4 ms·

Firefox 4 Beta 3 Released

52 points by mgunes 16y ago

nailer 16y ago
Awesome, but I predict most of HN won't be able to update until the similarly-awesome Firebug is updated for FF 4.
- saint-loup 16y ago
  Works here with an alpha version of Firebug and the Compatiblity Reporter Addon.
  - jseifer 16y ago
    Link to alpha version: http://blog.getfirebug.com/2010/08/10/firebug-1-6a19/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2010/08/10/firebug-1-6a19/
- daychilde 16y ago
  That, and a dev version of Tab Mix Plus, because the only truly cannot-use-if-feature-doesn't-exist for me is address bar, search bar, history, and bookmarks all opening in new tabs by default. It's the only thing I require. Search bar is supported in about:config, but the others aren't. So far, the beta looks good to me. But I'm dying without the rest of my extensions.
wwortiz 16y ago
Kind of makes me sad that it still looks like crap on linux, turns me completely off of testing it. Oh well, hopefully it is fixed by the time it is actually released.
- danudey 16y ago
  Really? I find it's much better on Linux than on Mac (where most of the time it doesn't behave the way a Mac app should). I have no problem using it on Linux or Windows though, it works great there, the way the rest of the OS works. I suppose this makes me that guy that shows up in every Firefox thread complaining that it's a shitty Mac app.
- bconway 16y ago
  By crap, do you mean "not like Windows," or actually crap? It looks native to me ("good" in my book), just like every other GTK app that I use.
euroclydon 16y ago
Has anyone read the part about the new jsval types? http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2010/08/02/mozillas-new-javascript-value-representation/ http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2010/08/02/mozillas-new-ja... According to the author, the old way was to store all JS vars in 32bit C variables, so a small int was able to be stored inline, but floats, objects and strings were stores as pointers. The author says that the last four bits stored the type info for the variable. But, since memory addresses are 8 hex characters long, a bitmask was used to convert the last four bits into another hex character, thus establishing the full pointer address. How does this work? I mean, you only have the four bits, if the info is not right there in front of my face in those four bits, how can a mask tease out the hex character?
- NinetyNine 16y ago
  I'm not sure I'm understanding you right; a hex character is four bits. To tease a hex character out of a 32 bit int, you'd apply a max of 0000000F, where F is the last four bits.
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    In the example, if the last four bits are 1100, it's a string. The first seven four-bit quadruplets, plus a bitmask'd version of the last quadruplet (1100) comprised eight sets for four bits. My questions is: how can four bits, if they don't already encode the hex character I'm looking for, be bitmask'd into displaying it, and still be capable of encoding any of the 16 possible hex characters?
    - Benjo 16y ago
      Where do you see 4 bits? I only see him mention 3 bits: The old jsval representation fit in a 32 bit value, using the 3 lowest bits as a way to tag the value as a particular type. These were called type tags. In the examples given, the lowest three bits are masked to 0s when determining the address. That's a loss of precision, meaning there's no way to represent a pointer to an address that's not modulo 8 == 0. Another way of saying this is that objects must be aligned to 8 byte boundaries. Isn't this a waste of space? Probably not. My guess is very few objects are less than 8 bytes in length, so that space is not really wasted. Even if objects ARE shorter, this is a dynamically typed language, we probably want to keep spare memory anyway, to reduce the chance that adding values to an object will require costly memory allocation.
vito 16y ago
Wow, that's a whole lot of pretty major changes just for this beta. It's great that the Add-Ons manager is in a tab now rather than a window. Hopefully the Downloads window gets the same treatment. Also: The "tabs on top" on OS X could use some touching-up - right now the tab bar is just swapped with the toolbar, and still below the window's title area. Something more like Chrome (or that Safari beta, for that matter) would be nice.
timmfin 16y ago
Don't get the regular beta, get the one with Tab Candy built in: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tryserver-builds/edward.lee@engineering.uiuc.edu-f193f519573b/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tryserver-bui... . It's definitely my favorite (and most used) feature in FF 4.
newman314 16y ago
Just a reminder that the changes in Beta 2 broke most of the extensions for me. (and no, the compat extension does not fix this). Also, copy and paste was broken in B2, anyone know if this is fixed in B3?
retube 16y ago
Websockets question: will this allow direct p2p (browser to browser) communication?
- cx01 16y ago
  No. The WebSockets API in Javascript only allows acting as a client, not as a server.

52 points by mgunes 16y ago

nailer 16y ago

Awesome, but I predict most of HN won't be able to update until the similarly-awesome Firebug is updated for FF 4.

saint-loup 16y ago
Works here with an alpha version of Firebug and the Compatiblity Reporter Addon.
- jseifer 16y ago
  Link to alpha version: http://blog.getfirebug.com/2010/08/10/firebug-1-6a19/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2010/08/10/firebug-1-6a19/
daychilde 16y ago
That, and a dev version of Tab Mix Plus, because the only truly cannot-use-if-feature-doesn't-exist for me is address bar, search bar, history, and bookmarks all opening in new tabs by default. It's the only thing I require. Search bar is supported in about:config, but the others aren't. So far, the beta looks good to me. But I'm dying without the rest of my extensions.

wwortiz 16y ago

Kind of makes me sad that it still looks like crap on linux, turns me completely off of testing it. Oh well, hopefully it is fixed by the time it is actually released.

danudey 16y ago
Really? I find it's much better on Linux than on Mac (where most of the time it doesn't behave the way a Mac app should). I have no problem using it on Linux or Windows though, it works great there, the way the rest of the OS works. I suppose this makes me that guy that shows up in every Firefox thread complaining that it's a shitty Mac app.
bconway 16y ago
By crap, do you mean "not like Windows," or actually crap? It looks native to me ("good" in my book), just like every other GTK app that I use.

euroclydon 16y ago

Has anyone read the part about the new jsval types? http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2010/08/02/mozillas-new-javascript-value-representation/ http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2010/08/02/mozillas-new-ja... According to the author, the old way was to store all JS vars in 32bit C variables, so a small int was able to be stored inline, but floats, objects and strings were stores as pointers. The author says that the last four bits stored the type info for the variable. But, since memory addresses are 8 hex characters long, a bitmask was used to convert the last four bits into another hex character, thus establishing the full pointer address. How does this work? I mean, you only have the four bits, if the info is not right there in front of my face in those four bits, how can a mask tease out the hex character?

NinetyNine 16y ago
I'm not sure I'm understanding you right; a hex character is four bits. To tease a hex character out of a 32 bit int, you'd apply a max of 0000000F, where F is the last four bits.
- euroclydon 16y ago
  In the example, if the last four bits are 1100, it's a string. The first seven four-bit quadruplets, plus a bitmask'd version of the last quadruplet (1100) comprised eight sets for four bits. My questions is: how can four bits, if they don't already encode the hex character I'm looking for, be bitmask'd into displaying it, and still be capable of encoding any of the 16 possible hex characters?
  - Benjo 16y ago
    Where do you see 4 bits? I only see him mention 3 bits: The old jsval representation fit in a 32 bit value, using the 3 lowest bits as a way to tag the value as a particular type. These were called type tags. In the examples given, the lowest three bits are masked to 0s when determining the address. That's a loss of precision, meaning there's no way to represent a pointer to an address that's not modulo 8 == 0. Another way of saying this is that objects must be aligned to 8 byte boundaries. Isn't this a waste of space? Probably not. My guess is very few objects are less than 8 bytes in length, so that space is not really wasted. Even if objects ARE shorter, this is a dynamically typed language, we probably want to keep spare memory anyway, to reduce the chance that adding values to an object will require costly memory allocation.

vito 16y ago

Wow, that's a whole lot of pretty major changes just for this beta. It's great that the Add-Ons manager is in a tab now rather than a window. Hopefully the Downloads window gets the same treatment. Also: The "tabs on top" on OS X could use some touching-up - right now the tab bar is just swapped with the toolbar, and still below the window's title area. Something more like Chrome (or that Safari beta, for that matter) would be nice.

timmfin 16y ago

Don't get the regular beta, get the one with Tab Candy built in: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tryserver-builds/edward.lee@engineering.uiuc.edu-f193f519573b/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tryserver-bui... . It's definitely my favorite (and most used) feature in FF 4.

newman314 16y ago

Just a reminder that the changes in Beta 2 broke most of the extensions for me. (and no, the compat extension does not fix this). Also, copy and paste was broken in B2, anyone know if this is fixed in B3?

retube 16y ago

Websockets question: will this allow direct p2p (browser to browser) communication?

cx01 16y ago
No. The WebSockets API in Javascript only allows acting as a client, not as a server.