Firefox 1.5
So, since the Planets are full of entries about Firefox 1.5, I thought I’d throw my 2 cents into the mix. First off, I haven’t noticed any huge differences. I have gotten maybe 5 popups in the past 2 years, so I’m unlikely to notice the popup changes. The speed doesn’t really seem any different to me. It does seem to use less memory. It looks pretty much the same. I still have problems with text running off the edges of dialog boxes, but this may be related to my theme somehow.
Where I’ve noticed a difference are the regressions, all related to extensions. First off, there are a number of extensions that I use that won’t work with the new Firefox. I just lose their functionality entirely until they’re updated, and I’m sure some of them won’t be. Obviously, I can’t force FOSS developers to update their code, and if I care enough, I should update them myself, but it’s still annoying. Second, some of the functionality in extensions I use all the time has changed. The biggest example is adblock. I don’t have a media player plugin in my firefox, so embedded media causes firefox to complain about the lack of plugins. In 1.0.x, adblock still was told about the media, and put up it’s button to block the URL, allowing me to click on the button, and copy the URL to another program, say mplayer. However, in 1.5, adblock no longer sees that media, and therefore I can’t get the URL without scanning the source. This is very annoying, necessitating a change in the way I use firefox. Ideally, what I want for this use case is the equivilent of flashblock for all embedded media. Maybe I’ll go hack it… Another problem is with sessionsaver. Before, it worked perfectly, saving the history of each tab, and properly restoring all state. Now, the first saved tab is always blank, and the history of tabs is not being restored. It’s possible this is a problem with sessionsaver, and will be fixed, but for now, it makes it hard to use.
On the whole, firefox 1.5 is nice, and it works pretty well. My memory usage seems to be noticably lower than it was before, based on watching the system monitor. Hopefully, my other issues will be worked out, but I just wanted to float onto the blogsphere that firefox 1.5 is not a perfect improvement.
Try this to make your current extensions compatible with firefox:
http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/nightly.html
well firefox devs are not extension devs.
I dont get all this people blaming firefox not working with extensions which are not compatible.
Hell, they don’t ship the extensions themselves. for every “major” update it’d been the same with extensions.
And you guys are big geeks/devs. You’re supposed to know that stuff. Supposed to have maybe even run the beta from time to time. But it appears no one did but me.
Well 1.5 has been very stable during beta stages, like usual. Extensions have been broken, like usual. But I don’t care, I know the reason, they’ll eventually be fixed by their dev in time. My life do not depend on it, and I’m not “just a end user wondering why adblock ain’t working”
that was it
Visual Studio 2005 was just released last month and is having the same kind of issues, plugins not working and so forth, and no one (that I’ve seen, anyway) is blaming Microsoft. These things happen when a new version of extensible software is released. It takes a while for the community to catch up. If you care more about the features of your extensions than the features in the new version, don’t upgrade yet.
x,
You missed the point, I think. I’m not blaming the firefox devs, it’s certainly not their fault. Whoever maintains the extensions need to update them, or I need to find (or create) an alternative. Most of my extensions have since been updated. I was merely pointing out to the general planetsphere that not all is rosy with firefox 1.5, as people seem to have been saying.
As for running the beta, I’m a gnome and amd64 dev, not a firefox dev, so I run *tons* of alpha and beta software, but not firefox.
I figured you’d have something about firefox, so I stopped by. Since I they won’t let you use firefox here and I have to wait to see it for myself, I wanted someone’s opinion whom I knew. Thanks.