5 ms·

Firefox in 2011 – Firefox plans for 2012

69 points by keyist 15y ago

napoleoncomplex 15y ago
At the risk of sounding ungrateful, can we please get a new download manager? I remember getting excited almost a year ago when an update for it was announced, yet I'm still stuck with this infuriating default which makes me want to smash my screen. Yes, I'm aware add-ons fix that, I don't want an add-on for something that should exist as a part of Firefox.
- kibwen 15y ago
  According to the Mozilla wiki[1] the release is on-target for Firefox 14, which means it should hopefully land in Nightly within the next six weeks. I feel your pain, though. Download Statusbar[2] has been indispensable for my purposes. Will be curious to see if the new download manager will be worth switching back to the default. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:P.A./Panel-based_Download_Manager https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:P.A./Panel-based_Download_Mana... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-stat...
kaolinite 15y ago
Woohoo. Addons are now synced as part of Firefox sync. I'm so glad they put this in. Yet to see if addon settings will also sync, somehow I doubt it.
- gkoberger 15y ago
  It depends on how the add-on author sets things up: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync#Are_Add-on_Settings_Synchronized.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync#Are_Add-on...
  - kaolinite 15y ago
    Ah good to know. I imagine the most popular addons will implement this. That's good enough for me.
davux 15y ago
Since there is no mention of Firefox 'Metro Style' for Windows 8, should one gather that it won't happen during 2012? I realize they just announced that they're starting it, but I assumed it would come sometime around the launch of Windows 8.
- wegwerf 15y ago
  According to the roadmap[1], a proof of concept will be done in Q2, and an alpha and a beta sometime in the second half of the year. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap
stef25 15y ago
Firefox is dead to me, replaced it with Chrome. On a relatively new iMac I get the spinning rainbow all the time, scrolling is jittery, everything takes ages. This is even with just 2-3 tabs open. Scandalous Firefox, you were great a couple years ago.
- indubitably 15y ago
  Baloney, Firefox works great.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    I think it depends on your system & usage. I ended up buying a new laptop several months ago mostly due to how badly Firefox was running on my system at the time. I had a PBG4 and was using the TenFourFox build of Firefox for PPC; Firefox was consuming epic amounts of memory and had a really funky stop-the-world pause every minute or so by the end of the day, requiring daily restarts and other hassles. That laptop did everything else I needed it to do, but since enough of my work requires a web browser, I ended up buying a new system just so that I could switch to Chrome. I've also seen similar behavior on Windows XP systems and other older hardware. I suspect that "Firefox works great" is true mostly for people running on relatively new systems, although I haven't so much as opened Firefox in the last 6 months, so I have no idea what their current software is like. There are comments on every Firefox thread about problems people have had with it. Declaring "baloney" is as stupid as if I were to respond to the above comments about Chrome by saying, "Nonsense. Chrome works great for me, I never have a problem with it."
    - indubitably 15y ago
      PPC is irrelevant.
  - stef25 15y ago
    for you
- bittermang 15y ago
  That's odd. I experienced the same issues with Chrome when I tried to migrate to it away from Firefox to see what all the fuss was about. Also Chrome's tab bar display when you have more than 50 tabs open is atrocious. I've since stuck with Firefox and been very pleased with how the browser has been progressing after getting out of their development slump. In any case, I have no desire to return to my fanboy days of yore and so called browser wars. I am perfectly content that anyone may use whatever browser strikes their fancy, so long as these browsers and web developers alike continue to forge and adhere to standards. Gone are the days when you would use a browser because it literally rendered pages better or different from another browser. Choice now is determined by the User Experience and features offered by the browser, the way it should be.
abhaga 15y ago
Well I ran Firefox 3.6 for years and it was stable as a rock. Couple of months ago, Ubuntu pushed the latest Firefox in updates. I am now running 10.0.2 on lucid and it barely lasts for couple of hours before crashing when running Gmail. I have dutifully submitted all crash reports and hope that somewhere on the 2012 roadmap, they also take care of this.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  My FF was the crashiest lump of pudding ever - seriously it was crashing a few times an hour ... until I started with a new profile and moved across my various .sqlite files (eg places.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, etc.). Now? Completely crash free AFAIR. I used http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile... as the basis of what to copy, though there are other such pages like http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering%20important%20data%20from%20an%20old%20profile http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering%20important%2... which might help.
pedrolll 15y ago
Seems there's still no proper Lion support. I wonder what's taking so long. Chrome has had this for months.

69 points by keyist 15y ago

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, can we please get a new download manager? I remember getting excited almost a year ago when an update for it was announced, yet I'm still stuck with this infuriating default which makes me want to smash my screen. Yes, I'm aware add-ons fix that, I don't want an add-on for something that should exist as a part of Firefox.

kibwen 15y ago
According to the Mozilla wiki[1] the release is on-target for Firefox 14, which means it should hopefully land in Nightly within the next six weeks. I feel your pain, though. Download Statusbar[2] has been indispensable for my purposes. Will be curious to see if the new download manager will be worth switching back to the default. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:P.A./Panel-based_Download_Manager https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:P.A./Panel-based_Download_Mana... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-stat...

kaolinite 15y ago

Woohoo. Addons are now synced as part of Firefox sync. I'm so glad they put this in. Yet to see if addon settings will also sync, somehow I doubt it.

gkoberger 15y ago
It depends on how the add-on author sets things up: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync#Are_Add-on_Settings_Synchronized.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/Sync/Addon_Sync#Are_Add-on...
- kaolinite 15y ago
  Ah good to know. I imagine the most popular addons will implement this. That's good enough for me.

davux 15y ago

Since there is no mention of Firefox 'Metro Style' for Windows 8, should one gather that it won't happen during 2012? I realize they just announced that they're starting it, but I assumed it would come sometime around the launch of Windows 8.

wegwerf 15y ago
According to the roadmap[1], a proof of concept will be done in Q2, and an alpha and a beta sometime in the second half of the year. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap

stef25 15y ago

Firefox is dead to me, replaced it with Chrome. On a relatively new iMac I get the spinning rainbow all the time, scrolling is jittery, everything takes ages. This is even with just 2-3 tabs open. Scandalous Firefox, you were great a couple years ago.

indubitably 15y ago
Baloney, Firefox works great.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  I think it depends on your system & usage. I ended up buying a new laptop several months ago mostly due to how badly Firefox was running on my system at the time. I had a PBG4 and was using the TenFourFox build of Firefox for PPC; Firefox was consuming epic amounts of memory and had a really funky stop-the-world pause every minute or so by the end of the day, requiring daily restarts and other hassles. That laptop did everything else I needed it to do, but since enough of my work requires a web browser, I ended up buying a new system just so that I could switch to Chrome. I've also seen similar behavior on Windows XP systems and other older hardware. I suspect that "Firefox works great" is true mostly for people running on relatively new systems, although I haven't so much as opened Firefox in the last 6 months, so I have no idea what their current software is like. There are comments on every Firefox thread about problems people have had with it. Declaring "baloney" is as stupid as if I were to respond to the above comments about Chrome by saying, "Nonsense. Chrome works great for me, I never have a problem with it."
  - indubitably 15y ago
    PPC is irrelevant.
- stef25 15y ago
  for you
bittermang 15y ago
That's odd. I experienced the same issues with Chrome when I tried to migrate to it away from Firefox to see what all the fuss was about. Also Chrome's tab bar display when you have more than 50 tabs open is atrocious. I've since stuck with Firefox and been very pleased with how the browser has been progressing after getting out of their development slump. In any case, I have no desire to return to my fanboy days of yore and so called browser wars. I am perfectly content that anyone may use whatever browser strikes their fancy, so long as these browsers and web developers alike continue to forge and adhere to standards. Gone are the days when you would use a browser because it literally rendered pages better or different from another browser. Choice now is determined by the User Experience and features offered by the browser, the way it should be.

abhaga 15y ago

Well I ran Firefox 3.6 for years and it was stable as a rock. Couple of months ago, Ubuntu pushed the latest Firefox in updates. I am now running 10.0.2 on lucid and it barely lasts for couple of hours before crashing when running Gmail. I have dutifully submitted all crash reports and hope that somewhere on the 2012 roadmap, they also take care of this.

pbhjpbhj 15y ago
My FF was the crashiest lump of pudding ever - seriously it was crashing a few times an hour ... until I started with a new profile and moved across my various .sqlite files (eg places.sqlite, cookies.sqlite, etc.). Now? Completely crash free AFAIR. I used http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile... as the basis of what to copy, though there are other such pages like http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering%20important%20data%20from%20an%20old%20profile http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering%20important%2... which might help.

pedrolll 15y ago

Seems there's still no proper Lion support. I wonder what's taking so long. Chrome has had this for months.