OSS PING
Posted on 11/30/2005 6:48:19 AM PST by N3WBI3
The much-anticipated release of Firefox 1.5 has finally been posted on Mozilla's FTP site. This is the full release, unlike the Release Candidates 1, 2 and 3 that were posted on the Mozilla.org website on November 1, November 10 and November 17, respectively.
The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit foundation that supports Firefox development and promotion, in addition to its for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary, plan to accompany the release with a media marketing blitz some time this week. The centerpiece of the marketing blitz will be user-submitted videos of Firefox users evangelizing their favorite web browser. These videos will be made available at the SpreadFirefox website. In addition, there will be a 30-second commercial, again chosen from the best of all videos submitted by users and fans. The Mozilla Foundation has not commented on where exactly this ad will be shown. Previously, the Mozilla Foundation took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, funded entirely by donations from Firefox users, to mark the release of version 1.0.
Firefox 1.5 comes in at a 5 megabyte download for the Windows version, 9.4 megabytes for the Macintosh OSX version and 8.1 megabytes for the Linux version. The source code, available as a zipped tarball, comes out to 33 megabytes.
The new release of the browser adds security enhancements, bug fixes, and some new features that were previously only available with third-party plugins, such as drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs. The much-maligned Automatic Updating feature has been completely revamped, and new updates no longer require downloading a whole new copy of the browser. Accessibility features have been enhanced with support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. For paranoid or easily-embarrassed users, the new Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
Firefox started as a fork from the open-sourced Mozilla web browser, which itself grew out of the late Netscape's decision to release all of its source code to the public. Recently, web sites tracking browser stats have shown that Firefox's market share has grown, and now stands at between 8 and 10 percent. Will the release of Firefox 1.5 continue this trend?
OSS PING
BTW--didja notice that with KDE 3.5, Konqueror is now the 2nd browser to pass the Acid2 test?
Agreed. I may have to take another look at it though. It seems they've been doing a lot of work on it.
In other words, it sanitizes your computer after you troll DU looking for threads for the DUmmie FUnnies. ;-)
oooh - rearranging tabs. Nice.
I hope they've done some work on the bookmarks manager too.
Nothing really new on the bookmarks front; that'll come in 2.0, which is scheduled for next summer.
The tabs is something I have been waiting for and it works great!
I don't mind it too much.
1.5 is a general under-the-hood release anyway. Lots of bugfixes (almost 4000 of them) and other things like that. Not much in the way of new UI, but they're finally going to do something with bookmarks in 2.0. They're batting the idea of meta-bookmarks around, which is good.
You should install the Tab Mix Plus extension. It holds quite a few pleasing suprises, including session saving.
Youre right, it is quite nice..
Well, now I'm back to Firefox with a whole pile of extensions.
well, at least this fixed the problem I was having of not being able to copy and paste urls when I had the bookmark manager open.
I've been waiting for re-arranging tabs for a while now. It's nice to have the option.
Rearranging tabs has been available for a long time via extensions.
Download Tab Mix Plus, 0.3 beta version. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
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