Posted on 04/30/2006 7:42:19 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
While Microsoft has become a favorite target of critics who say the company has dramatically scaled back expectations for Windows Vista, Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is about to join that crowd.
Mozilla has decided to strip out a major new feature from Firefox 2.0 in order to ensure that the update meets a Q3 2006 release target, a post in the browser's developer forum indicated earlier this week. "Places," a complete rewrite of the browser's bookmarking system, will no longer be included in the release.
While Places had made it into the first public alpha release of Firefox 2.0, codenamed "Bon Echo," it had been pulled previously. In announcing the decision, Mozilla's director of engineering Mike Schroepfer said the company wanted to ensure a quality release.
"Rather than rush it to market - we'd prefer to spend the time it takes to get it right," he wrote. Schroepfer said that it was a difficult decision, but it would ensure that when released, Places would work as Mozilla intended it to.
The removal of Places is a blow overall to the Firefox 2.0 release, which was reflected in the responses to Schroepfer's comments.
"mozilla.feedback [the company's feedback newsgroup] has 'I don't see any big differences' repeated frequently over 2.0a1, and it had Places. From your post, Firefox 2.0 sounds like it should be called Firefox 1.6," a user named Matt Nordhoff said.
Schroepfer said that Firefox 2.0 would still offer many improvements over its predecessor even without Places, pointing to enhancements in security, tabbed browsing, RSS, performance, and extensions.
"In order words, all the reasons people love Firefox will get demonstrably better in this release," Schroepfer said. Bon Echo Alpha 2 is set to be available on May 9, he added.
> Anyone else have a problem with Firefox and bookmarks?
Gosh no, but I'm still running version 1.0.2. Space and memory being a big consideration on this old Dell P2 box.
Keep in mind that browsers like Maxthon, Greenbrowser, MYIE2 and many other 'alternative browsers are NOT non-Internet Explorer browsers....like Firefox and Opera.
Those browsers are simply front end overlays to the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. It's still the same old MSIE swiss cheese on the back end.
I've never had this problem. Of course, I don't have 180MB of RAM. Perhaps if you removed some of the RAM from your box, you might solve that particular problem.
Regarding the article; I like the fact that they're going to take the time to do it right rather than ship a buggy product like another vendor we all know to well. I suspect they'll have it ready in time for their next scheduled update.
Yes it is, but the with the proper ad ons and basic security added, explorer is still the best browser. The only thing the FireFox had going for it was speed, and that is because it has no complexity. With a high speed connection and plenty of RAM, complexity is nice, and speed is not a issue. With products like Zone and adware add ons for popups and the like, you can set it up however you chose, protect all your ports and really feel relatively safe, as long as you run periodic port scans and testing to check your vulnerability level.
These other replacement browsers, and I have tried most of them, have irritation built in and do not give you all the bells and whistles needed like a decent favorites organizer. When you put the add/on's into the mix, you end up with the same vulnerabilities, the same speed and the same potential risks.
So I no longer see a point in them, unless and until they make something really good.
Let's say you have multiple tabs open and have browsed several pages with each. Firefox caches everything for each tab, and that can grow pretty big. There are settings to get rid of that.
We'll simply have to disagree on that point.
Firefox does things that IE can't do now and probably never will.
With Firefox, I can highlight a sentence on a page and it is copied to the clip board. A middle click pastes it.
I can highlight a non-hyperlinked URL on a webpage such as www.freerepublic.com and drag and drop it onto an empty spot and it will open up a new tab to that page.
I can highlight a word and with a right click do a search of any dictionary or thesaurus I wish...opened into a new tab.
I can, with a right click, duplicate an open tab into a new tab, complete with its history.
I can, with a right click re-open a recently closed tab, complete with its history.
Those are only 5 of the 25 extensions I have tweaked Firefox with. The list goes on and on. I only use IE for pages that are configured to work best with IE. And opening one of those pages in IE is only a right click away.
And the difference between managing Favorites versus Bookmarks is night and day.
I don't begrudge anyone from using what they are most comfortable with regardless of security issues. To each his/her own. But for me, Firefox is all I need or want.
And frankly speaking, I never have had any issues with MS programs, browsers or operating systems in any case. They have good and bad, and with a few standalone programs, the bad can be tweaked out of existence.
It seems that some people, (not you) but some folks are demanding a idiot proof computer, and that is impossible to achieve without compromises.
But at home...we are fully Foxed.
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