Author Topic: What is Mozilla trying to do? (Read 34256 times)

phitsc · « **Reply #25 on:** July 14, 2011, 03:20 AM »

Yeah, I know. Manually changing the respective file just sucks though.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #26 on:** July 14, 2011, 08:58 AM »

Yeah, I know. Manually changing the respective file just sucks though.
-phitsc (July 14, 2011, 03:20 AM)

Yes I know - but the trouble is that most addons are from third party developers (often loan programmers) and free so there isn't a huge incentive to keep updating the files themselves.

When Firefox was originally released the versioning method for addons was a good idea - it mean that developers could only release addons for Firefox versions that exist and can be tested.

Trouble is now that Mozilla has gone version number mad many developers are releasing addons with compat version numbers set too high. I have seen some addons saying they are Firefox 8 compat - presumably they have a crystal ball.

At least forcing you to take note that the version isn't officially supported means that you can check an addon works as expected.

Try installing Mr Tech Toolkit from http://www.mrtech.co...tensions/toolkit.xpi which allows overriding version checking on an extension by extension basis.

limelect · « **Reply #27 on:** July 19, 2011, 12:39 AM »

Do you know that you can FORCE the add on to work with a new firefox BUT with the old
code.There are at list 2 ways to do that.
Which mean that even the version change you can still work with the add on.
Well Google search the subject.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #28 on:** July 19, 2011, 06:44 AM »

Actually the simplest method is to turn off compatibility checking.

In Firefox go to about:config (in the address bar) and in the filter box type compatibility.

You should see something like:

Just double click a setting to toggle its value from True to False and back.

eleman · « **Reply #29 on:** July 21, 2011, 12:17 PM »

Here is an article by someone who had given more thought into the issue than I did. The gist of the argument is that there is no substantial reason to make changes in the browser, and change just for the sake of change is not a good idea.

lanux128 · « **Reply #30 on:** July 21, 2011, 10:45 PM »

I'm so sad Google tools bar doesn't support ff anymore.
-sarina (July 21, 2011, 10:39 PM)

ah, you meant this..

• http://www.zdnet.com...th-mozilla-next/3599

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #31 on:** July 22, 2011, 01:31 PM »

Hooray - an even better reason to use Firefox - I am sick to death of installing Google's f&&&&&g toolbar or avoiding its installation. Why would anyone want to use that? The only thing it does is track your browsing habits and collect marketing data.

What would be a really useful feature in FF would be the ability to block the installation of named extensions including:

Yahoo Toolbar
Ask toolbar
MS .NET extension

amongst many others ...

Curt · « **Reply #32 on:** July 25, 2011, 11:52 AM »

Firefox 6.0 Beta 2 was ready looong ago...

most of the time, we’ll release a new Firefox every 6 weeks

http://blog.mozilla..../19/every-six-weeks/
-Mozilla

nosh · « **Reply #33 on:** August 05, 2011, 08:56 PM »

I spent most of yesterday moving to FF 5.1. Made sure all the functionality was there, got replacements for the addons that didn't work, got the layout pixel perfect, tweaked the major new about:config settings. And what a letdown! The thing is a step back from 3.6 in speed and resource consumption. The UI feels more sluggish, browsing speeds seem to have taken a hit too. Had to fkn roll back to 3.6!!

40hz · « **Reply #34 on:** August 05, 2011, 09:30 PM »

@nosh - Interesting. I'm rocking V5.0 under Linux Mint 11 (using kernal 2.6.38-8-generic and Gnome 2.32.1 ) on an old 2.0Ghz Core2 Duo laptop with 1Gb RAM - and it screams!

What version of Windows are you running it on?

I was just about to start loading FF5 on all my Windows machines.

nosh · « **Reply #35 on:** August 05, 2011, 10:09 PM »

I guess it's the addons. I had 55 installed - have cut down on a handful of non-essential ones and have gone back to FF 5.1. I'm on 32 bit XP, Core2 Duo 3.16 GHz with 3.x GB RAM and a 1GB GFX card.

It runs OK if I have a few tabs open but I stress tested it with ~100 tabs

and it all but died. Come to think of it, maybe I was a bit harsh. FF 3.6 _does_ handle the load better, though.

nudone · « **Reply #36 on:** August 05, 2011, 11:33 PM »

I've had to go back to ff 3.5 too. Ff5 is terrible; locks up using gmail and two browser windows open, can't position buttons on the taskbars without large empty areas wasted, can hardly see some of the buttons anyway, seen it do weird browser inside a browser window things.

I always liked ff because you could arrange the buttons and toolbars to maximise the space available. Now ff is just another clone of opera (or whichever browser started that top left menu rubbish). If firebug worked okay on other browsers I think I'd just drop ff completely - I really am so very disappointed with it.

Stephen47 · « **Reply #37 on:** August 06, 2011, 08:13 PM »

FF6 is coming mid August

mahesh2k · « **Reply #38 on:** August 06, 2011, 11:32 PM »

I just want them to get rid of plugin_container.exe leak. :/

nosh · « **Reply #39 on:** August 07, 2011, 04:27 AM »

I tried the latest Nightly, Aurora and v6 Beta yesterday. Couldn't run the nightly well, too much weirdness caused due to the changes in the UI. Aurora did feel snappier, I'd just come off reading a review that it was targeted towards performance, so hopefully that wasn't the placebo effect. v6 Beta felt kinda the same as 5, couldn't tell much of a difference. Roboform doesn't work on any of these, even after manually bumping up the version in the .xpi. I'm back to v5 and really looking forward to Aurora getting out of the pipeline.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #40 on:** August 07, 2011, 08:33 AM »

I've had to go back to ff 3.5 too. Ff5 is terrible; locks up using gmail and two browser windows open, can't position buttons on the taskbars without large empty areas wasted, can hardly see some of the buttons anyway, seen it do weird browser inside a browser window things.

I always liked ff because you could arrange the buttons and toolbars to maximise the space available. Now ff is just another clone of opera (or whichever browser started that top left menu rubbish). If firebug worked okay on other browsers I think I'd just drop ff completely - I really am so very disappointed with it.
-nudone (August 05, 2011, 11:33 PM)

Not been my experience with FF5 - I have GMail open all the time and never had a single lockup, in fact whenever I open FF5 it opens 6 tabs including gmail, hotmail, facebook and DC and I have had no issues at all.

As for wasted space - the buttons are probably a bit bigger than they need to b (especially the ones with the superfluous drop down arrow) but I don't have huge spaces between them ???

I agree with the cloning issue though - all browser now seem to be converging on one look and feel - which seems to defeat the point of different browsers. Its got to the point now that I have to look quite hard to work out which browser is open!

For me FF still wins because of the add-on community - but I suspect that is going to get short lived as Mozilla seem to be using radpid version numbering to destroy obvious compatibility for so many addons. Yes I know you can override the version number in the addon but most people can't/won't do that and this seems to me to be stripping FF of its edge in the choice of browsers.

tomos · « **Reply #41 on:** August 07, 2011, 08:43 AM »

For me FF still wins because of the add-on community - but I suspect that is going to get short lived as Mozilla seem to be using radpid version numbering to destroy obvious compatibility for so many addons. Yes I know you can override the version number in the addon but most people can't/won't do that and this seems to me to be stripping FF of its edge in the choice of browsers.
-Carol Haynes (August 07, 2011, 08:33 AM)

ironic that their competitive paranoia is damaging their competitiveness.
Saying that, I use only a handful of addons and am happy with FF5

cyberdiva · « **Reply #42 on:** August 07, 2011, 09:52 AM »

For me FF still wins because of the add-on community - but I suspect that is going to get short lived as Mozilla seem to be using radpid version numbering to destroy obvious compatibility for so many addons. Yes I know you can override the version number in the addon but most people can't/won't do that and this seems to me to be stripping FF of its edge in the choice of browsers.
-Carol Haynes (August 07, 2011, 08:33 AM)

I strongly agree. I'm very happy with Firefox 5, which works well on my Windows 7 64-bit and aging WinXP Pro 32-bit computers. I have stayed with Firefox primarily because of the add-ons, but each so-called major upgrade creates havoc with some add-ons, and I know of some developers who are losing patience with the need to alter their add-ons with increasing frequency.

nudone · « **Reply #43 on:** August 07, 2011, 10:36 AM »

Not been my experience with FF5 - I have GMail open all the time and never had a single lockup, in fact whenever I open FF5 it opens 6 tabs including gmail, hotmail, facebook and DC and I have had no issues at all.
-Carol Haynes (August 07, 2011, 08:33 AM)

Probably something on my machine - but the problem isn't having several tabs open, it's having more than one FF5 browser window open. I've had it lock up using two different Windows 7 setups. The other "browser in a browser" problem I mentioned also happens when using more than one FF window. Just seems like the FF team have only been testing on single window users.

The button problem is a bit of an exaggeration. I just find it not as nice to look at as on FF3.5 - mainly because of the transparency behind the buttons (no, I'm not going to disable transparency on Win7 just so FF5+ looks okay). Also, I do have about 30 buttons visible in the top area, which was fine when they were against a solid background.

I've also seen FF5 rendering pages incorrectly, just slight 1 or 2 pixel problems (not a problem on FF3.5).

Curt · « **Reply #44 on:** August 13, 2011, 02:42 AM »

Firefox 3, 4, 5, 6 ...
most of the time, we’ll release a new Firefox every 6 weeks
-Mozilla
-Curt (July 25, 2011, 11:52 AM)

nosh · « **Reply #45 on:** August 13, 2011, 09:03 AM »

Mozilla dev owns up to FF4 regression.

And while things improved in Firefox 3/3.5/3.6, Nethercote admits "Firefox 4 regressed again" in part because of all the new features that were shoveled in, as well as "over-aggressive tuning of heuristics relating to JavaScript garbage collection and image decoding."

Mozilla to Get a Grip on Memory Leak Issues in Firefox 7

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #46 on:** August 13, 2011, 03:28 PM »

Mozilla dev owns up to FF4 regression.

And while things improved in Firefox 3/3.5/3.6, Nethercote admits "Firefox 4 regressed again" in part because of all the new features that were shoveled in, as well as "over-aggressive tuning of heuristics relating to JavaScript garbage collection and image decoding."

Mozilla to Get a Grip on Memory Leak Issues in Firefox 7

-nosh (August 13, 2011, 09:03 AM)

They haven't succeeded on that one since version 2!

Winkie · « **Reply #47 on:** August 15, 2011, 02:11 PM »

What is Mozilla trying to do? Continues...
Mozilla Plans To Hide Firefox Version

Conclusion:

It seems like they somehow want to hide the fact that the version changes each 5 minutes, which suggest that they are aware it’s not exactly the best idea So basically, we have a bad idea, we implement it and then hide it from the user. Great plan, shows a responsible attitude!
-Nebulus

JavaJones · « **Reply #48 on:** August 16, 2011, 12:08 PM »

Actually, I think they should have hidden the version in the first place, without this stupid intermediate "3 versions in 6 months" BS. Chrome works this way just fine...

- Oshyan

Curt · « **Reply #49 on:** August 17, 2011, 03:19 AM »

6.0 Final:

Firefox web browser | International versions: Get Firefox in your language

Mozilla Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox | Download a Thunderbird that speaks your language