Mozilla hastily shoves Firefox updates out door

Darned vulns!

Typical of Microsoft to release a half finished, half baked browser with all these XSS vulnerabilities and so on, plus charging over the odds for Apple's shiny look on this Chromey shiny Safari Vista!

Bah... I'm off to hand code HTML packets on my tuxedo wearing flightless cold bird flu iPenguin with the controlled hardware software combo from Redhatmondtino.

Heh

That'll teach us for gloating at the poor old IE users, eh?

Nice to see the Google spyware gone from V2, as well. If that doesn't get me flamed, nothing will. I need a few flames; it's rather cold today ;o)

Repeat after me...

I will install noscript, I will install noscript, I will install noscript.

Funny...

MS, Opera, and Mozilla are all rushing out critical fixes this week. Maybe one development model isn't inherently better than another. Maybe the only real way to ensure browser developers care about security is to enforce it from the user end by maintaining the competition and letting your favorite developer know you can and will switch whenever they seem to get too lazy...

Oh, wait, this is The Register. Opera got theirs out first! Suck on that, monolithic and open-source development fanbois!

Aaaargh! Irony...

"IE's buggered! Change browser"

"Duuh OK"

*Installs Firefox*

*Spends rest of day watching Firefox fall down*

How about some decent testing before releasing what appears to be a technology which has merely provided us more vulns? No! I don't want fries with my McFail...

fire fox sake! [geddit?]

glad they've fixed the security holes.

now is there any chance of doing something to stop the OSX version of FF3 leaking memory like a sieve, hogging 30% processor time while in the background and gradually grind-i-n-g t--o a c--r--a--w--l as the hours go by?

@ Meh.

"This is not the future I was promised."

Awwww, poor thing.

BTW, I've heard some nasty rumors about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, too.

Getting tired of this

Can't someone just make a browser that doesn't have gaping security holes to start with? Asking a lot right? Maybe if they didn't worry about supporting all this scripting junk.

Ff3? no way

I will upgrade to Ff3 when they give us a way of turning off the annoying new address bar (and also ideally the rendering of tabs when you drag them to move them but that isn't a priority)

Unwanted and unsolicited 'features' ftl.

@Meh

If you don't know how to manage your bookmarks in Firefox 3, you're probably too thick to use it anyway.

Hastily?

Why makes you think it was done hastily? Evidence please.

The fact that 4 out of the 5 update releases for FF3 have been on a Wednesday (including this one) suggests that it was planned.

@Ff3? no way

re : the annoying new address bar

try the "oldbar" extension

firefox3 nein danke

I just wrote to mozilla to tell them I will not be installing ff3 until they allow users to turn off the "Awesome"(sic) address bar functions.I do not suppose they will pay any attention.

If I want

If I want ur pass...

Browsers are designed to tell it.

Paris, 'cuz being designed for something ain't all bad.

Here we go again

I am sick and tired of these Firefox Updates and am seriously considering going back to Internet Explorer

FF3 bookmarks? What's the problem?

So, you fiddle around with your bookmarks using "Organise Bookmarks" until they do what you want, then you select the Backup/Restore button and you can then backup, restore or even <gasp!> Import and Export as HTML.

Why is that difficult?

@Madra

That'd be the same Firefox 3 I'm running on 4 Macs with no memory leaks, about 3% CPU usage with sessions usually running all week... I'd have a look at the extensions you're running.

And isn't No-script a No-brainer?

actually this release was planned for weeks

as you can see by going to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases, this release has been planned for weeks and is part of Mozilla's regular update. The next one is planned for Feb 3rd. Presumably we can expect another Register article about security panics on Feb 4th. Or would the Register prefer it if browser makers didn't patch their software?

FF2 No longer updated?

FF2.0.0.19 will no longer be updated? EXCELLENT-- finally will be rid of those annoying "do you want to update now" popups that always seem to pop up when I'm doing something really important (such as working on my banking site, about to click on a sell order on my brokerage site, or about to snipe something on eBay). Now FF 2 is TRULY perfect.

@Ff3? no way Anonymous Coward

The one that irks me is how the Back pulldown and Forward pulldown were merged into a single list with less total entries. Yes, IT DID MATTER. A lot of the time the page I want to jump back to is 10-15 pages back, especially if you've been browsing about on Amazon or similar. Now you only get 7 forward, 7 back, and the confusion of seeing the page you are currently on.

Add to that FF3';s adoption of a NONSTANDARD cookie file format and their removal of useful stuff from Tools/Page Info and FF3 is a major regression for me. What? You thought Mozilla was all about standards? That went out about 4 years ago. Ever since its been all about the chrome, baby! Look at that snazzy backforward button that looks like something stolen from MS. How many extra cycles does it take to draw that versus a standard rectangular region?

Oh, and when FF first came out, then again in FF2 they took stuff out of Preferences and buried it in about:config. Now, with FF3 its still buried in about:config but you're warned that you are mucjking about in an area where you shouldn't! Seriously? Just to change my Ctrl+Wheel behavior?

@Eddie Johnson

Stop moaning. It's free.

If you don't like it, use another browser or write your own. Nobody's stopping you.

@Keith Doyle

No, you won't get any more updates for FF2. Of course, if you get screwed over by a vulnerability in an old and unsupported version of FF which you are using to control and run your finances via the web, then don't go whining that it's all Mozilla's fault. It won't be. It'll be your "change is scary" Luddite conservatism which is to blame.

What problem?

My Firefox 3.0.4 on Ubuntu 8.10 seems to be chugging along without any problems.

Why am I not overwhelmed with paranoid type anxiety?

Anyway what with Climate Change/Financial system Meltdown/ Credit Crunch/ Mr. Madoff of New York etc , I am surprised all you lot have not gone into your bunkers by now

@Sim, various ACs etc. re: 'Awesome' bar

Want to turn off the 'Awesome' bar? Allow me to let you in to a closely guarded secret - you can do it! Just by typing, you don't need no stinkin' extension!

It's even been published on El Reg several times already!

There's a top secret L33t HaX0r way of finding out what to do. The thing is: there's this pretty good website called 'Google' that runs this, like, index of the Internet. And the best thing is - you can search it! So if you go to Google and you type in something really complex like

turn off Firefox awesome bar

Any one of the 74,800 hits will tell you ...

In the 'Awesome' bar type

about:config (and press Enter)

Find the line for

browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped

Click that line so that the value changes to true

The end.

Now put your computer back in the box it came in, and send it back to the manufacturer asking for a full refund.

Title not protected

Well, after reading the Reg for some six months, I've finally installed Noscript, so thanks Reg commentators, evidently repetition does work. Had Adblock and Firephorm for some time (with BT until they change the T&Cs), for some time.

I still think Firefox is the best (and safest) when you include the plugins IMHO.

+1 to Firefox 3.

FF Bookmarks

"So, you fiddle around with your bookmarks using "Organise Bookmarks" until they do what you want, then you select the Backup/Restore button and you can then backup, restore or even <gasp!> Import and Export as HTML"

Even better, install the foxmarks plugin and you can share/backup your bookmarks on every PC you use

@Vincent

"i'm thinking about jumping ship to Chrome once it comes out of Beta."

http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/article.php/3790856/Googles+Chrome+Should+Still+Be+In+Beta.htm

re Great Support

Preach it, AC.

IE6: released 27 August 2001, supported until 13 Jul 2010

FF2: released 24 October 2006, supported until 16 December 2008

And people wonder why grown-up organisations - who are often squeezed to complete the evaluation, sign-off and rollout of an app in under two years find it hard to take the Mozilla org seriously? We are, after all, talking about an application which famously is about as amenable to centralised management as a pissed-off tomcat.

(aside: where's the Asa-Dotzler-with-horns piccy?)

@AC

Interesting that the FF3 fanbois are all ACs. At any rate, unlike most people (apparently), I don't depend on the browser for security. And that includes protection against phishing sites, buffer overflows and stealth XML, ActiveX or other such nonsense.

FF3 has resurrected all of the same reasons I stopped using Netscape, Mozilla and, for that matter, IE. The developer's just don't get it. They can't keep themselves from bloating the browser with unnecessary and redundant features such as tabs and databases (and for that matter, bookmarking-- which need to be accessed on all the user's computers and shouldn't be stored at all on web clients). And while they're so busy adding useless features, critical ones they should be concentrating on are completely ignored (like user interruption protection-- THOU SHALL NOT STEAL KEYBOARD FOCUS AWAY FROM ME WHILE I"M TYPING -- and while that may be the OS' job, if they're not doing it, the browser can and should).

I may move away from FF2 at some point, but I can tell you it ain't gonna be to FF3.

Seamonkey - the FF for the clued up folks

I'm just glad there is Seamonkey available, which doesn't treat you like a clueless newbie like IE and FF (as it wants to imitate IE) do.

For anyone frustrated with FF, try Seamonkey, same browsing engine as FF, therefore same extensions and plugins as FF, but much better UI, more configurable, and no useless cpu-consuming gimmicks.

@steve

I already tried that, it doesn't solve the main problem:

if I want to go to google, I start to type it in. When I type go, google should appear, being the most visited address starting with go. Instead, I get random websites that contain go in their title bar, or, even more annoyingly, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE URL. I only want it to match the start of a URL, not the middle, and not titles at all.