X.0” release which is really a beta, followed by an X.1 release which is intended to be the real release. This change of description regarding the status of FF3 is simply another way to send a message that the software, in it’s current state, will likely not eat your children, and that it might be a good time to try it out.
Uh, this is open source.. there are no kinks, remember?
I don’t think you have got that quite correct.
It is not the case that there are NO kinks in open source browsers, but rather just that they have far less kinks than in IE (and more functionality and standards compliance as well, but that observation is off the main point here).
I’ve been using Beta 4 since it came out, and it’s been really unstable for me; it crashes over twice a day.
I suspect they’re saying this to nudge Extension developers into updating their extensions ready for the launch. Until now, FF3’s been a changing too rapidly. Why bother updating your extension when the next nightly could break it? This sends out a signal that it’s safe to develop for FF3 now. They want that because they want to have lots of sexy extensions to boast about when it’s released.
Firefox is great and all but all the time we read things like: “Additions boost security…”
As usual, this will have to be proven, not stated. I mean after reading “improved security” in every article about a new browser that has been comming up for a few years now, we’d have to feel so secure we shouldn’t be even able to handle it
And yet, Bruce Schneier still says the state of security isn’t getting any better. I guess he doesn’t use firefox… or he’s right
This is only partly correct.
It is possible to add a feature that by itself can be said to add to security, compared to the same browser compiled without that feature.
Anti-phishing provisions is one such feature that comes to mind.
Not true. Every bit of code that you add to a product increases the potential attack surface. The anti-phishing provisions are intended to prevent a particular problem; however, besides addressing that problem, they may open you up to other problems (ie. buffer overflows, privilege escalations, and so on).
Your statement doesn’t disprove his’.
There are several kinds of security threads. If a feature is added to help on a specific thread (like phising), this adds to the overall security of the product usage.
It could be that this additional code opens security holes in other regards, but this is not mandatory.
I never said it was mandatory. What I said was that that more code increases the attack surface. Which means a higher probability of vulnerability.
Flash news for ya: nothing that’s connected to a network is 100% secure, no matter how hard you try. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t close the most obvious security holes, but if you want true security, disconnect now.
Yeah, of course. But just look at how security is treated by columnists:
“… and it’s more secure too!”
I mean how can you tell ? Say, we fixed 10 security bugs or loopholes, but how do you know that there isn’t a new bug exploitable in a more disastrous way?
Note that security is often more about human behaviour than bugs. Probably people are now more aware of privacy issues that should be handled by themselves, not software. I’ve seen disputes that social community portal is BAD because you get all the people’s data on a platter. But wait, who did post the actual data?
So bragging about security when there’s much to be tested and proven seems just like a marketing thing.
Of course if I were a developer I’d say we’re more secure, because we’ve introduced anty-phising, prezeroed allocation, and so on. But you shouldn’t blindly belive that: yap, now, i’m secure, coz, dudes on the web say so.
Cheers!
Even if it’s disconnected, it’s still not “100 %” secure. People can still find ways to access the hardware.
Since Safari 3.1 has been released for Windows and scored very well in the latest web 2.0 compatibility tests Mozilla started to rush Firefox 3 to the market
Panic? They^aEURTMve been planning the release to be some time this summer for the previous 6 months.
Sorry, but I don’t understand your message.
When I said that Mozilla panics I did not refer to the June release date but to the headline of the article in which Mozilla claims that Firefox is ready for the masses now!
Because if they didn’t, then some Windows 2000 users will be very disappointed.
I downloaded the nightly build and it looks like some decent work went into Firefox 3. The memory usage appears to be much better. It is running about 50% below Firefox 2. It looks like a Kool release. It is pretty amazing how eight years later XUL appears to work well using native widgets now. I guess good things can take awhile.
I can see how XULRunner is ready for desktop widgets and such. I saw in Fedora 9 builds recently the inclusion of XULRunner. I look forward to seeing how Redhat will integrate this. I have always liked the speed at which a GUI application can be strung together with XUL and some javascript. Now that the performance is decent it seems like XUL desktop applications are ready for serious development.
Edited 2008-03-22 01:05 UTC
Thanks for the “mini review”
I’m glad I modded you up before losing my right by posting a comment.
Is the download available for RedHat or Fedora yet?
It is in Rawhide… and will be part of Fedora 9…
Yes. AFAIR FF3 has replaced FF2 in rawhide shortly after the F8 fork and was a part of Fedora 9 Alpha release.
Other then that, unless something really bad happens, FF3 will be included in RedHat’s next RHEL update (5.2).
– Gilboa
Clearly the person who wrote that article is a grade schooler… or at least is friends with one.
I definitely “laughed out loud”.
I think it is EXCELLENT even tho it is beta it is an big improvement and a lot of new features.
Thumbs up!
I’ve been browsing around for a bit taking care to go exactly the same places and do exactly the same things in FF3 and Epiphany 2.20.2, based on FF2. Observing resident – shared memory at each step, I’d say they are neck and neck. Using about 35MB each, they don’t vary from each other by more than a MB or two. Of course, Epiphany is 64 bit and the available binary for FF3 is 32 bit. So I’d say, based upon this informal test, that Epiphany still has the edge. Epiphany in Fedora 9 should be based upon FF3. I’m looking forward to seeing its numbers.
Just to clear it up, Epiphany isn’t based on Firefox at all, it doesn’t include XUL support for example. It just uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, Gecko.
Also interesting, Epiphany will soon have complete support for the WebKit rendering engine.
It’s still got a way to go before it’s ready for more than prime time testing. Beta 4 crashed a lot for me. The nightly builds have been more stable.
In the last two weeks of nightly builds, they introduced a bug that causes it to loop infinitely on Mac OS X when clicking on the Help menu, of all things.
I haven’t seen any add-ons that work with it yet, but I hope that they’re supported well since I could be using another browser without them.
There are still some very major issues with Gecko 1.9, take for example this page of preformatted text: http://pastie.org/167277
Now try to select a chunk of that text, notice that the white space from the beginning of each line randomly moves to another position. This isn’t the only occurrence of this bug either, there are many issues with text randomly moving around the page.
I’ve not been able to find a bug report for this mind you, since Bugzilla can be a real PITA to search, does anyone know of one?
I do not see this behavior.
What system are you on? I’m on:
Fedora 8 using Gecko/2008032104 Minefield/3.0b5pre
It’s possible the bug is OS specific, but I have run into it many times since the very first beta.
Edited 2008-03-22 03:09 UTC
Fedora 8, of course.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030318 Firefox/3.0b4
Overall, the new version has some nice features, and although I haven’t used it much, it does seem snappier to use than its predecessors. On the other hand, I’ve seen some braindead “features” and changes in this release. One, the so-called “AwesomeBar,” is anything but, and needs to be put somewhere in the browser as an option to turn OFF and revert back to the tried-and-true, predictable, and accurate behavior we’ve come to expect over the last ten-plus years of Web browsing.
And I don’t mean get an extension: this is something that has been a part of browsers since day one, it was only now that Mozilla decided to go and **** it up with some sloppy Microsoft-like “haha, we THINK we know what you want, and we’re going to tell you, whether you like it or not, no matter how inaccurate our algorithm is!” Besides, OldBar doesn’t even work *exactly* like previous Firefox versions of the bar, it still uses the same wretched algorithm. Add in the bold page title, and it’s a PITA to navigate this new bar menu. Really, it’s just downright obnoxious.
Second is the Back and Forward buttons. And no, I’m not talking about the ugly big back button and the smaller forward button which just look and feel out of place (although if I were still using Windows and had to put up with that crap, I would certainly be). I’m used to there being two drop-down menus, one beside both Back and Forward. Click the one beside back, and you get *only* the previous pages in history. Click the one beside the forward button and you get only the pages you visited after the current page, nothing more. Now, there’s only one pulldown menu–and you get a list of *both* previous and later viewed pages. That’s just confusing, and a change for the worse IMO.
Its performance improvements and ability to keep the font size of each site separately, on the other hand, are extremely welcome improvements.
Latest Fedora update (firefox-3.0-0.45.cvs20080317.fc9) selects text properly for me
Well, I just grabbed a newer nightly build and it seems to be fixed, quite odd, but definitely a relief.
Edit: I’m a tard and can’t even reply to the right message.
Edited 2008-03-22 03:09 UTC
It definitely needs some kind of release. With any major release there is always a showstopper that has slipped though the net
.
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/
I noticed that Vista SP1 has been released, but is not rolled out, ans judging by personal experience its simply not ready to be rolled out through update. I’m not saying its Microsoft fault. I think its a good method, of identifying show stoppers early.
I do think they need to release this simply because its simply a massive improvement over Firefox 2.x. I think its time for a “pre-release” or a “spring edition”
I swear, first thing I attempted to use Firefox 3b4 for was to edit the welcome page on one of my Google Groups. It worked slightly better than FF 3b2 in that it at least rendered the controls, but still didn’t work properly.
So here I am, using IE to edit my Google Group.
So ready for Prime Time? Not sure.
Your issue is with the Google Groups editing page, not with Firefox.
Don’t be silly, the problem “must” be with Firefox, in the same way that Linux sucks because it will not run Dreamweaver