back to article Mozilla hangs fire on Firefox 3.5 till June

Mozilla has further delayed the release date for the next version of its Firefox web browser. The next version of the open source browser was initially due in early 2009, but the addition of extra fixtures and additional testing rounds means that the middle of the year has become a more realistic target date. Firefox 3.1 beta …

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  1. Bassey

    No wonder it's been delayed

    My experience is that beta 3 is a crok of shite. I installed it over the weekend and it's barely stayed up for more than five minutes since. I've rebooted, re-installed etc. but it just falls over and dies after a couple of minutes. In fact, last night it wouldn't even get as far as rendering my homepage.

    I've actually resorted to using IE8 RC1 - which is surprisingly good. It imported all my Firefox bookmarks and settings and renders OWA sites particularly well. I'll still switch back to Firefox once they sort themselves out because I use a lot of their plugins but the new I8 is actually very good.

  2. Alexis Vallance
    Thumb Up

    lol

    "Schtop! This browser is not ready"

    made me laugh

  3. Dam

    Competition \o/

    While I don't contemplate the possibility of using Opera, Safari or God forbid, IE, one has to admit that Firefox rekindled the competition.

    That's a good thing :)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Bassey

    You need to change your OS. Beta 3 works fine on a real operating system.

    Resorting to IE8 when you've got so many better options (Chrome, Opera, Safari) makes you a bit of a retard.

  5. Richard Vivash

    Safari 4

    I think Firefox has a long way to go to keep up with other browsers these days and I wouldn't be surprised if they've looked at what the competition are doing and thought "whoops, we need to work a bit harder on this one". Until recently it has always been my browser of choice, but since the Safari 4 beta arrived I've been using that exclusively.

    I've never been a fan of Safari and always found that it lacked features, however I think Apple have pretty much hit the nail on the head with version 4 (provided you install adblock of course). The new coverflow history is truly useful and makes locating that one page in 1000 so much easier. The tabs in the title bar is neat and the top sites 'wall' display is cute eye candy, although not exactly a must have feature.

    But for me the one killer feature Safari 4 has is the developer tools. I'm a freelance web developer, so the ability to inspect elements, see computed styles, trace inheritance and switch selected styles on and off in a way that is truly integrated into the browser is a brilliant time saver. I really don't know how I've managed without these kind of tools before. I've always used the web developer plug-in for Firefox, but this takes it to a new level of integration and ease of use. Excellent. I can't wait for the final version!

    Firefox are really going to have to pull something out of the bag to win me back.

    Just my opinion, ymmv.

  6. Ian Bradshaw

    Who cares?

    In the grand scheme of things, who cars about a browser?

    Some are marginally faster at a/b/c, but the same one slower at x/y/z. They'll all have some security bugs, so you're going to have to keep checking for updates to them all (and frankly, who cares if it gets upgraded once, twice or 50 times a year - they all do it automatically).

    The only people this matters too are the ones making the browsers, the rest of us install whatever pedastole we want to stand on (wether its an Opera one, a Mozilla one or a MS one) but at the end of the day; we all have to update, patch and upgrade regardless of whatever path we pick.

    As for speed ... it makes no difference. In the real world, websites dont use 9000 JScripts or whatever, so a marginal saving (in time terms) is meaningless anyway.

    You get a site that loads in 10 sec on one browser and 5 on another, its doomed anyway; as there will always be a split between browsers - so you immediately alinate whatever % are using that browser. By the time sites are upgraded to what is the latest and greatest website toy, the browsers will be capable anyway.

    The web runs on the lowest common denominator of the major browsers, not whichever is the fastest. So if your interested in saving 0.25sec of your life, the browser speed choice is relevent. For the rest of the human race its about wether you want to customise it, disable scripts or whatever your personal quirk is.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Does that mean...

    they are developing a way to disable the AwfulBar?

    I hope so. Might finally get me to upgrade from 2.0.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    International Units

    "The decision to rename Firefox 3.1 to Firefox 3.5 reflects the sheer volume of work that makes it feel more than a small update to Firefox 3.0,"

    Do we have a new unit here? Work done measured in FFVs?

  9. Eddie Johnson
    Stop

    Oh, you've gotta be kidding

    I've barely got 3.0.X deployed and its already out of date!?!

    I still want my 2.0.0.20 or whatever back, with the features they took away since then in exchange for a forward/back button that looks like a TV remote and a stupid URL input that prevents me from clicking Go at its random whim.

    Its funny how Firefox is making all the same mistakes MS made years ago, going to non-text based cookie files, config files etc so mass deployment and remote configuration becomes a nightmare.

    And before you tell me I can get a plugin to address <whatever> - that's the whole problem - undoubtedly 3.5 will bring with it a whole new architecture that breaks all existing plugins and you can see the fatigue setting in with the plugin authors. Who's going to rewrite AllCookies for example? Hell, the best Calendar extension I have only works with Mozilla 1.7 or Firefox 1.0. The port to 1.5 was crap and the port to 2.0/3.0 is nonexistent.

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Trix
    Boffin

    At ACs

    Dear morons,

    #1 Works fine on my XP workstation. Did you bother recreating your old poxy FF profile?

    #2 You've been able to set the search/address bar back to the old behaviour forever. Maybe if you googled and got yourself into about:config, you might be able to figure it out. Personally, I like the feature.

  12. Another Anonymous Coward

    Ah well, at least competition is always good..

    The awesomebar is changeable, but changing it needs to be a tickbox option, not simply "instructions for how to change this are buried away in some obscure piece of documentation that involves editing about:config".

    I stick with Firefox for the extensions, I still believe that customisation is key for anyone who wants to use a browser other than IE. Being able to customize the theme is crucial, whitehart all the way for me! Being able to customize interface elements is also good... the browsers with fixed input field boxes and tabs at the top with no way to change this bug me, so firefox's drag and drop interface for changing it is great. 2 thin bars: one with file/edit/view etc., search box and address box, the other with navigation icons and bookmark icons (text removed, naturally).

    Now that I'm used to that, I could never go back to the clunky great icons and mulltiple useless toolbars. I do think Chrome has gone a bit too far in the other direction though, people like it if there's the usual file/edit/view menus to click on.

    Very good to see a healthy amount of competition though, means that all browsers have to up their game if they want to keep or raise their market share.

    Improving javascript speed is not as important as getting the compatibility right.

    Somehow I get the impression that MS will release a new browser with superfast javascript that still doesn't bloody conform to the standards. It's a bit frustrating... I'm a flash developer and a lot of stuff could be done with javascript instead, but there is no way I'm trawling through every legacy browser to make sure that the code is compatible when I can code in AS3 and be damned certain that it'll do the job.

  13. Eddie Johnson
    Flame

    @Trix

    >>Maybe if you googled and got yourself into about:config, you might be able to figure it out. Personally, I like the feature.

    But-but-but- what about the warning when I enter about:config? It warns me that I'm tampering in a special area where I shouldn't and might invalidate my warranty?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @trix

    It still doesn't fix the single most irritating behaviour - that is starts matching urls based on words in the middle, when I only want it to match from the start. It also doesn't restore the go button and get rid of that annoying star that serves no purpose whatever.

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