Mozilla 1.7, Firefox 0.9 Release Candidates Out

An anonymous reader writes "mozilla.org have released what are expected to be the final release candidates for their next versions: Mozilla 1.7RC3 (MozillaZine article; download) should iron out any final bugs in what will replace 1.4 as the new stable branch and Firefox 0.9RC (MozillaZine article; download) features the new default theme ported from Mac OS on Windows (though please bear in mind that the theme is nowhere near finished yet). The final releases of these versions are due very soon."

A Firefox mirror...

[tcopeland]

...is here [cougaar.org].

FWIW, CVS 1.11.17 - the security release that happened this morning - is up there too.

Very clean!

[erick99]

I downloaded and installed Firefox .9 and I am quite impressed. All of my settings, bookmarks, popup exceptions, etc. ported over perfectly and automatically. The "look and feel" of .9 is very clean. I don't know how these folks manage to make each iteration better than the previous but they sure do. It loads fast as did .8 and it loads web pages quite fast. All-in-all, this is well worth the download. And, as always, Firefox is, for me, far superior to Internet Explorer or any other browser on the market.

Happy Trails!

Erick

Just do it

[stecoop]

It was just discussed earlier today that some users cant install Mozilla [slashdot.org] on restricted systems but you can download the zip files on run from any directory. So there is no need to patch IE [slashdot.org]. Just start with mozilla.
Some option you will want to use are under edit -> preferences -> Navigator:
+ Tabbed browsing - turn on Load Links in background, Add, Tabs, Middle click and ctrl-enter
+ Smart browsing - Enable Internet Keywords, Auto complete, Domain Guessing

The key for someone new is to try it. Don't listen to everyone one trying to shove Mozilla at you, but simply check it out for say 3 days. If you don't like it then that is ok but I bet you will start saying that it's a great browser.

Mozilla/Firefox Whitelist

[ChowyChow]

Since spyware has gone cross-platform thanks to the XPI extensions, they've now implemented a whitelist (see What's New [mozilla.org]) in retaliation.

This really is open source at its best. Microsoft has not responded to the same problems involving ActiveX.

Camino 0.8b

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Camino still being worked on at all? It's been 0.8b since like early 2003.

Re:I hope they fix the slow loading issue !

[IvyMike]

My main gripe with Mozilla is that when you leave it alone for about 30 minutes or so and come back, it takes like 15-50 seconds to be active again, which is extremely annoying (loading it from virtual mem ?)

Saw this on mozillazine a few weeks ago:

Users experiencing bug 76831, a very long delay restoring Mozilla after it has been minimized for several hours (Windows machines only), may find relief by setting the config.trim_on_minimize preference to false. See comment 0 and comment 303 in the bug for details.

(Back to Mike: I think you need to go to about:config and create a new boolean pref for this; I have not tried it myself.)

Re:IE

[PeterPumpkin]

There is a luna theme [intraplanar.net] availible, but it doesn't appear to be maintained anymore. It breaks some features in Firefox 0.8, but if the IE look is all you care about, there you are.

Re:A Firefox mirror...

[tcopeland]

Note that I had to change the filenames slightly to get GForge [gforge.org] to accept them... it didn't fancy the "+". Just in case anyone notices...

Huh?

[LothDaddy]

I don't know about Mozilla, but the last time I upgraded Firefix (0.8), the installer pick up all of the bookmarks, stored form information, etc.

Version 0.8?

[Alby]

This is Version 0.9RC, a release candidate, that's why you see "Version 0.8" in the install screens.

Seems a bit faster to start up than before and the warning on closing a window with multiple tabs open is long overdue. The new theme, however, is pretty disgusting (except the "throbber") and most of the themes out there don't seem to be backwards compatible.

Re:IE

[DA-MAN]

I'd like to help the community and I could actually install mozilla on several dozen of the PCs that I administer but the curve is too high for non-geeks. I will continue to use IE and endorse it with this kind of response.

My girlfriend is as non-geek as you can get. When I removed IE from the Desktop and replaced it with a Firefox Icon, she didn't even miss a beat. As long as all her bookmarks imported she could care less what was displaying the site.

That said, I don't think I've ever seen anyone miss a beat when using Firefox as opposed to IE. To most people, a browser, is a browser, is a browser...

Re:I hope they fix the slow loading issue !

[TechnoPops]

Note the fine print:

(Back to Mike: I think you need to go to about:config and create a new boolean pref for this; I have not tried it myself.)

Re:exit all WIndows programs?

[Plutor]

That's bug 240527, filed 14 April 2004. It's marked as "blocking 1.0", but not "blocking 0.9".

Re:Big deal

[daemonc]

Yeah, IE is so much more superior [securityfocus.com], I can't imagine why anyone would use Mozilla/Firefox...

Re:I hope they fix the slow loading issue !

[Anonymous Coward]

My main gripe with Mozilla is that when you leave it alone for about 30 minutes or so and come back, it takes like 15-50 seconds to be active again, which is extremely annoying (loading it from virtual mem ?). They really need to fix that.

Lookee here [mozilla.org] - it's fixed already:

Users experiencing bug 76831, a very long delay restoring Mozilla after it has been minimized for several hours (Windows machines only), may find relief by setting the config.trim_on_minimize preference to false. See comment 0 and comment 303 in the bug for details.

(If you read that bug, you'll find a knowledge base article from Microsoft that shows that unconditionally swapping out minimized applications is standard windows behaviour... *ugh*)

np: Autechre - Gelk (Peel Session 2)

Re:Very clean!

[jimand]

I installed it this morning before the /.ing and lost all my 0.8 firefox bookmarks (bug 246018) when Firefox auto-imported (no prompt; bug 170869) all the IE bookmarks on my PC. I now have all my son's bookmarks. aargh!

Re:Can't beat Konqueror's font rendering though

[dmomo]

I had this problem too. I then found a package which included GTK libraries. That fixed it fine.

No other themes or extensions

[wyldeone]

I just installed .9, and unfortuanetly it doesn't allow you to use any old themes or extensions (and as far as I know there aren't any new ones). It did manage to bring over all of my setting to the new version quite nicily, though I have to say that the new default theme isn't nearly as nice as the old one.

Re:Mozilla/Firefox Whitelist

[Anonymous Coward]

Users who find themselves locked out of their favorite extension because it's not offered on one of the whitelisted sites (mozilla.org, mozdev.org, texturizer.net) can

• turn off the whitelist requirement (BAD CHOICE) by setting xpinstall.whitelist.required to false in about:config.
• add the site to the whitelist in xpinstall.whitelist.add (also on the about:config page)
• download the extension xpi and drop it onto an open Mozilla window.

Re:Firefox 0.9 RC1 on Windows theme problem

[fiiz]

Hey,

you can get the qute theme from its designer's website here. [quadrone.org]

Re:Very clean!

[Teach]

Can Firefox disable animated images now? Or stop them when you hit the ESC key?

Yes, but like many things there's still no way to modify the preference from the menu. You'll have to type about:config in the URL bar, and then change the value of image.animation_mode. I've got mine set to once, which plays each animation once and then stops, but I think you can also set it to none.

Reduce spacing in default theme

[Rayban]

Change the following items in classic.jar/skin/classic/browser/browser.css and the default theme looks WAY better:

.toolbarbutton-1, .toolbarbutton-menubutton-button { padding: 3px; }

.toolbarbutton-1[checked="true"], .toolbarbutton-1[open="true"], .toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[checked="true"], .toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[open="true"] { padding: 4px 2px 2px 4px !important; }

The spacing is less annoying and the icons look a lot better.

Re:mozilla vs. firefox/thunderbird?

[FlashBac]

Mozilla is more than just a Web browser. It has a mailer, chatzilla, some class of editor and a browser... firefox is essentially nothing more than the browser refactored and cleaned up. If you only use Mozilla as a browser, you would be as well moving to Firefox. If you want all the stuff that comes bundled with Mozilla, go about your business same as ever :)
Hope that's useful.

Re:Very clean!

[chromaphobic]

They're probably not gone. Just go into Documents and Settings\Your User Name\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\ and then into the gibbersh folder and they're in there as bookmarks.html. Just import that file using the bookmarks manager.

At least they were for me.

Re:Nowhere near finished, but due out soon?

[colinramsay]

Yes. All extensions and themes which have not been updated for 0.9 WILL NOT work. You must wait for the theme you want to be updated before it will correctly work in this new version.

This was necessary because the theme and extension system in Firefox has been pretty badly broken since the project started. For example, you couldn't uninstall extensions.

0.9 will see automatic updates of extensions and a Mozilla.org extension repository.

Re:Release Candidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing the numbering scheme of an open source project with the numbering scheme of a closed source project.

In an open source project, 0.9 does not mean unstable. It means it's significantly different than 0.8, but not a HUGE difference.

In a closed project, a 1.0 version number means complete enough to sell, and we'll pick up the pieces later.

Downloading The Old Theme

[CeleronXL]

The old theme, Qute, is now available from Arvid Axelsson's site [quadrone.org]. You can also install it in Firefox 0.8, which by default runs a version of Qute v1, whereas the version that was initially going to go into Firefox 0.9 was Qute v2.

Re:mozilla vs. firefox/thunderbird?

[visomo]

I use FF/TB seperately. If one crashes, the other is still up. And I use Opera mainly for browsing.

Qute theme still available

[egarland]

If you liked the theme from 0.8 (qute) better you can download it [quadrone.org] for 0.9. The author completely revamped qute for 0.9 and it's better than ever.

I don't know about the rest of you but this new theme doesn't look as nice to me. The icon's aren't as detailed or polished and it feels a little clunky compared to the old one.

Also, shame on the Mozilla folks for not letting the Qute author know all his hard work to support their project wouldn't be included.

watch out if you install over an older version....

[Anonymous Coward]

just installed the new version of Firefox over the previous version. All of the favorites from IE were imported, and I've lost all the bookmarks I had in the old version of FireFox ;(. It seems to do a great job if you're switching from IE to Firefox, but leaves a bit to be desired if you're simply upgrading and also have IE installed.

Lesson of the day: be sure to backup bookmarks.html if you're installing over a previous version and want to keep your bookmarks.

Re:Camino 0.8b

[buckhead_buddy]

Well according to a lead developer's blog [mozillazine.org] and the Camino 0.8 roadmap [mac.com]

• Camino .8 only reached beta status on May 17, 2004.
• Camino's release numbering is independent. Camino 0.8 doesn't correspond to Firefox 0.8
• They made a fork of the Mozilla 1.7 final code only on April 19, 2004

There's also a great quote from Mike Pinkerton back on September 2, 2003 [mozillazine.org] about just how Camino got to a point where its own success was one of its biggest problems.

Initially, Camino (then Chimera) did release early and often and it garnered a loyal following who couldn't wait to get their hands on the next release. The problem stems from our own success. Camino 0.7 was so stable and polished that people came to treat it as they would a 1.0 product. Releasing another version of lesser quality would be seen as a black-eye to the project as a whole, that quality was slipping, and what once was a promising product was now beginning to collapse under its own weight.

Secondly, While "listen to your users" has a wonderful ring to it, Mozilla is a perfect example of what happens when you delegate UI to a self-selecting group of developers. Camino needs strong direction and someone in charge who has no qualms about saying "that sucks, fuck off". Bad ideas aren't suddenly good ideas just because they come from the open-source community. The project has succeeded because those of us in charge had a singular vision to keep it simple. Apple saw the benefit themselves and Safari shares the same belief.
...
Right now it seems we're stuck in a catch-22: we can't gather developer interest without shipping a version and we can't ship a version without developer interest. We're triaging bugs because being able to point developers to a single list that we can drive to zarro boogs is, in my opinion, the best way to engage the development community, and what this project has been lacking since AOL began to fund its development. Now that AOL has fully withdrawn all support (even for Gecko itself), we need developers more than ever. I understand that the end-users on the various lists don't give a donkey about bug triage, they simply want new bits to play with. I just don't think we can get them bits without focused development.

Re:A Firefox mirror...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Does firefox finally have the ability to stop animated gifs?

try privoxy, it rocks

also look into the "nuke anything" firefox extention.

Re:Very clean!

[Ruediger]

Take a look at Session Saver [texturizer.net]. This will save sessions states (including tabs) if the browser crashes or if you choose to (File->Save Session).

Re:1.7 or 1.8 would be stable branch?

[Neophytus]

1.7 will be declared stable with 1.8 taking over the role of development

Re:Anybody got a screen shot?

[TheSurfer]

Screenie of the new "Winstripe" theme [mozillazine.org]

Re:Debian

[reynaert]

Debian has never shipped Netscape 4, it being non-free and all...

/. issues fixed

[1019]

I was having major issues with Firefox 0.8 viewing /. in Mac OS X. It would completely push the news headers off the window, horizontally, until I refreshed a couple times.

That seems to have been addressed in 0.9rc (running it now).

I just had a strange experience, however, when I was running the 0.9rc app after taking it from the disk image..firefox kept trying to open and then closed itself after 3 seconds and did this over and over until I had to reboot.

Hopefully that was just a first-run thing

Re:Am I the only one..

[Misch]

Neil Turner points out [neilturner.me.uk] that this version has "A 3% increase in general speed".

Startup will be a tiny bit slower because of the 7zip compression of the executable files.

Re:Installer and About Dialog Box

[Misch]

It's not 0.9 yet because it isn't 0.9. It will be 0.9 when the final release is made.

Remember, this is a release candidate.

Re:Very clean!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't "have to" update every other week. You can if you want to though, it's your choice.

Also the parent is complaining about a release candidate which is guaranteed to have a few bugs. That's why it's not called "final".

I have been trolled.
I hope this helps.
I will have a nice day.

The new thme sucks!

[popular]

I don't care how far along the new theme is, there's no redeeming value or promise in it for me. The old theme, designed to work with 0.9, is right here [quadrone.org].

Re:IE

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of valid reasons for just about everything... I'm sure the parent appreciates the tip... but who cares if you're confused? Here's an example... I sometimes want to clone the window because I want to tab around some links where I am originally... but I also want a separate window open on my other monitor which contains some password information.

Sorry, pet peeve of mine...

Re:Windows 95

[Andrew_T366]

Mozilla 1.4 and later require version 2.30.4265 or later of the system file oleaut32.dll to run properly beyond the splash screen. If you have problems running this software under Windows 95, it is probably due to this or another missing or obsolete system file. I have flawlessly run Mozilla 1.6, 1.7 RC3, and Firefox 0.8 myself under Windows 95C (although I'll still need to check to see if Mozilla Firefox 0.9 RC works under this OS).

Re:Not true

[Buran]

The purchasing people in our office still use Eudora Lite 3. But it works for them, and if you're using email for relatively simple things, you may not need to upgrade since there aren't a lot of absolutely compelling new features. Now, I personally use Eudora 6 because I like the spam filtering options and it works very well. However, I admit I haven't yet checked to see whether Thunderbird can import my Eudora mailboxes and filters (I have a rather lot of filters) and whether it can have multiple signatures and multiple accounts to check. (It probably does; I just haven't yet looked.)

It really depends on what you need. Some people hate Eudora's interface; I mostly like it, and the spam filters were great; my boss gets hundreds of spams a day and has used Eudora for years. When I gave him 6, he immediately found his spam problem manageable. But he's not a geek and won't try a new email client. I am, and I will.

p.s. any answers to my haven't-had-chance-to-check-yet musings are appreciated. :)

Re:I hope they fix the slow loading issue !

[Pionar]

Also, some pages like WashingtonPost.com have a problem where it is constantly reloading itself (perhaps a JS error).

Um, that's not a bug. It's standard HTML. go to washingtonpost.com and view it's source. see in the first line the meta tag with the http-equiv="refresh" and the content="900;url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/?LO AD_PAGE&reload=true"? that's what's refreshing the page. It's the page, not firefox.

Re:Not true

[DA-MAN]

We try to push them towards Thundirbird. I mean there is nothing I can think of that Eudora does that Thundirbird doesn't (other than suck) and lots of things it can't do.

I know of one thing that Thunderbird can't do, and it's a very important feature in Windows. That is, integrate with a Virus Scanner, obviously not Thunderbirds fault. However if you get an e-mail with a virus, the virus scanner tends to delete the infected file which in Thunderbird also stores all your previous e-mails. So if you use pop, instead of imap, and are running a Virus Scanner, be afraid... be very afraid.

Re:Very clean!

[Misch]

The site for the radialcontext moved to radialthinking.de [radialthinking.de]. You'll have to wait for a new version to be released that works with 0.9. Sorry. :-(

Re:Very clean!

[Misch]

Okay. They moved the profile folder for 0.9 to %APPDATA%/Mozilla/Firefox (windows)

If you used the Windows installer, then it looks like the installer makes a file that tells Mozilla to use the old profile location. (I'm not certain of this, it's just what I see.)

If you want to copy your bookamrks and such, you'll find them in the old Firefox folder. Just copy the file bookmarks.html to the new profile location.

Re:Very clean!

[Moofie]

You mean, thanks for doing all the things the release notes said it was going to do? Uh, yeah. You're welcome, I guess.

Re:A Firefox mirror...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use privoxy as well as nuke anything. Neither really allow you to contral animated gifs though. For instance, it would be nice to allow animated gifs, and then stop all animations on a page, or stop a single animation, start a single animation, force gifs to only animate some specified number of times, etc. It seems that this would best be done in an extension.

Re:Very clean!

[Vaevictis666]

At the same time, do a search of current bugs and see if it's already in there. If it is, and you can add something worthwhile, add a comment. If it's there and has everything you could say about it, leave it alone and be assured _someone_ will look at it.

Re:Nowhere near finished, but due out soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify, the Qute theme was trashed for very good reasons [pained.net].

You may also be interested in QuickPrefs

[Anonymous Coward]

QuickPrefs [mozdev.org] (for Mozilla and Firefox) adds a toolbar icon with a dropdown menu of options you'd usually have to dig around

about:config

for, such as cookie/image blocking, referrer and useragent spoofing, and animated image settings (never, once, or normal).

Re:Not impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

it should say v0.8+ (The plus meaning inbetween .8 and .9)

for anyone who doesnt like the manky alpha theme

[Norgus]

http://quadrone.org/graphics/Qute/Qute.jar just install this and your back to it looking decent :)

THEMES BREAK DOWN

[MissTuxie]

0.9 won't install any themes and has broken up the ones I had installed on my profile...

Yes it can stop animated gifs

[WD]

Go to:
about:config

Find "image.animation_mode"
Change it to "once" or "none"

Re:mozilla vs. firefox/thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Edit->Preferences in Linux to fit the GNOME HIG, but it's still Tools->Options in the Windows builds.

err...

[RAMMS+EIN]

Man, I don't want to know how many people think that Debian _reall_ still ships Netscape 4.7... Here's the truth:

1. Debian has never, nor ever will include Netscape 4.7 in the default branch, because it doesn't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines [debian.org].

2. Debian is actually one of the more up to date distros I've used. Just run unstable and you get almost everything just a few days after release, virtually always working.

I am sick of tired about people bashing Debian because they make every conceivable effort to guarantee that their stable distribution Just Works, even avoiding incompatibilities between versions of the same package.

At the same time, their unstable distribution gives you the latest software as soon as is feasible while still maintaining unmatched quality, and has (to my knowledge) the largest collection of packages of any distro, compiled for several architectures.

Combine all that with package management that is so good that other distros have eventually given up trying to match it and are now adopting apt one by one, and you have a distro that can turn intelligent people into zealots like me. Get on your knees and apologize! ;-)

Re:IE

[Venner]

I too wouldn't mind being able to clone the old window in the new window; it's one thing about IE I grew to like. I did it so I could have the same history in both windows. For my browsing habits, at least, it is nice to jump around in both.

CSS3 Opacity added

[pi8you]

Looking at the release notes on the Mozilla side of the browers, I see they've added support for CSS opacity, very cool. Not something I'd incorporate into the core design of my pages yet, but I might toss it in as a bonus to Moz users.

Release Notes

[SmlFreshwaterBuffalo]

Since the link on the mozilla.org homepage is still pointing to 0.8, here's a link to the official
Firefox 0.9 RC Release Notes [mozilla.org].

Re:Debian

[steveha]

The Debian "nonfree" packages still include Netscape 4.7

Actually, I just checked and it's "contrib", not "nonfree". Sorry about that.

steveha

Re:Mozilla/Firefox Whitelist

[rabidcow]

and maybe I'll just disable Javascript and steal your images out of spite

No need to disable JavaScript:
- "Tools" menu
- "Page Info" (Ctrl+J)
- "Media" tab
- "Save As..." button
Also works for flash and other weird things that you usually can't right click on to save.

Re:Version 0.8?

[Myen]

I believe the official guess is the 14th. (By way of Ben Goodger being quoted by Peter(6) on the MozillaZine forums)

... So my personal adjusted guess would be two weeks ;)

Re:Can't beat Konqueror's font rendering though

[X]

Assuming you use the appropriate version of Gtk+, you'll find that Konqueror and Mozilla are actually both using the same font rendering software.

Re:Not true

[HermanZA]

Well, that is a stupid feature of McAffee - deleting your whole inbox. Rather use AntiVir. It costs nothing and works better.

Re:Release Candidate?

[e6003]

'Cos it's a Release Candidate - a potential release-grade 0.9 if no serious bugs are found. OpenOffice.org 1.1RC5 is actually the same as the official 1.1.0 release - there were no bugs serious enough reported, so this candidate for release was chosen to be the release version. (What confused me was when K3B went from 0.9 to 0.10 - seemed like a huge retrograde step at first to me!)

IE without a shortcut.

[Atragon]

Start -> Run -> Iexplore

Re:Ack!

[twistedcubic]

I became disillusioned a long time ago when the moved Edit->Preferences to Tools->Preferences, which doesn't make any sense (is "Preferences" a tool???), just to be like Microsoft.

Re:Not true

[JCholewa]

> Norton Anti-virus works perfectly well with Thunderbird - never had any problems with it.

NAV Corporate 7.x (and probably 8.x) eats Mozilla inboxes. Very annoying.

--
-JC
http://www.jc-news.com/coding/freedom/

Re:Yes it can stop animated gifs

[Saint Stephen]

Answering my own question:

Here are some useful extensions packaged for Firefox 0.9.

http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtop ic =284

Re:CSS3 Opacity added

[ttfkam]

The "filter" CSS property is a proprietary extension to IE. It is not now nor ever will be part of the W3C CSS3 spec.

As an aside, Mozilla has supported opacity/transparency as well for a while now through its proprietary "-moz-opacity" CSS property. The main difference here is that while it's clear that you are using a browser-specific extension with Mozilla, the IE variant appears like any other CSS property, and you may not realize that you are in IE-only land.

But if proprietary extensions don't bother you, "-moz-opacity: 0.93" and "-moz-opacity: 0.3" will give the same effect to your post-its as the filter attribute does.

However the real news item here is that the new Firefox code -- like Safari 1.2 before it -- supports the "opacity" property as specified by the W3C CSS3 color module working draft. Perhaps it will be incorporated in the IE7 hack [edwards.name] for compatibility.