OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18061/First_Look_Firefox_3_Alpha_5 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:13:03 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246446 http://osnews.com/thread?246446 What about adding Speed Dial functionality into Firefox?

I'm using it in Opera, it's excellent.

http://operawatch.com/news/2007/02/new-speed-dial-functionality-in-...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810 Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chuck Norris) Comments XUL http://osnews.com/thread?246457 http://osnews.com/thread?246457 Hey, my first post, but been a long time reader.

Anyway, looks like Firefox 3 won't be distributed with XUL Runner as the underlying engine as was once stated on the roadmap.

"Specifically this means we are not producing supported XULRunner builds and we do not plan to ship Firefox3 on top of a stand-alone XULRunner."

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/05/xul_and_xu...

I guess this makes sense since mozilla is so big and xul runner has only been in development for a reasonably short amount of time. however, there seems to be many applications that are being built on it these days: songbird, democracy player, joost, etc...

with all the talk of flash, sliverlight and javafx lately, i'm surprised that not many people brought up xul as an alternative. especially with how much the svg canvas has matured. the only disadvantage i would see for xul runner is in native multimedia capabilities. Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (centinall) Comments RE: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246463 http://osnews.com/thread?246463 What about adding Speed Dial functionality into Firefox?

Ummm, create an HTML file on your hard drive with some links in it, and then set it as the home page? Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WorknMan) Comments RE[2]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246477 http://osnews.com/thread?246477 I was modded to hell. Did I offense some one by suggesting a feature that I particularly like? To those who cowardly modded me down, please speak out. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chuck Norris) Comments RE[3]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246480 http://osnews.com/thread?246480 Ummm, create an HTML file on your hard drive with some links in it, and then set it as the home page?
Nice one, that made me chuckle a little. I think keywords are much better than speed dial and very underused. A lot of people don't realize you can set one word shortcuts to bookmarks by setting the keyword property in a bookmark. For example, I press Ctrl+L to get me to the location bar and then press os to load osnews.com, s=slashdot, g=google, etc.

In regards to the XUL comments, it is unfortunate that XUL Runner is not ready yet to be the base for Firefox. If you are a Linux user you probably know that most libraries on your system are shared. Even though Thunderbird and Firefox use the same XUL runtime they don't share the library yet and so consume memory. It is like duplicating installations of the GTK widget library for each application on your system. The older Seamonkey suite actually shares one XUL runtime between Mail and the Browser making it more efficient with memory management.Edited 2007-06-09 02:10 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (buff) Comments Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246481 http://osnews.com/thread?246481 Another interesting feature with Firefox 3 is the places feature. This is essentially bookmarks and history blended together with a SQLLite backend. I find it puzzling that this feature is moving Firefox from version 2 to 3. I wonder if their direction with advanced bookmarks or places is a little old fashioned. It seems most users have a regular set of bookmarks and then just use a search engine to find the rest. Not really a ground breaking feature for a major browser version. Mozilla might want to reconsider some of their design decisions. I still have friends using 1.5 since they don't like the changes to 2.0. Do people think the major innovation has peaked with Firefox and these new features are really just minor tack-ons? It appears the move from version 2 to 3 is more marketing-speak than a useful indication of a new design or feature set.Edited 2007-06-09 02:27 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (buff) Comments RE: Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246493 http://osnews.com/thread?246493 It appears the move from version 2 to 3 is more marketing-speak than a useful indication of a new design or feature set.

Firefox is getting a major new version number because of the move to Gecko 1.9, not Places. It is a major reworking of the entire display framework, including the use of Cairo. If you think Places is the major new feature, then apparently they aren't doing enough marketing... Sat, 09 Jun 2007 03:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246495 http://osnews.com/thread?246495 Firefox does have this functionality, it's had it ever since it was firebird. Go into a bookmark property, and there will be a keyword field. You can even use it to make custom site searches. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 04:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Rocinante) Comments RE: Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246502 http://osnews.com/thread?246502 Well, the bookmarks system has been broken long before Mozilla 1.0 arrived. There is a recursion bug which raises its ugly head from time to time when they try to speed up the current JavaScript-enabled system. It happened in a recent BonEcho beta again. I don't see much in Places at this moment but it seems to be working better than in version 2, alpha 1. They've had some time to work out the kinks.

The change to the rendering and widgets is quite good and all those sites that look okay but not quite right will finally look as intended. Having native widgets will be a plus for many people. I can say that the whole browser, as of alpha 5 is quite good and, even though buggy, is good enough that I would consider dropping version 2.0.x, if my addons worked. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 04:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments favorites http://osnews.com/thread?246504 http://osnews.com/thread?246504 I like the way Microsoft has implemented bookmarks by using the *nix philosophy of using many small files and using the file system where possible. Copying, deleting, renaming, organizing in folders and adding a singe or multiple bookmarks by manipulating files in your file manager just makes sense. Even rsync works to sync my bookmarks. I feel that a SQL database is just overkill. Keep it simple. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evert) Comments web archives http://osnews.com/thread?246511 http://osnews.com/thread?246511 One of the IE7 features I like alot is when you save as, it creates a single file which contains all the page assets as well as the html. This is a non-issue for desktop users, but for laptops you are often in situations with no internet. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (swarmi) Comments RE: web archives http://osnews.com/thread?246520 http://osnews.com/thread?246520 There is an unofficial extension which adds this ability. I'm not sure I'd really trust it to be bug free though.

http://files-upload.com/278946/maf-0.6.4u.xpi.html Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE[2]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246532 http://osnews.com/thread?246532 Firefox does have this functionality, it's had it ever since it was firebird. Go into a bookmark property, and there will be a keyword field. You can even use it to make custom site searches.

You're talking about keyword shortcuts. You didn't check my links. I'm talking about Speed Dial. When you open a new tab, it shows a series of thumbnails of the 9 web sites you access most (can be defined manually).

http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/opera92.jpg

As some one said, you can set up an HTML, create these thumbnails and set up this page as my home page. I can also code my own browser if I'm enough motivated, if we take this way. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 09:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chuck Norris) Comments RE: web archives http://osnews.com/thread?246536 http://osnews.com/thread?246536 I also used to complain about it, because I find it very useful to handle a single file when saving web pages.

But now I have found the best way for it: print the page as pdf !! For me it is a nice solution. Really portable ;-) Sat, 09 Jun 2007 10:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (isaba) Comments RE[3]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246539 http://osnews.com/thread?246539 I guess that it's a case of relative ease.

Time to code a new browser with all the features of Opera/FF: >1000 Hours

Time to make an HTML page with thumbnails of your favourite webpages: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stestagg) Comments RE[2]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246542 http://osnews.com/thread?246542
Ummm, create an HTML file on your hard drive with some links in it, and then set it as the home page?


Then nice thing about Speed Dial is that you can change the sites it displays extremely quickly.

Just drag and drop a couple of links from your bookmarks or open tabs and you can have super quick access to them. With keyboard shortcuts automatically set and thumbnails that can be refreshed to show current page contents.

I use bookmarks and keywords to access my long term favourite sites, at least the ones that aren't saved as a session. I find Speed Dial useful for those sites that I want to access regularly for a short period of time then forget about. Particular discussion forum threads I'm following, pages where I'm waiting for an update, a help document that I want to refer back to while working on something, etc.

Speed Dial means that I don't have to create, organise and delete bookmarks, and maybe set keywords, every time I want a few days of quick access to a particular page.

Apart from anything else, Speed Dial provides a visual and extremely easy to use way of managing a few sites. Very useful for new and inexperienced browser users who haven't discovered the more complex features.

Manually creating a page of links is hardly the same thing. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 12:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dave_K) Comments RE[2]: Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246544 http://osnews.com/thread?246544 If you think Places is the major new feature, then apparently they aren't doing enough marketing...
You are over-interpreting. If you look at my comment it describes Places as a minor feature with not a lot of noticeable improvement to a user. Also switching to a newer rendering engine version is also minor from a user's perspective they won't recognize a lot of work was done. These are really just regular updates and some minor new features. It will essentially look the same but render better. Sounds like a version 2.1 to me. Also, if you read the developers site for Firefox 3 they do have Places as being one of the showcase new features.Edited 2007-06-09 12:54 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 12:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (buff) Comments New Bookmark management http://osnews.com/thread?246547 http://osnews.com/thread?246547 Finally! One of the things firefox has missed for a while now is good bookmark management, I cant wait. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 13:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (74k3n) Comments RE[3]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246562 http://osnews.com/thread?246562 Time to search on Firefox's addons site: 30 seconds

SpeedDial for Firefox,
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Beta) Comments Memory consumption http://osnews.com/thread?246568 http://osnews.com/thread?246568 Any news about the memory consumption? Sometimes it's said that this new version will improve memory management; is it true? Sat, 09 Jun 2007 15:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sapere aude) Comments RE[3]: Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246595 http://osnews.com/thread?246595 Maybe you should take a look at your own comment.

Do people think the major innovation has peaked with Firefox and these new features are really just minor tack-ons? It appears the move from version 2 to 3 is more marketing-speak than a useful indication of a new design or feature set.

As I said, that is false. There is a major change in the design of parts of Firefox. Or were you simply referring to a UI design change?

Also switching to a newer rendering engine version is also minor from a user's perspective they won't recognize a lot of work was done. These are really just regular updates and some minor new features. It will essentially look the same but render better. Sounds like a version 2.1 to me.

Since when are version changes linked to what the viewer sees? They have always been linked to the code - when half of the code has been replaced, it's time for a major version change, whether the end user sees a difference or not. Like I said, these are not minor new features, they are a major redesign of entire subsystems inside Firefox.

Also, if you read the developers site for Firefox 3 they do have Places as being one of the showcase new features.

I'd agree that Places isn't such big deal. I do think it is a nice step towards the future, but doubt it will really affect me.

Since you seem to be so unimpressed by the changes, what exactly were you expecting? What new feature would make it worth the 3.0 change? Did you want 3D tabs that you could flip over and write comments on the back? What exactly would be a "major" update to you? Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE[4]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246613 http://osnews.com/thread?246613 I guess this is why I don't use Firefox. The most basic features are all available as extensions only (session saver, speed dial, mouse gestures, user-agent switcher, etc...). Ironically, Firefox's setup file is 3x bigger than Opera's, that has the functionality of most of these extensions included as default, ready to use out of the box, no need to have to search for them on the web, no version issues between the browser and extensions. It just works. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chuck Norris) Comments RE[5]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246620 http://osnews.com/thread?246620 Session saver is built into Firefox 2. Speed dial, mouse gestures, and user-agent switching are all things that very few people use, so I can't disagree with their decision to keep these as extensions. If you really do need all those features, then perhaps Firefox isn't the best browser for you - Opera is a great alternative. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE[4]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246621 http://osnews.com/thread?246621 "Time to make an HTML page with thumbnails of your favourite webpages: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jayson.knight) Comments 64 Bit? http://osnews.com/thread?246622 http://osnews.com/thread?246622 Any word on native x64 binaries? And no, Minefield doesn't count. Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jayson.knight) Comments RE: New Bookmark management http://osnews.com/thread?246623 http://osnews.com/thread?246623 "Finally! One of the things firefox has missed for a while now is good bookmark management, I cant wait."

Enter del.icio.us...the plugin for Firefox provides seamless integration. I don't know of a better system out there (either built into a browser or not). Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jayson.knight) Comments RE[5]: Speed Dial functionality? http://osnews.com/thread?246624 http://osnews.com/thread?246624 Well. I said < for a reason. This is a worst-case estimate assuming that the person has to work out how to screengrab, then work out how to use Blufish//Scite. I always like to bias numbers against my argument if I can, it makes it harder for the opposition to attack your case.

I like the idea of growing your own Tags tho. Kinda cute ;) . Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stestagg) Comments RE:64 Bit? http://osnews.com/thread?246639 http://osnews.com/thread?246639
Any word on native x64 binaries? And no, Minefield doesn't count.


Compile them? Sun, 10 Jun 2007 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (joelito_pr) Comments Gotta love native HTML widgets in linux http://osnews.com/thread?246651 http://osnews.com/thread?246651 This was only checked in recently so its only available in nightly build now but should be in 3.0!

Check out the screenies (i am using clearlooks theme):

http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/8/6/9/f_ff2m_15a3db4.jpg

http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/8/6/9/f_ffm_ed0c955.jpg


Still needs work but looks much better than current widgets IMO. Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siimo) Comments Firefox 3 too bloated! http://osnews.com/thread?246663 http://osnews.com/thread?246663 Firefox 3 too bloated! Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (casuto) Comments RE[2]: Places feature useful? http://osnews.com/thread?246679 http://osnews.com/thread?246679 If you think Places is the major new feature, then apparently they aren't doing enough marketing...

...well obviously, just look at the blurb of the article!

=) Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jelway) Comments RE: Firefox 3 too bloated! http://osnews.com/thread?246695 http://osnews.com/thread?246695 "Firefox 3 too bloated!"

What isn't to bloated these days. Even the simple "Hello World" program is bloated. =P

Seriously though I don't think it's fair to call something still in alpha phase bloated. Even more to the point how does one define bloat? Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (systyrant) Comments Use http://osnews.com/thread?246696 http://osnews.com/thread?246696 boox extension for quick tooltips.

http://joliclic.free.fr/mozilla/boox/ Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eric Martin) Comments Used it. http://osnews.com/thread?246697 http://osnews.com/thread?246697 Noticed NOTHING unique.

Very disappointed.

Need to get rid of Xul graphics.

Needs way better default skin. Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eric Martin) Comments RE: Gotta love native HTML widgets in linux http://osnews.com/thread?246698 http://osnews.com/thread?246698 Wow! At last! I have asked for it in the Mozillazine forum since 2005 and nothing had been done until....now ;)

Your screenshot looks excellent now, very good job. Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chuck Norris) Comments RE[2]: Firefox 3 too bloated! http://osnews.com/thread?246978 http://osnews.com/thread?246978 It is bloated when it has a feature I dont particularly care or want. Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tweek) Comments RE[3]: Firefox 3 too bloated! http://osnews.com/thread?247036 http://osnews.com/thread?247036 Not that I would disagree with that definition, but if that were to stand then all software is bloated. Then again maybe all software is bloated. ;) Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (systyrant) Comments