The open-source Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client will be updated for the second time in a week because of code changes that have
The open-source Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client will be updated for the second time in a week because of code changes that have
I understand if there was some sort of bug in the extension managing part of the code, they need to do an update. That makes sense. But why ask developers to stop localizing things? Does the extension manager have anything to do with localization? Would the translators be needed to do bugfixing? It doesn’t really make much sense to me…
Bit of a heavy handed article. It’s presented as if things are falling apart at the seams. Critical security issues? Yeah people are getting hacked all the time, right? Right.
People complain IE releases and bugs take too long? Now you should know why.
At least IE does testing on plugins and informs developers and users of changes and what will fail.
I would rather have an update as soon as its available. I really don’t mind if I have to update everyday.
It’s not like we’re talking about a mission-critical application like mySQL or apache. It’s a third party browser extension.
,,At least IE does testing on plugins and informs developers and users of changes and what will fail.”
Riiigh, Mr. Troll. Name one ,,IE plugin” (plugin as Mozilla plugins, not the adware that hijack your toolbar) and one pressrelease about ABI changes released to the users by Microsoft.
Is this a joke? Gimme a break. I’ll stick with Opera, it’s more stable and consistent.
I concur with you. News.com and some of its editors seem to have an anti-Firefox…eh, make that an anti-Open Source stance for quite some time now. Things like these can/will happen, and I don’t see a problem with it. Nobody claimed Firefox is perfect, but it’s far better than the alternatives… 😉
To gain enterprise acceptance of Firefox, it should be considered as part of a mission-critical application. If you wonder why some enterprises only develop to IE, it’s because they can control deployment base on a finer level than a browser like Firefox.
If you wonder why some enterprises only develop to IE, it’s because they can control deployment base on a finer level than a browser like Firefox.
That’s bullshit. You shouldn’t develop to any specific browser, but to standards.
… I am getting sick of these updates. They are a pain to install.
I know the 1.1 version of Firefox will address that, but there is an important user perception issue here too. If these monthly or biweekly updates continue on like this for another few months, your typical user’s idea of Firefox is going to go from “it’s more secure than IE” to “omigod, it needs security fixes all the time.”
Firefox’s project leaders need to be wise to this and do more to manage perceptions. If this CNet article is overly negative, as some seem to be saying, then that’s still Firefox’s fault — no one will do their PR but themselves.
From a practical point of view, maybe this means moving security fixes off of public mailing lists. Or having the balls to be a bit more heavy-handed and treat only truly critical (i.e. w/exploit in the wild or trivially easy to exploit) security problems as things that need immediate releases. And otherwise, just say “Sorry your third-party extension doesn’t work, it isn’t a security issue, so we’ll fix it in the next release, in the meantime you can do X, Y or Z.”
I’m not sure what the answer is exactly, but this is something consumer-focused OS projects like Firefox probably need to do differently from projects like Apache where users are technically sophisticated.
Difficult to install?
Admittedly I do cheat using Slackware, I use Swaret to keep my system up to date but it’s a piece of cake to update and upgrade.
While I’m thinking about it. Seems like most of the time when there’s an update to a program my laptop/desktop use I download the whole program and install a newer version of it.
I don’t get the “It’s a pain to install”.
Easy, easy, easy. Better than leaving the issue unaddressed.
meant to say “moving discussion of open security holes” off public mailing lists, or somesuch.
The constant updating might be tiring but I am glad knowing someone up late burning midnight oil trying to make it better.Like someone said, its not perfect.
it seems like bad days are for mozilla foundation
first their website gets hack (not their but the main promoter site of their product) & now this
BTW CNET ppl are not anti-FF as someone suggested (if you go through website you’ll see they infact promote FF – Editors pick)
lets hope mozilla folks can work it our fast & it won’t happen in future
IMHO instead of waiting for 1.1 to implement patching they should do it ASAP (if possible delay 1.0.6 a little & add patching to it)
Gotta love that good ol’ OSS coding. Breaks stuff and forces you to update twice a week.
I’ve also noticed pop-ups coming through firefox lately. Granted they are pop-behinds, but firefox used to filter all this stuff out. I thought since firefox was open-source they would catch these things and fix them very quickly. I hate any form of pop-up. I’ve also noticed some spyware beginning to slip through as well.
Also, on a Windows machine the firefox update feature still doesn’t work right.
I hope the mozilla folks address these issues, because I really enjoy using firefox, however, I can’t wait until IE 7 comes out. I look forward to seeing how well it has progressed…
Try 1.1 Deer Alpha they solved the pop-up problem. I also remember they say something about how they did it in the changelog at mozilla.org and it is interesting because the solution was diferent for mac and windows vs linux.
The pop-ups are ad-people getting smarter.
Instead of plain javascript they started using flash and shockwave-based popups.
Still, a matter of suppressing non-user induceded new windows methinks.
Is to wait about a week and see what it breaks
Seriously though, I don’t mind the frequent updates, but this extension-breakage thing has got to go.
As for popups, there is an adblock import filter file out there – I don’t know what’s it’s called (something ‘6’). After I installed that, the popups went away.
a sign of good character is owning up to your mistakes and fixing them.
mozilla does it right.
go mozilla!
sorry, a lot of enterprise are developing with ie in mind because it is installed everywhere as default. Personaly, since 4 years I refuse (yes you can just say to management it is not possible, security blabla) to code any js, html which can not be displayed in alternative browser.
Moreover we (a small insurance company 4700 people) run in trouble with another one (900 banks agencies) with our programs, because they are using a lot of ie version: with without services packs, with or without all these shitty KBXXXX patches and cumulative update which are not clearly documented! (this kb resolve a remote control flaw….), with or without all these shitties security zone which were created only to mask a lack of basic security design (the code feature first)
No, no no the internet explorer world is not better!
Moreover having its server hacked is only a matter of time, if bad people really want to break it! You can not use this information against firefox.
written with firefox 1.04 under linux suse 9.3 🙂
http://www.waltercedric.com
Because it’s far safer and stable than this kids play of a browser.
This isn’t slashdot, the mods here can’t put “5:Funny” after your post.
The more you know
That’s bullshit. You shouldn’t develop to any specific browser, but to standards.
And what standards are you referring to? Are you talking about W3C Recommended standards?
Apparently, you didn’t read the part about client-side deployment. I guess you’re correct in that developing to standards will help with that issue.
Why didn’t they stay with the good ole Suite. If there was so much to polish before 1.1, 1.1 should have been 1.0 instead. What use is advertising and other promotion if what transpires to the public is that the thing is buggy and always in need of fixes (which wouldn’t transpire if they were quietly done via small automatic patches)?
Have a tickbox ‘Keep FF up to date’, and the beast could patch itself with no need for disastrous press releases.
Firefox sucks. Use Mozilla. Mozilla is better than Firefox. Go Mozilla.org!
Deer Park Alpha 2 seems to stop most of those pop-ups from showing up.
Considering Mozilla STILL leaks memory like a sieve in every build/version (both regular and firefox) stuff like this is hardly a surprise…
Just open up task manager (or whatever your OS/Distro decides to call it) and open multiple windows and tabs with images in them…. now close them all except one… lather, rinse repeat and notice it doesn’t release all the memory for each window/tab close… When you hit 240+ megs of memory use regardless of OS, it hangs and you have to kill it’s process… GOD HELP YOU if you start saving images as the download manager will quickly hit 80-100% CPU use because their tasking model SUCKS (and they don’t appear to use the one built into the native OS…)
Of course, that there’s been a bugzilla entry on this for over two years, and the only REAL response on the subject from their staff was taking me to task for using the word crash instead of hang, a distinction I’ve never heard of in three decades of computer work… Does not really inspire confidence in its future.
It’s really bad when Mozilla makes IE look GOOD. At least it doesn’t leak memory every time you open a page in a new window or download something…
Correction, regardless of OS or RAM installed… You hit 240+ megs of memory use in Firefox, even on a machine with 2 gigs of RAM you’re boned.
Which with my browsing habits takes about five minutes.
> […]taking me to task for using the word crash instead of hang, a distinction I’ve never heard of[…]
Well, that’s a problem because they both are very different things and should not be confused.
A crash (eg: memory corruption) is usually worse than a hang (eg: threading issues).
240 megs….
how much porn do you surf man!!!!
i usually have 10+ tabs open, sometimes as many as 20+ and dont even come close to using 60megs! I would say the reason it still uses the memory from a closed tab would be because it is still resident for lack of a better word. All I do to get some memory back is minimize which usually takes it down to only using a few megs and then restore it and I am back to normal…. With IE you have multiple instances of the same program, with firefox you have one program. SO I would expect that just closing a tab probably doesnt release everything.
Oh, and I did a bit of testing and posted in another thread about your sieve and concluded you needed to take your copy and paste post somewhere else along with your memory hog IE and your sieve….
Open 20 windows in IE and 20 tabs in firefox and tell me which is using more memory….
And I dont have any experience with the download manager that you state you have had. I use a 300mhz laptop with 128megs of ram and I… well right now I am browsing bestbuy, a few osnews tabs, yahoo mail, and I am using the download manager to grab a few files and my cpu is not the least bit maxed out. And the coolest thing is I can restart the downloads if they poop out which I cannot do in IE. I can also download a few files at once which IE doesnt let me do. All this on my little laptop using dialup….
I havent ran across anyone with your problem but YOU! makes me wondder….
i would of thought with three decades of computer work you would know the differene between crash and hang….
oh by the way, what computer work was you doing in 1975?
Considering Mozilla STILL leaks memory like a sieve in every build/version (both regular and firefox) stuff like this is hardly a surprise…
I browse like mad, but I never have this problem on either XP or KDE. I admit it doesn’t have a small footprint..but it doesn’t do gobbling either.
Do you perchance use Windows 95/98/ME?
>>Do you perchance use Windows 95/98/ME?
Nope, XP, Yellowtab Zeta RC3 and Ubuntu Warty right now… Although I spend 99% of my time in XP, I run the others under M$ VPC since Zeta and Ubuntu seem to work like $#!T native on this box… My bad, Radeon 9800, what did I expect… ATI and linux to actually WORK together?
>>I browse like mad, but I never have this problem on either XP or KDE. I admit it doesn’t have a small footprint..but it doesn’t do gobbling either.
Do you close out ALL your windows on a regular basis? I’ve noticed saving images really seems to excasterbate the problem…
Go to… a gallery website… let’s say http://zip.4channel.org/k/imgboard.html … Now open up all the images in that first page of /k in their own tab while watching your memory use… Now close all the images, but not the original page you opened them from… and go to the next page and repeat. You’ll notice that when you close the tabs not all the memory is released. Do that enough times, and by my own experiments you’ll hit about 240 megs of footprint and it all goes to hell, forcing you to kill it’s process… even when it hits the 160 meg mark (and I’ve seen this on machines with 2 gigs of ram) the system will start to slow to a crawl… Again, if you actually start saving images or worse video it goes to hell a LOT faster. It’s really easy to recreate.
Only ‘workaround’ is to do a 100% exit out of firefox before you reach that point.
… and yes, I realize posting a link to 4chan costs me some credibility, but it is a good example of a site to break Firefox with. Go ahead, call me a /b-tard.
not sure if this was the correct “test” you wanted but here goes another waste of time…
have 5 tabs open….. 39,228k
open the link you posted… 40,286
1 the link you posted
13 from the page you linked
5 i already had
19 total tabs …. 55,648k
….dont even want to think about how much memory it would be if it was IE…
close the 13 tabs… 42,564
click to go to the /t …40,820
1 the link you posted
5 i already had
open up 13 tabs there … 58,416
ckose the tabs…. 46,512
OMG look at that seive… whew I think it would take me about 10 years to eat up 240 megs at that rate… I dont see it as a high priority bug, I see it as a certain “trick” that causes ff to hold on to some remnants…
as a matter of fact all one needs to do is minimize and restore for it to free up the rest…
minimize and restore… 18,584
What I consider “memory leaks” in a program is if you can open the program and do nothing in it and it slowly uses more and more memory…. thats a leak!
I dont think you have a issue here at all…
heh…. i don’t even really use the tabbed browsing and it is not uncommon to have sometimes 10 firefox windows open at once….. i’ve never noticed a memory leak, never had stability issues .. and i’ve used firefox since pre 1.0
Gentoo linux, firefox 1.0.4, emerging 1.0.5 as we speak
perhaps it is a windows only problem?…. never experienced it myself and my browsing habbits are bad to lol
under Fedora Core 4 as we speak.
That’s bullshit. You shouldn’t develop to any specific browser, but to standards.
And what standards are you referring to? Are you talking about W3C Recommended standards?
Apparently, you didn’t read the part about client-side deployment. I guess you’re correct in that developing to standards will help with that issue.
Wow, that’s some subtle sacarasm there. Are you trying to be an a$$?
Regardless, I agree, once Mozilla as whole has a better updating system in place, we should see larger acceptance on the enterprise level.
My understanding re the issue of asking the localizers to not continue work with 1.0.5, it’s more a matter of not having them waste their time given 1.0.6 will be days away (and their work with these security patches is almost entirely QA, the actual locale files probably haven’t changed).
Still, a mis-step they could have done without.
>>Riiigh, Mr. Troll. Name one ,,IE plugin” ,,IE plugin”
Google Toolbar… an application so good they built a workalike into firefox. Nice typing BTW.
>>and one pressrelease about ABI changes released to the users by Microsoft.
I ASSUME you mean API…
The API is fairly well fixed, and you call a routine it rarely ever changes its functionality between versions… None the less it’s apparant you’ve never read the text that comes with hotfixes or the various API documentations they release fairly regular… like:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/ie/6/all/reskit/en…
And you are calling HIM a troll… If you are going to accuse someone of being a troll, at least form your words well, type carefully and most important, have a clue what you are talking about.
,,Google Toolbar…”
So, you can manage all your ,,plugins” from somewhere in IE? I mean, you can enable/disable them by one click, autoupgrade all of them. They are standarized, right? Or it’s just ,,every man for himself”?
,,Nice typing BTW.”
Nice and adult argument. Could you show me an example of your Polish?
So, you can manage all your ,,plugins” from somewhere in IE? I mean, you can enable/disable them by one click, autoupgrade all of them. They are standarized, right? Or it’s just ,,every man for himself”?
I thought he told you to do some research before you troll
Go to Options -> Programs -> Manage Addons. Lower right is a button called Update and lower left are buttons named enable/disable
Firefox’s plugin management is pretty good, but that’s one thing I preffer in IE. To be able to disable Flash and other crap. Yes I know about flashblock, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
On the topic; I absolutely hate upgrading Firefox. Maybe it’s just be, but _everytime_ I try to upgrade (I uninstall first of course) firefox.exe locks itself up. I can’t delete the bastard so I have to use Dr.Delete or something to set it to delete it after reboot. I really hope the make the upgrade feature right.
I tried Deer Park some days ago and it seems OK for an alpha, but apart from the new menus, fast-back and the useless sanitize feature, I haven’t really seen any progress. Same pages don’t render correctly and same pages still take ages to render.
got a mySQL error during posting, and it offed everything between the URL and the “And you are”
Which was to the tune of: The IE API is so well documented and easy to access it is WHY you get all the “adware which hijacks your toolbar”… Because any dumbass with a copy of VB and the Resource kit can build one.
there is VARG!
hello varg or should I say deathshadow…..
” be able to disable Flash and other crap. Yes I know about flashblock, but that’s not what I’m talking about”
what other crap are you speaking of? Dont install flash and you wont have it in firefox! Just try and use IE without having it installed…..
What about flashblock? then what are you talking about?
I guess varg had to show up so he could vote deathshadow posts back up…. shame really….
>>Nice and adult argument. Could you show me an example of your Polish?
Ok, what the blazes is with the two commas instead of a double-quote? I’ve never seen that before and it looks really… WIERD… Unnatural even. Some side-effect of a foreign language keyboard or some quirk of your languages grammar or something? Nonstandard non-unicode characters on your end? Are we talking the language equivalent of Reverse Polish Notation? ooh, bad TI Calculator flashback…
Your new question on the other hand, leads me to the same conclusion I have repeatedly come to with a lot of M$ haters, they hate M$ so much they won’t use the products enough to learn how to do anything with them… As Varg was nice enough to point out.
Don’t like the adobe bar that’s forced on you? Turn it OFF. Don’t like the quicktime or realplayer playing in the windows and prefer to have it download instead, turn the add-ons off. Wanna update an addon? Select it and choose “Update ActiveX”… Simple.
IE is Crap and is built on crap.
XP is Crap with Christmas lights.
SP2 is more crap.