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back to article Mozilla gets orientation-friendly with Firefox 3.6

The next iteration of Firefox will be able to detect the orientation of laptops and mobile devices that come loaded with accelerometers. Mozilla said yesterday that Firefox 3.6 would carry support for web pages to read machine orientation details, if available on the device. It created the device API to allow users to work …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    back to front?

    "He added that some Macbooks detect the orientation information backwards, which is something Mozilla is also working on"

    Surely something Apple should be working on.....

    Anon - cos I don't want to face the fanbois

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  2. Greg J Preece

    Please please please

    Put it in Fennec

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  3. Neil 27

    Unwanted Bloat

    Surely this will be unused and unwanted bloat for many users. I really hope a lot of new features such as this can be removed or deactivated (on install preferably).

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  4. Mage Silver badge
    FAIL

    Umm..

    Shouldn't the OS be managing this and transparent to the Browser?

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  5. Anonymous Bastard
    Thumb Down

    Redundent?

    Wouldn't it make more sense for the host OS to rotate/resize the display to match orientation? Expecting each application to handle it themselves is counter-productive.

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  6. Asylum Sam

    orienteering

    ''nifty for rotating the user interface based on the orientation of a mobile device''

    Yes indeed bloat, certainly on a mobile, because correct me if i'm wrong, but won't most devices that detect orientation already change the display accordingly? So would tilting the device 90 degrees left result in firefox mobile being upside down?

    Just a thought..

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Yay, more useless bloat

    Ff is getting nearly as bad as opera with useless 'features' that do nothing except waste memory and cause potential security holes.

    New browser please?

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  8. Clive Galway
    WTF?

    Pointless

    My mobile already does this - changing orientation changes the device resolution, and the application automatically redraws. Why does it need to be supported by the application, this is a function of the OS.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    W++

    Waste-of-time++

    Are firefox going to have hardware specific hacks now?

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    May I be the nth to say...

    Bloat.

    That is all.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Detect user orientation? Easy!

    switch ( OS ) {

    case MAC: user = gay; break;

    case WIN: user = straight_but_frustrated; break;

    case LINUX: user = virgin; break;

    }

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Orientation?

    The first thing that went through my mind was:

    "Great it detects if you're a furry, then automagically loads 4chan and deviantart."

    These new pills are great!

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  13. Andy Cadley
    FAIL

    Accelerometer support in a browser?

    Excellent news. That's way more important than, for example, fixing the fact that the autoupdate mechanism is completely borked if you happen to be one of those people who think running a web browser with full administrator rights is a bit retarded. Way to prioritise feature development!

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  14. YumDogfood

    @AC 23:35

    Furry has gone mainstream - The New Cadbury Bunny makeover. *shiver*

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  15. Tom Chiverton 1

    Point

    The point is not to have he browser rotate it's chrome (that's done by the O/S as suggested), but to provide an API that apps in the browser can use to (for instance) change from portrait-based icon GUI to landscape-biased buttons-with-text GUI (thus making better use of the horizontal space).

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pointless point

    Most of our icons are square anyway, so it shouldn't make a difference.

    The browser would be better just to handle "narrow" resolutions in the way it shows their toolbars etc. They do that now, by hiding the icons in the spill over in a new popup menu... I think that will suit most people when they turn their laptops for... a few minutes.

    Anyways, how are you going to click anything whilst you are holding your laptop on its side?

    What if I wanted to lie on my side, using the laptop... I would now need to site up to lie on my side ;)

    Even though its a point, I think its pointless.

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  17. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Down

    Not that it hasn't been said already, but...

    Bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat.

    I'm still using FF 2.0.0.20 on both my G4 tower and G4 iBook, as FF 3.0 was absolutely dog-slow -- not to mention that there's no way to get rid of those goddamn' thumbnail site icons in the Bookmarks menu which, I'm quite sure, is what's slowing things down in FF 2.x and is what almost always sent FF down in flames in early versions of 2.x and 3.x.

    I tried a later version of FF 3.x on my iBook and, while it was able to access the Bookmarks menu without crashing -- which is what almost invariably happened as it tried to load all those goddamn' icons next to the site names -- I still had to wait several seconds while FF grunted and groaned as the Bookmarks menu crawled down the screen.

    I got rid of FF 3.x pronto, and have gone back to 2.0.0.20, which can at least load that needlessly icon-loaded Bookmarks menu without crapping its drawers.

    FF is still my main browser, but I've found myself occasionally tinkering with Opera while waiting for something better as, sadly, Mozilla seems determined to send FF down the road to ruin.

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  18. Mike Flugennock

    Oh, and one more thing...

    Why the hell haven't they fixed the AutoUpdate/phone-home "feature" in 2.x yet?

    Are any other FF 2.x users here noticing how -- even if you explicitly turn off auto-update in the Preferences -- FF 2.x still insists on trying to contact mozilla.org for an auto-update? It doesn't happen _very_ often, but on a regular basis; I'll be happily browsing along, and all of a sudden a message pops up from Little Snitch telling me that FF wants to contact addons.mozilla.org. Not catastrophic, mind you, but still annoying as hell, especially when I went to the Prefs and specifically turned the goddamn' auto-update _off_.

    Jayzus, you guys, get with the goddamn' program, already.

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