8 ms·

Firefox 8.0 is Released

141 points by evanw 15y ago

hozzer 15y ago
Dear Mozilla. Why do you keep doing all these full version releases? Seriously it's just annoying. Just because IE is on version 10. Doesn't mean you have to be. Why are you doing this.... You've gone from 3-8 in a year. That's not right.
- sp332 15y ago
  "Full" version releases? There will be a new release every six weeks. Whatever features are ready to be shipped at that time will be released. There was a discussion about removing the version number from the "About" box but it was left in for debugging purposes. That's all the version number is for now. Since there are no "long-term support" versions, just make sure you're up-to-date and don't give the version number any mind.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    > There will be a new release every six weeks. The corrollary to this being that releases are no longer news.
    - sp332 15y ago
      Right. New features might be news, but new versions shouldn't be.
      - FantasyIslander 15y ago
        Exactly. For business who have legal or medical requirements to keep track of Browser Capabilities, Firefox is already known to be a rogue browser. Browser capabilities are very important, and how it behaves must be expected for legal and medical requirements. Please join us in the real world, and leave your fantasy behind. The plane boss! The plane!
  - hozzer 15y ago
    The point about "There was a discussion about removing the version number" is about the only appropriate response I got that somebody actually got my rant. However you are Assuming "The latest is the Greatest". There was one of the versions 5 or 6, I forget. I didn't want it. But when it came time to reformat my computer I didn't have a choice and had to get an older version from a friend. It was buggy and slow. Crashed with Flash all the time. You could blame Adobe, but I want to wait till it gets worked out to upload. I'm just wandering why not 4.1 - 4.2 with an automatic update especially if it's a security issue. People are much more likely to download an update then a full version upgrade. You can't tell me you don't automatically click "Update" when it pops up vs load new version where you think twice. I can tell you my friends have a variety versions of firefox 3-7 (Not all of them are tech savvy). But I guarantee they all have they most up to date sub version of what ever they are on. Also as a rule with version releases I usually wait a month or 2 to let other people "beta" test it to make sure their are no major bugs. It's something I have applied in my career and has protected me from various software issues that come with new version. XP -> Vista -> 7 is an example for why I never used Vista but now happily run 7. I'm sorry but Mozilla is not using versions right. I'm just shocked people don't get this and my comment was taken with such backlash. And don't get me wrong, I love mozilla and what they've done. I love firefox.
- skl_ 15y ago
  Although I've not looked into exactly why Mozilla have adopted the rapid-release cycle, I'd imagine it may be something to do with the ability to quickly drop backwards-compatibility and support. That way the code base can mature faster and less time is spent on redunant versions.
  - DEinspanjer 15y ago
    The most important reason for it was to keep new features from being stuck in limbo just because they happened to be part of the same branch as a feature that was taking a long time to be production ready. This is what killed us with 4.0. There were big and nice features in 4 that were actually ready more than 6 months prior to release, but they couldn't go because they were "full release" features and they were waiting for other features that were considered to be "must have" for 4.0. With the rapid release cycle, when features start development, they have the ability to be easily configured out of the release product if they aren't ready for a particular version. We have a reliable release schedule that we expect to hit every 6 weeks. Obviously, we do our best to have as many new features as are ready be part of each release, but we don't leave people wondering when it will finally happen because we keep to the schedule and release the features that are ready. Some of the biggest parts of this release were actually groundwork improvements to make the add-ons ecosphere more comfortable in the context of rapid release.
- eCa 15y ago
  I sort of understand their reasoning. It's easier to get people interested in a "full" release, than some 3.0.21 version every three mongths. It also was more wrong to stay on 3.6.* for over two years. A middle road might be to start a year with a full release and then do point-releases doing that year, so in 2013 we would have, for instance: 13, 13.0.1, 13.1, 13.2, 13.2.1, 13.3.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    This is a valid, on topic, cogent post. Why is it getting downvoted?
    - richbradshaw 15y ago
      Because version numbers are irrelevant, what's important is keeping people on the newest version. "Solving" the problem of large version numbers is like solving the problem 1/0.
      - eCa 15y ago
        At work we have a web application purchased about 18 months ago that officially don't support Firefox above 3.6. There were rendering differences between 3.6 and 4 that were serious enough to enforce that restriction for certain users. Apparently, it has begun working as expected again in FF7 (might have worked in FF6, not sure). The application also uses jQuery 1.2.6 (released May '08) - I guess I'll be the one to QA the migration to the present day. Hence I am not yet a believer in "latest version is the greatest version", in all cases. In principle, yes, but there are exceptions that makes version numbers necessary.
        Skalman 15y ago
        I'm not entirely sure, but I think Mozilla will continue to support Fx 3.6 until they have a better solution for large companies. I'm not sure what that better solution would be, but I believe they're trying to solve the problem.
        15y ago
- azakai 15y ago
  Firefox and Chrome both have the same update cycle - a new major version every 6 weeks. I believe the main reason for both projects doing it are allowing them to get improvements and new features to users faster. One or two releases a year means a very long time before improvements get to users, and it holds everything back. 6-week releases means you get improvements to users in just a few months. Of course there are downsides to 6-week releases. If you prefer a slower-updating browser, there are other good options, such as Opera. And if you want even more stability, there are Safari and IE, which these days are quite good as well.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- DEinspanjer 15y ago
  You were off by a bit there. We should expect to be on version 16 by this time next year. Not that the version number should be important to end users. Just developers.
- melling 15y ago
  Mozilla will soon be auto-updating Firefox every 6 weeks like Chrome, so half the Internet will be getting a regular update and progress will happen much more quickly. The version number is irrelevant. Personally, I think it's amazing that we can move this quickly.
- notatoad 15y ago
  here we go again with the version number complaints. get over it. it doesn't make any difference to you what number they want to call it.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    Considering the whole reason they're doing this crap is to make it look like they're keeping up to date with Chrome, yeah, it kinda does make a difference. Methinks they don't understand the concept of "Major release.minor release"
    - richbradshaw 15y ago
      That's not why they are doing it. It's because it's better for everyone if things like browsers are essentially versionless, and everyone is on the newest version. Immediate automatic updates mean that users are always able to access the newest features.
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        That's an awfully subjective position to take. I don't have a problem with rapid release, but I have a problem with passing off minor revisions and bugfixes as major releases. And try to tell me the version doesn't matter when there's a regression or otherwise something broken on a newer rev that works fine on an older one. I don't know where this recent trend of "version numbers are evil" came from, but it's entirely silly.
recoiledsnake 15y ago
Just got the notification, but didn't upgrade because a lot of my very useful extensions for HTML dev weren't compatible. I don't think the new features in 7->8 make up for the lack of my extensions.
- joenathan 15y ago
  Use this extension to "make" your extensions compatible https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=api https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat...
  - evanw 15y ago
    This is great, thanks for posting it. I manage my passwords with 1Password, and while they're good about pushing updates, I've never seen their Firefox extension marked as compatible when a new version of Firefox is released.
    - sirn 15y ago
      1Password 3.8.7 seems to be compatible with Firefox 8 though. They're getting a lot better at keeping up with Firefox version lately (ever since they introduced Aurora and "maybe" Nightly support)
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Why 1Password rather than Firefox Sync?
      - nassosdim 15y ago
        Probably because 1Password doesn't support just a specific browser and it's also available for tablets and smartphones.
        carussell 15y ago
        The Sync API is documented, and Mozilla encourages development of outside server and client implementations. Sync is available for tablets and smartphones.
Tichy 15y ago
The add-on thing could be huge, if it works out. I am tired of seeing computers riddled with spybars.
- udp 15y ago
  Yep - I was very impressed to see the update installer ask if I want to keep add-ons installed by a third party, with the default option being no.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Definitely a good idea for Windows users, and possibly Macs as well (I don't know the prevalence of browser-infesting software there). On Linux, though, it promptly flagged all of the addons I had installed through the distro packaging system as "third-party addons" and wanted to disable them by default.
  - Ziomislaw 15y ago
    so it worked properly on Linux. there is no way to know whether an addon instaled 'for the whole' system was added by third party, or by package. only addons in Your home dir are considered as 'installed by you'
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Except that Linux doesn't tend to suffer from the browser-infesting stealth installs common to other platforms; the case of packaged addons seems far more common and likely.
      - Ziomislaw 15y ago
        ubuntu? yes, you can unistall it, but popular distros do come with pre-installed stuff.
dman 15y ago
Folks at mozilla - keep up the good work. Could you create some videos and tutorials about extension development?
- padenot 15y ago
  Tutorials (and learning material in general) can be found on https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions. This page seem to cover both API (XUL & Jetpack).
  - dman 15y ago
    I am aware of the page and have written an Extension in the past. I am unclear about the following things a) Is Jetpack the way to go going forward? How much of the XPCom api is available through Jetpack? b) Is there an IDE I can setup that will allow me to get autocompletion for extension development? c) Is there an API browser for XPCom objects listing the objects, the methods available on them and the minimum version of Firefox that supports the particular api? Having a searchable index would be even better. d) When I was working on a Firefox extension I often got the feeling that I was doing something suboptimal because the development process seemed pretty broken. I was building extensions and had to restart the browser for them to take effect, getting a debugger going was more work than it should be, I wondered why isnt the Firefox ui itself written using HTML and css. I am hoping that more tutorials and workflow related posts will address many of my concerns. Knowing the workflow of folks at mozilla will be a huge help to people like me who are working on writing extensions because the road to writing a meaningful extension is not as straightforward as it could be. In the end I dont want the above points to act as a downer in a software release post and would like to congratulate folks at Mozilla about the great work that they do.
    - sp332 15y ago
      Jetpack is preferred because it's easier to write, reduces compatibility problems between versions (because there are fewer "hooks" into deep FF innards), and you don't have to restart to install, uninstall, or reload them. Of course there are limitations, but unless you really need something in XUL that's not available in Jetpack, Jetpack is the way to go.
rnadna 15y ago
Is this great news, or good news, or nothing too exciting? Dunno. It might be interesting to learn how many people read this in another browser, popped over to firefox to update it ... and then returned to their other browser. We may be at the point where browsers are like toilet paper -- lots of brands will do the work, and it's hard to pay much attention to which one is installed.
- bergie 15y ago
  Firefox Sync sort of changes that for me. It gives enough convenience that I've also gone Firefox on my mobile devices. Being able to access open tabs from my laptop on the phone is great when I'm sitting in the bus.
  - quinndupont 15y ago
    I really hope the persistent sync bugs get worked out soon. I'm told that the final, and big, fix was in alpha, which makes me think that it's not in 8.0. Soon, soon.
electic 15y ago
In 5 weeks they are going to be shipping Firefox 13.0.
shocks 15y ago
It would make more sense (to me) that they focused on fixing some of the many bugs filed in the bug tracker. Just saying, but then Chrome is my browser of choice anyway...
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  You do realize that there were tons of bugs fixed between 7 and 8, right? It's just that bugfixes never make the news.
- abraham 15y ago
  Chrome has over 31,000 open issues. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list
bakhlawa 15y ago
Have the memory issues been resolved? Under Windows 7, it isn't uncommon to find an idle Firefox browser with a few low-activity tabs using up more than 1.5GB of memory. It's gotten to a stage where I have to restart the browser every couple of days...reminds me of when I had to this with my Windows PC! I've recently moved over the Chrome and while I miss Firefox, the browser is far less of a memory hog.
- daemin 15y ago
  Why does it bother you that an application is using so much RAM? Do you only have 2 GB or something like that? I'd prefer that applications used my RAM since unused RAM is just wasted electricity. I find it strange that people still think of RAM as a precious resource that needs to be conserved and under-utilised. I'd rather have it used than have to fetch something from disk or the network.
  - hnwh 15y ago
    Some of us actually use our RAM for other things...
  - getsat 15y ago
    > I'd prefer that applications used my RAM since unused RAM is just wasted electricity. I... but... er... This is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen on this site. You could write a two line C program that allocates all the memory on your system and then sits in a loop doing nothing, but then you'd be wasting even more electricity because your hdd would be reading/writing to your swap space. :| > I'd rather have it used than have to fetch something from disk or the network. Modern operating systems do use your free memory for cache. Linux will regularly chill at 90%+ memory usage (the majority being cache that can be freed instantly when other apps need it) and Windows has SuperFetch which does basically the same thing as I understand.
    - daemin 15y ago
      Yes, you could write such a program. Yes modern OSes do use non-Application RAM for caching, mostly files and other small buffers. While Firefox is probably doing a lot of caching for web content, something that modern OSes don't yet do. Hence I have no qualms about it using over a gig of RAM. I guess my comment was read more angrily than I meant it to sound. What I mean is let applications use as much RAM as they need and be done with it.
latif 15y ago
The Firefox teams seems to no longer care about add-ons and add-on users. I am an Add-on author. I submitted an updated version of my addon for Firefox 8 on October 27. Twelve days later the new version is still sitting in a sandbox waiting editorial review. With a new release happening every 6 weeks this kind of behavior is inexcusable and will likely drive people away from Add-ons. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/categorize/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/categorize/
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Known problem with the compatibility system, and Mozilla plans to address it in the near future by improving the notion of compatibility, as well as adding the ability to quickly mark an existing version of an addon as compatible when it doesn't need changes.
- Sanddancer 15y ago
  I disagree. The folks at Mozilla are not so quietly encouraging developers to get involved in the alpha and beta releases to ensure that things do work on day one of a release? How much work was done up to October 27 ensuring that your add-on was ready to go?
  - wslh 15y ago
    Sorry Sanddancer but my experience as an add-on author is that writing free add-ons can quickly turn to a demanding job. For example, if you look at the tab mix plus add-on source code you can find a very long list of workarounds to make it work in different contexts.
- patd 15y ago
  My last addon release was reviewed after a little over a month. They do however do automatic check to ensure that your addon still works with newer releases and upgrade the compatibility automatically.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nodata 15y ago
s/is released/has been released/;

141 points by evanw 15y ago

Dear Mozilla. Why do you keep doing all these full version releases? Seriously it's just annoying. Just because IE is on version 10. Doesn't mean you have to be. Why are you doing this.... You've gone from 3-8 in a year. That's not right.

sp332 15y ago
"Full" version releases? There will be a new release every six weeks. Whatever features are ready to be shipped at that time will be released. There was a discussion about removing the version number from the "About" box but it was left in for debugging purposes. That's all the version number is for now. Since there are no "long-term support" versions, just make sure you're up-to-date and don't give the version number any mind.
- technomancy 15y ago
  > There will be a new release every six weeks. The corrollary to this being that releases are no longer news.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Right. New features might be news, but new versions shouldn't be.
    - FantasyIslander 15y ago
      Exactly. For business who have legal or medical requirements to keep track of Browser Capabilities, Firefox is already known to be a rogue browser. Browser capabilities are very important, and how it behaves must be expected for legal and medical requirements. Please join us in the real world, and leave your fantasy behind. The plane boss! The plane!
- hozzer 15y ago
  The point about "There was a discussion about removing the version number" is about the only appropriate response I got that somebody actually got my rant. However you are Assuming "The latest is the Greatest". There was one of the versions 5 or 6, I forget. I didn't want it. But when it came time to reformat my computer I didn't have a choice and had to get an older version from a friend. It was buggy and slow. Crashed with Flash all the time. You could blame Adobe, but I want to wait till it gets worked out to upload. I'm just wandering why not 4.1 - 4.2 with an automatic update especially if it's a security issue. People are much more likely to download an update then a full version upgrade. You can't tell me you don't automatically click "Update" when it pops up vs load new version where you think twice. I can tell you my friends have a variety versions of firefox 3-7 (Not all of them are tech savvy). But I guarantee they all have they most up to date sub version of what ever they are on. Also as a rule with version releases I usually wait a month or 2 to let other people "beta" test it to make sure their are no major bugs. It's something I have applied in my career and has protected me from various software issues that come with new version. XP -> Vista -> 7 is an example for why I never used Vista but now happily run 7. I'm sorry but Mozilla is not using versions right. I'm just shocked people don't get this and my comment was taken with such backlash. And don't get me wrong, I love mozilla and what they've done. I love firefox.
skl_ 15y ago
Although I've not looked into exactly why Mozilla have adopted the rapid-release cycle, I'd imagine it may be something to do with the ability to quickly drop backwards-compatibility and support. That way the code base can mature faster and less time is spent on redunant versions.
- DEinspanjer 15y ago
  The most important reason for it was to keep new features from being stuck in limbo just because they happened to be part of the same branch as a feature that was taking a long time to be production ready. This is what killed us with 4.0. There were big and nice features in 4 that were actually ready more than 6 months prior to release, but they couldn't go because they were "full release" features and they were waiting for other features that were considered to be "must have" for 4.0. With the rapid release cycle, when features start development, they have the ability to be easily configured out of the release product if they aren't ready for a particular version. We have a reliable release schedule that we expect to hit every 6 weeks. Obviously, we do our best to have as many new features as are ready be part of each release, but we don't leave people wondering when it will finally happen because we keep to the schedule and release the features that are ready. Some of the biggest parts of this release were actually groundwork improvements to make the add-ons ecosphere more comfortable in the context of rapid release.
eCa 15y ago
I sort of understand their reasoning. It's easier to get people interested in a "full" release, than some 3.0.21 version every three mongths. It also was more wrong to stay on 3.6.* for over two years. A middle road might be to start a year with a full release and then do point-releases doing that year, so in 2013 we would have, for instance: 13, 13.0.1, 13.1, 13.2, 13.2.1, 13.3.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  This is a valid, on topic, cogent post. Why is it getting downvoted?
  - richbradshaw 15y ago
    Because version numbers are irrelevant, what's important is keeping people on the newest version. "Solving" the problem of large version numbers is like solving the problem 1/0.
    - eCa 15y ago
      At work we have a web application purchased about 18 months ago that officially don't support Firefox above 3.6. There were rendering differences between 3.6 and 4 that were serious enough to enforce that restriction for certain users. Apparently, it has begun working as expected again in FF7 (might have worked in FF6, not sure). The application also uses jQuery 1.2.6 (released May '08) - I guess I'll be the one to QA the migration to the present day. Hence I am not yet a believer in "latest version is the greatest version", in all cases. In principle, yes, but there are exceptions that makes version numbers necessary.
      - Skalman 15y ago
        I'm not entirely sure, but I think Mozilla will continue to support Fx 3.6 until they have a better solution for large companies. I'm not sure what that better solution would be, but I believe they're trying to solve the problem.
      - 15y ago
azakai 15y ago
Firefox and Chrome both have the same update cycle - a new major version every 6 weeks. I believe the main reason for both projects doing it are allowing them to get improvements and new features to users faster. One or two releases a year means a very long time before improvements get to users, and it holds everything back. 6-week releases means you get improvements to users in just a few months. Of course there are downsides to 6-week releases. If you prefer a slower-updating browser, there are other good options, such as Opera. And if you want even more stability, there are Safari and IE, which these days are quite good as well.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

DEinspanjer 15y ago
You were off by a bit there. We should expect to be on version 16 by this time next year. Not that the version number should be important to end users. Just developers.
melling 15y ago
Mozilla will soon be auto-updating Firefox every 6 weeks like Chrome, so half the Internet will be getting a regular update and progress will happen much more quickly. The version number is irrelevant. Personally, I think it's amazing that we can move this quickly.
notatoad 15y ago
here we go again with the version number complaints. get over it. it doesn't make any difference to you what number they want to call it.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  Considering the whole reason they're doing this crap is to make it look like they're keeping up to date with Chrome, yeah, it kinda does make a difference. Methinks they don't understand the concept of "Major release.minor release"
  - richbradshaw 15y ago
    That's not why they are doing it. It's because it's better for everyone if things like browsers are essentially versionless, and everyone is on the newest version. Immediate automatic updates mean that users are always able to access the newest features.
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      That's an awfully subjective position to take. I don't have a problem with rapid release, but I have a problem with passing off minor revisions and bugfixes as major releases. And try to tell me the version doesn't matter when there's a regression or otherwise something broken on a newer rev that works fine on an older one. I don't know where this recent trend of "version numbers are evil" came from, but it's entirely silly.

recoiledsnake 15y ago

Just got the notification, but didn't upgrade because a lot of my very useful extensions for HTML dev weren't compatible. I don't think the new features in 7->8 make up for the lack of my extensions.

joenathan 15y ago
Use this extension to "make" your extensions compatible https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=api https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compat...
- evanw 15y ago
  This is great, thanks for posting it. I manage my passwords with 1Password, and while they're good about pushing updates, I've never seen their Firefox extension marked as compatible when a new version of Firefox is released.
  - sirn 15y ago
    1Password 3.8.7 seems to be compatible with Firefox 8 though. They're getting a lot better at keeping up with Firefox version lately (ever since they introduced Aurora and "maybe" Nightly support)
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Why 1Password rather than Firefox Sync?
    - nassosdim 15y ago
      Probably because 1Password doesn't support just a specific browser and it's also available for tablets and smartphones.
      - carussell 15y ago
        The Sync API is documented, and Mozilla encourages development of outside server and client implementations. Sync is available for tablets and smartphones.

Tichy 15y ago

The add-on thing could be huge, if it works out. I am tired of seeing computers riddled with spybars.

udp 15y ago
Yep - I was very impressed to see the update installer ask if I want to keep add-ons installed by a third party, with the default option being no.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
Definitely a good idea for Windows users, and possibly Macs as well (I don't know the prevalence of browser-infesting software there). On Linux, though, it promptly flagged all of the addons I had installed through the distro packaging system as "third-party addons" and wanted to disable them by default.
- Ziomislaw 15y ago
  so it worked properly on Linux. there is no way to know whether an addon instaled 'for the whole' system was added by third party, or by package. only addons in Your home dir are considered as 'installed by you'
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Except that Linux doesn't tend to suffer from the browser-infesting stealth installs common to other platforms; the case of packaged addons seems far more common and likely.
    - Ziomislaw 15y ago
      ubuntu? yes, you can unistall it, but popular distros do come with pre-installed stuff.

dman 15y ago

Folks at mozilla - keep up the good work. Could you create some videos and tutorials about extension development?

padenot 15y ago
Tutorials (and learning material in general) can be found on https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions. This page seem to cover both API (XUL & Jetpack).
- dman 15y ago
  I am aware of the page and have written an Extension in the past. I am unclear about the following things a) Is Jetpack the way to go going forward? How much of the XPCom api is available through Jetpack? b) Is there an IDE I can setup that will allow me to get autocompletion for extension development? c) Is there an API browser for XPCom objects listing the objects, the methods available on them and the minimum version of Firefox that supports the particular api? Having a searchable index would be even better. d) When I was working on a Firefox extension I often got the feeling that I was doing something suboptimal because the development process seemed pretty broken. I was building extensions and had to restart the browser for them to take effect, getting a debugger going was more work than it should be, I wondered why isnt the Firefox ui itself written using HTML and css. I am hoping that more tutorials and workflow related posts will address many of my concerns. Knowing the workflow of folks at mozilla will be a huge help to people like me who are working on writing extensions because the road to writing a meaningful extension is not as straightforward as it could be. In the end I dont want the above points to act as a downer in a software release post and would like to congratulate folks at Mozilla about the great work that they do.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Jetpack is preferred because it's easier to write, reduces compatibility problems between versions (because there are fewer "hooks" into deep FF innards), and you don't have to restart to install, uninstall, or reload them. Of course there are limitations, but unless you really need something in XUL that's not available in Jetpack, Jetpack is the way to go.

rnadna 15y ago

Is this great news, or good news, or nothing too exciting? Dunno. It might be interesting to learn how many people read this in another browser, popped over to firefox to update it ... and then returned to their other browser. We may be at the point where browsers are like toilet paper -- lots of brands will do the work, and it's hard to pay much attention to which one is installed.

bergie 15y ago
Firefox Sync sort of changes that for me. It gives enough convenience that I've also gone Firefox on my mobile devices. Being able to access open tabs from my laptop on the phone is great when I'm sitting in the bus.
- quinndupont 15y ago
  I really hope the persistent sync bugs get worked out soon. I'm told that the final, and big, fix was in alpha, which makes me think that it's not in 8.0. Soon, soon.

electic 15y ago

In 5 weeks they are going to be shipping Firefox 13.0.

shocks 15y ago

It would make more sense (to me) that they focused on fixing some of the many bugs filed in the bug tracker. Just saying, but then Chrome is my browser of choice anyway...

bzbarsky 15y ago
You do realize that there were tons of bugs fixed between 7 and 8, right? It's just that bugfixes never make the news.
abraham 15y ago
Chrome has over 31,000 open issues. http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list

bakhlawa 15y ago

Have the memory issues been resolved? Under Windows 7, it isn't uncommon to find an idle Firefox browser with a few low-activity tabs using up more than 1.5GB of memory. It's gotten to a stage where I have to restart the browser every couple of days...reminds me of when I had to this with my Windows PC! I've recently moved over the Chrome and while I miss Firefox, the browser is far less of a memory hog.

daemin 15y ago
Why does it bother you that an application is using so much RAM? Do you only have 2 GB or something like that? I'd prefer that applications used my RAM since unused RAM is just wasted electricity. I find it strange that people still think of RAM as a precious resource that needs to be conserved and under-utilised. I'd rather have it used than have to fetch something from disk or the network.
- hnwh 15y ago
  Some of us actually use our RAM for other things...
- getsat 15y ago
  > I'd prefer that applications used my RAM since unused RAM is just wasted electricity. I... but... er... This is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen on this site. You could write a two line C program that allocates all the memory on your system and then sits in a loop doing nothing, but then you'd be wasting even more electricity because your hdd would be reading/writing to your swap space. :| > I'd rather have it used than have to fetch something from disk or the network. Modern operating systems do use your free memory for cache. Linux will regularly chill at 90%+ memory usage (the majority being cache that can be freed instantly when other apps need it) and Windows has SuperFetch which does basically the same thing as I understand.
  - daemin 15y ago
    Yes, you could write such a program. Yes modern OSes do use non-Application RAM for caching, mostly files and other small buffers. While Firefox is probably doing a lot of caching for web content, something that modern OSes don't yet do. Hence I have no qualms about it using over a gig of RAM. I guess my comment was read more angrily than I meant it to sound. What I mean is let applications use as much RAM as they need and be done with it.

latif 15y ago

The Firefox teams seems to no longer care about add-ons and add-on users. I am an Add-on author. I submitted an updated version of my addon for Firefox 8 on October 27. Twelve days later the new version is still sitting in a sandbox waiting editorial review. With a new release happening every 6 weeks this kind of behavior is inexcusable and will likely drive people away from Add-ons. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/categorize/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/categorize/

JoshTriplett 15y ago
Known problem with the compatibility system, and Mozilla plans to address it in the near future by improving the notion of compatibility, as well as adding the ability to quickly mark an existing version of an addon as compatible when it doesn't need changes.
Sanddancer 15y ago
I disagree. The folks at Mozilla are not so quietly encouraging developers to get involved in the alpha and beta releases to ensure that things do work on day one of a release? How much work was done up to October 27 ensuring that your add-on was ready to go?
- wslh 15y ago
  Sorry Sanddancer but my experience as an add-on author is that writing free add-ons can quickly turn to a demanding job. For example, if you look at the tab mix plus add-on source code you can find a very long list of workarounds to make it work in different contexts.
patd 15y ago
My last addon release was reviewed after a little over a month. They do however do automatic check to ensure that your addon still works with newer releases and upgrade the compatibility automatically.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nodata 15y ago

s/is released/has been released/;