Mozilla FireFox

[Andrew]

Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension

Check to see if Microsoft installed an extension in firefox without telling you. It is from .net update.

I havn't installed .net updates, because they are like 200mb.

[Andrew]

Last firefox beta 99 was released a couple days ago. So a RC is expected in a couple weeks.

According to betanews, firefox 3.5 is 2.5 times faster than firefox 3.0.x

Expect 250% Firefox speed blast after 3.5 RC release

From the graph is looks like firefox, chrome and safari are all fast. Internet explorer is still slow.

Early July release?

[Andrew]

3.5 release candidate 1

So looks like final release soon (couple weeks). yah!

The New Firefox Icon

EDIT:

Mozilla quickly released a second RC

Firefox 3.5 release candidate now available for download

[Andrew]

Firefox RC3 available

[Andrew]

It has been pretty much confirmed for a release tomorrow.

To watch the progress of release:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.5

Looks like release around noon tomorrow eastern time.

[Andrew]

Firefox 3.5 is now available for download

I checked for updates (tools->check for updates) and it started updating to newest version. Although the download is very slow and even timed out. Gonna have to download manually. (update is 10.2 mb while installer is only 8 mb..). Pause/unpause updater seemed to get it downloading again.

HTML 5 video/audio is going to be awesome.

[Dragoon Knight]

Downloaded and installed.  Lots of incompatible add-ons, but luckily, ABP is still good.

Not really noticing the purported speed increase, though.

[Andrew]

nosquint

customizegoogle

aren't compatible.

I can't scrollwheel click to open links in new tabs. EDIT: Nevermind, was just a specific link/image that doesn't work

[Dragoon Knight]

Oh that annoyed me.  Firefox 3.5 reset the location for downloaded files to the default "Downloads" folder in My Documents.  Sod that - I had it set to Desktop, always have.

Plus the new icon looks crappy.  Not doing so well so far, Mozilla.

EDIT - More problems!  Twitter doesn't take well to Firefox 3.5 - updates via the webpage result in constant "loading", but if you refresh the page, your update will have been posted.  Addons like Twitterfox seem to work fine, though.

[Andrew]

I just upgraded to 3.5 on ubuntu. works good so far.

If you are using ubuntu (or any linux), and run firefox a lot, and maybe notice some slowdowns when typing into awesomebar (url locations), or adding/viewing bookmarks, this tutorial will make firefox much faster than before. I'm not talking a little bit faster, but a LOT faster, as it moves your firefox profile into RAM. No more hard drive thrashing.

Howto; Firefox profile in RAM for increased speed and stability

If you have >=1gb ram and usually have free space, this should only take up about 200mb ram, although you can go as low as low as 128mb ram if you lower your cache value (70mb+whatever your cache is). I'm currently using 250mb ram (although it will probably only use 200mb or so max since my cache is 128mb). I might try this on my old pentium 4 computer since it has 768mb ram.

I tried this with default 3.0.11 and it worked great. I decided to update to 3.5 (it's in repository and will install as shiretoko). I had to tweak some location stuff for the guide to work (took <2 min to update stuff). Firefox 3.5 in ram works good as well.

I also notice now that firefox scrolling in ubuntu (with compiz enabled!) is fast. Before with compiz enabled it was a bit too slow to use. But now I might be able to use compiz more since this was the biggest reason for me not using it. I'm not sure if this is solved with firefox 3.5 or putting profile into RAM. Hmm, video playback in vlc is good, maybe it's not related to firefox at all. Either way I'm happy that compiz is working good again.

Definitely recommend trying this if you use linux.

EDIT:

Hmm, something corrupted firefox 3.5. I'm guessing the ram thing. 3.0 is working now in ram. Put old 3.0 profile back into 3.5 and 3.5 works again.

EDIT:

I switched back to hard drive profile as ramdisk was unstable. Might try again later with manual load/unload into ram.

[Andrew]

Firefox to Hit 1 Billion Downloads Friday

Includes all versions from 1.0 to now. Includes multiple downloads by same person. But does not include automatic updates.

[D2k Sardaukar]

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Windows_Theme_Mockups

4.0_Windows_Theme_Mockups  :D

[Khan]

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-ultimate-guide-to-speeding-up-firefox-3-5/

Guide to speeding up FF. Some useful tips in there.

[veK]

Attention NoScript users

Noscript developers are corrupt and hijacked adblock+ so that advertisements would be displayed on noscript update webpages so they could make money.

Guess I'll remember not to use noscript, even though it was usually recommended to prevent websites from doing stuff you did not want.

I know download helper extension does same thing. A new update every 2 weeks minimum and they have ads plastered all over their website which shows up when you update.

I still use NoScript because it's pretty useful. And I don't care if they update often and send me to their page afterwards because I have never even looked at the page, I just close the tab as soon as it pops up and I don't mind if the ads count an ad impression.

There's one thing though that bothers me a lot: I always display the tab bar, even with only 1 page opened. Before 3.5 you could just close every tab and if there was only 1 tab left and you closed that one as well FF would still be running with a 1 blank tab. Now if I close the last tab FF closes and I have to restart it. That's really annoying  :-[

[Andrew]

You can change the tab setting.

preferences->tabs->uncheck always show the tab bar

I have it enabled. I disliked it at first but have gotten used to it. I almost always have tabs open, and I figure the odd time I only have one tab open when I close the second last tab, it has to resize and remove the tab bar which wastes time.

[veK]

That's not my problem. I WANT the tab bar to be always shown, even if I only have 1 tab open.

My problem is: if I only have 1 tab open and press CTRL+W (to close the active tab) FF quits - because obviously I closed every site. I don't want FF to quit though but just to close the tab an leave me with a blank tab. Before 3.5 it was always like that and now it's not anymore and this really sucks.

[Andrew]

Ok, I understand now.

Here are solutions:

Firefox 3.5 Issues

Summary:

One reader pointed me to the about:config settings and

browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab setting and changing it from false

to true stopped Firefox from closing when I tried to close the last

tab with crl+w.

I googled: firefox 3.5 ctrl+w

[veK]

Cool, this solved the problem. Obviously it's the other way around: you have to change the setting from true to false (not from false to true like the guy from the quote said). I'm really happy about that because I accidentally closed FF quite a lot since 3.5  ::)

By the way... I found a great addon yesterday: InstaClick 1.4

This addon open links in new tabs with a single right click. You can open links in new tabs without that addon by default if you click your mousewheel but I don't like clicking with the mousewheel and sometimes I don't have one (when I'm using the laptop's touchpad). You can still rightclick to get the menu everywhere else on a page except for the links OR if you press CTRL while rightclicking on a link. I really love that addon  :)

[Andrew]

Firefox 3.5.2 and 3.0.13 security updates now available for download

[Andrew]

Anyone noticing google ads everywhere? adblock+ is not blocking them. I have customizegoogle which is supposed to block them but it has been disabled since 3.5 update, and I only recently noticed google ads.

It really sucks browsing the web with ads everywhere.

[Andrew]

Turns out I was using adblock+ 1.0.2, and 1.1.1 is available. Not sure why firefox didn't alert me to newer versions. Probably because of using shiretoko 3.5.2 on ubuntu 9.04 or something.

downloadhelper was also out of date.

I was clicking on lots of ads to see if they were legit. Guess that is what happens when I am used to seeing no ads, then all of a sudden see lots, I start looking at them and clicking.

Hm, my adblock on usb stick is 1.0.2. Time to update that file as well. I have firefox 3.5.2 for windows installer and adblock extension. Gets installed on every computer I come in contact with :)

[Andrew]

Firefox 3.5.3 released.

Some security and stability things fixed.

changelog.

Real bug list shows 43 bugs fixed.

[Andrew]

Firefox pases IE6 market share

Good. IE6 is garbage.

Sadly IE6 has more market share than IE7 or IE8 separately.

IE6 23%

IE7 18%

IE8 20%

[Khan]

At work we have IE6 and it's like going back in time. It always crashes and loading pages takes so damn LONG!

[Andrew]

I just did some updates to windows xp (Havn't done windows update in months), and get .net infecting firefox, Microsoft provides a way to remove it. There was no way for me to remove it from Firefox addons. Currently says not compatible with Firefox 3.5.5...

How to remove the .NET Framework Assistant for Firefox

Crap, I have to edit registry to get rid of it? Or download and install the assistant (which is currently already installed wtf), then I can uninstall it? This looks difficult. Go to hell Microsoft.

And people complain about linux and having to use command line.

EDIT:

Ok, so I installed assistant, and it is no longer listed uder firefox addons. Guess that fixed it easily. Though I thought I was supposed to remove it from firefox addons.