The Mozilla Project released Firefox 1.0-RC2 for testing. Thunderbird 0.9 also available.
Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC2
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I wonder if they will make their goal of simultaneous releases of 1.0 firefox and 1.0 thunderbird.
It seems unlikely as firefox is getting to its 1.0 goals faster.
The last visited URL is the last url on the location bar.
I’m glad to see they finally have an organized structure on their ftp site now. Before it was a hassle to sift through all the files in one directory just to get the files you want. This new way of seperating them into subdirectories based on platform, locale, and the such is a lot better. I’d like to see the Thunderbird team do the same.
an OS X plug in that connects fire fox to system services. not having the built in spell checker is a bummer.
win98, dial up connection
I tested rc1 today, but there are things I do not understand.
1) It seems FireFox is asking for a connection only when I open it. Later it’s no more possible to establish a connection. If I’m disconnected and I click on a link on a web page, FireFox is not asking for a connection. I only get a msgbox saying I’m working offline. How do I connect without restarting FireFox?
Enabling or disabling work offline does not help.
2) If I’m offline, I cannot browse pages I have previously visited (history), eg http://www.python.org. With IE, no problem. Strange.
It seems FireFox is working only if you are permanently connected.
Related to this, I have the same kind of problem with Thunderbird. I can not compose a message offline and send it later.
(do not remember the version, I removed it)
What am I doing wrong? Any ideas? Enabling cookies?
jmf
Yeah, without spell-checking it’s like you live in the rest of the world. OK, so I’m just jealous. I use Macs at work and I can get jealous – I love Gnome, but Mac OS X is so nice.
I think spell-checking is a good idea, but they could even do it on Gnome. Gaim has it. I know that the 1.0 final for Mac is coming later than Gnome and Windows (because they want to make it better integrated). Maybe spell-checking is one of those areas. Does anyone know if Camino has spell-checking?
I can’t wait for the 1.0 release because my IT department won’t officially support anything pre-1.0. Hopefully it will encourage wide adoption which would be amazing for designing websites – IE is so annoying with CSS layouts.
yes, Camino supports Spell check, but that is because it is a cocoa application. the problem I have with camino is that they do not use the same extensions as firefox (big mistake) so they cannot take advantage of the search bar plugins that FF has.
It seems like there are a few things that Camino lacks in relation to Firefox (extensions being a biggy). But at the same time, Camino developers seem to have a better eye for the appropriate look/feel/interaction of a Mac OSX app (maybe Firefox just hasn’t gotten around to focusing on it yet?). I really wish the Camino people and the Firefox people would work together to make a hybrid Firefox 1.0/Camino 1.0 that had the best of both worlds: all the features of Firefox with the native feel of Camino. Or– at least, hopefully, one project or the other will get there on their own.
>> I have the same kind of problem with Thunderbird. I can not compose a message offline and send it later.
There are a couple of extensions (outbox & MagicSLR, IIRC) that allow you to add a “send later” button in your composing windows. At least one of these also adds funcionalities like “send & get” and “gett all”.
I know the feeling. I’m a Firefox user and I get jealous everytime I see Konqueror’s spell checking.
If I want to report what appears to be a bug, do I have to read through all the bug reports? If so, I don’t think I’ll bother running an up-to-date version without extensions to check for the bug.
(The possible bug is that when browsing local files on Windows, if I click on a file at file:///c:/x[1]/x[2]/…/x[n-1]/x[n]/file.htm, it points to file:///c:/x[1]/x[2]/…/x[n-1]/file.htm. Extensions may be at fault and it may have been fixed).
The best thing about Thunderbird 0.9 is the Saved Search as folder feature! Now I can have somthing like v-folders in MS Windows!
Those link buttons highlight-up on hover but after about half-dozen presses, one of them will show depressed on hover. I like being able to get rid of the icons on the buttons. They might try putting a small amount of buffer space on the top and botton of the sidebar.
imho, it’s more appropriate to link to a homepage or ‘Release Notes’ page of that software.
(i.e. not directly link to a ftp directory),
especially if you use the word “released” as a link.
I wonder if they will make their goal of simultaneous releases of 1.0 firefox and 1.0 thunderbird.
It seems unlikely as firefox is getting to its 1.0 goals faster.
“The following roadmap talks about what to expect from Thunderbird between now and our anticipated 1.0 release due in mid November, 2004.”
(http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/roadmap.html)
“We had picked an ambitious target release date for Firefox 1.0 – 10/11 that proved un-attainable if we were going to achieve the quality our users demand. Hitting our new target date, 11/9 – our new and final release date, is still going to be a difficult task.”
(http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html)
http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/
spell checking plugin for firefox. just right click on the text box you want to spell check.
“I wonder if they will make their goal of simultaneous releases of 1.0 firefox and 1.0 thunderbird.”
Not even a remote possibility. Firefox 1.0 Final in a week, while TB just released 0.9.
RE: Spellcheck. default integrated spellcheck is coming, though it’s going to take awhile. http://www.xulplanet.com/ndeakin/article/284
it is OK, but it is not inline like you get in every other OS X aplication.
as far as what Axord said, the inline feature seems to be Mozilla 1.8 only right now. probably will not see the ligh of day ntil firefox 1.1 is out, and even then, they have a seperate sub menu for the word selections in teh context menu 🙁
I’d use Thunderbird if it had an extension to access Gmail.
google has patents to protect that kind of access. I am not sure whether its entirely defensive. there are a few extensions to notify and open the webmail
A few things missing from the Mac OSX version of Firefox so far.
1. Rendezvous bookmarks folder
2. Integrated address book bookmarks folder
3. XUL menubars (there is a bug registered for this but not fixed so far)
I use the first two (in Safari) quite a lot for accessing local and client sites quickly. The last one is a pretty big show-stopper for using XUL to create web apps.
In linux libGmail will allow you to connect to you Gmail acct and check it, still some small annoyances (like it won’t delete the message from the web) but it works really well with thunderbird.
I know I’m probably runnng against a wall here, but for me Mozilla is just much much better than Firefox and Thunderbird either together or separate.
That is, I surely hope they won’t ditch it as they had planned at a time.
Mainly I dislike the menu layout and the settings windows.
umm, because typing in a web form and typing in a word processor are EXACTLY THE SAME. and people do not want to look like morons if they misspell a word.
to the Gmail folks. get an application called freepops. it sets up a local pop proxy on your machine and in your client of choise, you point to the loop back IP for the server. then you just put in your gmail, yahoo, hotmail, whatever address in for your user name, put in your password and your done.
it will also download the messages from the server, keeping it empty.
Just installed 1.0 RC2 in Fedora Core 2. Pages with Flash still make Firefox crash (been a problem ever since upgrading X.org from 6.7.0.5 to 6.7.0.9), unless I turn off JavaScript, in my normal user profile and my root profile (no extensions). Same problem in Mozilla. Uninstalling the plug-in and using a new profile doesn’t help. Major problem for me since Mozilla and Firefox are the only browsers other than IE that can render the mouseover menu in the bottom left of messages in Delphi Forums (which uses JS) and Opera 7.54 for Linux looks horrible on certain sites with the default font settings.
I’ll see if deleting ~/.mozilla helps any. Only other fix I’ve read about is editing X.org’s config file (something about alpha channels I’ll have to Google up again).
Only one thing annoys me of firefox. It’s installer (for win32, at least). You would normally run the install assuming it will overwrite whatever older version you have and that it’ll take care of the registry, etc. But no. Now I have multiple versions seen on my Add/Remove Programs window. And all points to the same folder in Program Files. If I try uninstall the older version, it wipes out files and registry entries that makes the new version unsuable.
You got to fix this.
in meanwhile firefoxPR1.0 and mozilla 1.73 get malformated in some commecial sites, it tips only netscape>6 and IE5 supported and i tried, it s done.
that s the reason i am using ns7.2 though i ve known it s just a duplication of mozilla 1.7x
umm, because typing in a web form and typing in a word processor are EXACTLY THE SAME. and people do not want to look like morons if they misspell a word.
Heh, you’d never guess it from reading the typical web forum…
I was just going to ask if they had fixed that yet. It is quite annoying. Luckily uninstalling doesn’t delete your profile data so you just have to uninstall and install the new version. Last time I checked this worked fine, but you might want to back everything up first just to be sure. Just don’t blame me if you lose all your mail/bookmarks.
Also, just wanted to say great job to the Firefox and the Thunderbird team. I have been a loyal user since Firebird .7 and Thunderbird .3 (I think .3 for Tbird). Keep up the good job and I am anxiously awaiting the final release of Firefox 1.0!
Also, take a look at Sunbird for calendaring. It doesn’t receive a lot of attention, but it is slowly getting better.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
I know about uninstalling the older version and then reinstall again the new one. But what about all the extensions? They have to be installed again, right? Now this is really annoying.
The extensions don’t need to be reinstalled.
UglyKidBill wrote:
There are a couple of extensions (outbox & MagicSLR, IIRC) that allow you to add a “send later” button in your composing windows. At least one of these also adds funcionalities like “send & get” and “gett all”.
Thanks for the answer. From that I conclude FireFox and Thunderbird are not ready for my desktop and my dialup connection. :-(. In these circonstances, it is not a suprised people continue to use IE and Outlook!
jmf
You have to create the folder you want to put Firefox into BEFORE you start installation if its other than default ?? errrr I am on 98SE not DOS WT*…….
It is dead slow on dialup…. which is what most of the rest of the world still uses. Green Browser runs rings around it for speed and looks and Opera 606 simply leaves it in the dust.
How do you get rid of the wasted space called ‘Bookmark Toolbar’ ?? It will not work with Pegasus Mail.
For a ‘modern’ browser the GUI is rather crude and bland. I guess this is still a major problem with java…. along with java’s vaunted speed.
And the preview for this comment does not work……
Good Grief……..
errrr I am on 98SE not DOS WT*……
It’s WTF. F is not a four letter word. You can write as many F’s as you want. And Windows 98SE is basically nothing but DOS.
It is dead slow on dialup…. which is what most of the rest of the world still uses. Green Browser runs rings around it for speed and looks and Opera 606 simply leaves it in the dust.
You shouldn’t be able to see any speed difference beteween browsers on dialup. Most probably this appears because you’ve visited the sites which appear to be slow on Firefox before with other browsers, so the other browsers can use the cached versions of all graphics of the site, while Firefox has to pull them all. Firefox can be a lot faster on dialup if you use Adblock.
For a ‘modern’ browser the GUI is rather crude and bland. I guess this is still a major problem with java…. along with java’s vaunted speed.
Do you think that Firefox is written in Java? It isn’t. And the crude GUI is probably once again a Win98SE problem. On Linux, Firefox blends very nicely with the GTK theme.
How do you get rid of the wasted space called ‘Bookmark Toolbar’ ?? It will not work with Pegasus Mail.
This is really not hard: View -> Toolbars -> Bookmark Toolbar.
Hi,
I am not sure current versions deserve to be marked as RCx, as for me – RC shoudl work, as far as functionality is concerned, as final product. So what actually happened to me?
1) I installed few skins. Tne I installed newer version of FF (RC1). After starting FF dialog box appeared, telling me something about missing XBL binding. The only option is to quit FF. OK, I choosed to uninstall and install FF once again. Still no luch – skins are stored in user profile dir. I think that typical user here is cutt-off from using FF. So I went and found FF profile, deleted dir for Pinball theme, edited prefs.js changing “skin” entry to “default”. FF started, but instead of menus, dialogs, I got only white windows with plain text messed texts. The only way for me to correct the situation was to delete entire profile!
IMO it should not happen in the first place! Product infrastructure should NOT allow usage of incompatible skins and if such is found, it should be disabled and FF should automatically switch to default skin!
2) What is with “automatic updates”? I expected that running FF RC1 will offer me to upgrade to RC2. Nothing like that. So I went and manually tried to check for updates. It offered me some “security” fix, I downloaded it, but About/help shows me no evidence, what version I am using – just “preview release” text is there. So what version do I run? And why user is not automatically notified of newer version/fixes?
So – are we really ready for 1.0 release?
-pekr-
They decided, for whatever reason, not to make the RC’s very high profile; they aren’t pushed on the mozilla.org front page (which still pushes the PR) and the auto-updater doesn’t pick them up by default. You can tweak some settings to make the auto-updater update you to the RC’s, for testing. I did this, and it works. That theme situation sounds rather bad, maybe you should submit a bug?
I have tried several times netscape and mozilla over linux and windows. M.Firefox is the best i have tested yet, and I started using it over IE even on XP. For the first times I am so happy with the performance and GUI of an GNU software:)
I don’t care what people say, but yeah spead and GUI matter for people and having something that simply works. Mozilla and Netscape were both very slow considering IE and I can so far Firefox performs better than IE and more eye candy as well.
Hope people developing staroffice or openoffice would learn somethingelse from that experience… we all enjoy security and stability as more function as possible but at the end we just care the speed, usebility, GUI and it working for us. openoffice, linux in general fails on 4 of those am. Hope someday it will happen on those as well. Congratulations to the developers of Firefox…
PS: The only problem I yet experienced was, that firefox for somereason failed to send a error report… maybe there is a bug or something on the report thing
http://mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=5487
Many of the features you guys have mentioned , like real time (in-line) spell checking throughout the entire suite is one important feature that Linspire has contributed to Mozilla. However this feature, Hot Words, or MailMinder will not be publically available for a while.
Once 1.0 comes around I can quit worrying about every god damn extension I use breaking and updating everything constantly.
Thats my only real complaint about Firefox – no backwards compatability with extensions. hopefully with releases after 1.0 they’ll offer a better solution than updating everything.
i know with firefox you uninstall and install the new version, can that be done with thunderbird too without risk of losing years of email?
actually, Firefox was purposely designed to make extensions stop working every time you go up a version, simply because the designers knew that up to 1.0 nothing was going to be stable and it’d be likely that extensions would break between releases, so it was done to force extension authors to test their extensions with new releases and to force users to update. The design will probably change post 1.0 to reflect interfaces being a little more stable.
yes but ppl prefer to overwrite the old version instead. it s better for mozilla team to fix it up in the finals. pfcoz’ it doesnt affect to your emails data or whatever for your data are stored in your acct. anyway (/home/usrname/.mozillafirefox or C:Documents and Settingsyour AcctApplications and Datamozillafirefox)
i have found that it doesn’t always overwrite properly, so i prefer to uninstall and update.
e.g. i have thunderbird installed to:
f:Program FilesThunderbird
if i uninstall that and reinstall to the same place will i definately still have all my emails?