Firefox 1.0 has several new features that will greatly improve the user experience. Marcus wrote about three of them here. Our take: We hope they will support the rdf+xml type too (only rss+xml works atm).
New Features in the Upcoming Firefox 1.0
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Firefox is clearly becoming the best multi-platform web browser. I have been using it since version .4 so I might just be biased.
I like the old notification of popup blocking notification better. Based on that screenshot, the new version is ripped off from Windows XP SP2’s version of IE. Scary.
Hopefully it can be disabled or I will perminately have to see that bar at the top of each webpage that has popups.
One browser I hope will emulate Firefox is Epiphany. Epiphany is great but it’s just too scanty. For example, Epiphany’s “privacy/security” features are totally non-existent.
A few days ago, a friend had access to all my banking transactions on the internet that I had accessed using Epiphany (thanks to history pages and cookies).
Firefox provides security features to null the history pages and to delete cookies after the session is over. These are invaluable security features every web browser should have that epiphany lacks.
Perhaps I should report this as a bug.
Sure, it sounds great, but the features described are nothing more than minor GUI improvements.
However, I don’t expect any drastic changes between 0.9 and 1.0, since it would only introduce more bugs.
This just sounds like some MS marketing BS. I think it’s time to come up with a new word for innovation.
Erasing cookies? Go to Edit->Personal Data, Shift select all the cookies you want to delete and click Remove.
Additionally, accidentally saved a password in epiphany. USe the same dialog to remove said password.
I don’t see a way to remove the history. I think the the Edit->preferences->privacy->temporary files->clear
might do it. If not, put a feature request and it might come into the Personal Data dialog.
(P.S. I am using the ‘unstable’ branch so I don’t know how these features look or if they even exsist in the stable branch. With gnome 2.8 coming real soon now, it shouldn’t really matter)
But I do agree that there are quite a number of UI features that epiphany is missing that firefox has. Infact, I think it would be very nice if that type of find dialog behavior would be integrated into the HIG and used everywhere in gnome, including gedit, and so forth.
Borrowvation maybe?
How can Firefox 1.0 which if memory recalls has had it’s features frozen for a little while now be copying SP2 which only just came out??
or did you just prove that to people can have the same idea for different things.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m aware of the methods available to clear the history, the cache and cookies. But I think it is unnecessary and cumbersome to expect users to do that frequently.
It’s a better idea to provide options to limit the life of session cookies and also to control the history database. That way, when a user closes Epiphany, the necessary data is erased. I think Firefox does it best.
It’s also useful is deploying Epiphany in public places, like libraries, cafes etc.
Firefox devs took a rather bad direction deciding that the find dialog should not show up as a pop up any more. This obviously is not allowed by some Gnome HIG. See the for example hidden files dialog in the File Chooser.
Instead, to improve usability even further and bring it to new spheres like they did with the new permanent and not removable popup notification bar (which seemingly will get more disturbing then just letting the pop ups.. well.. pop up, the old IE school) and to go conform with the spatial metaphors, they should abandon the URL Field alltogether, because most users never edit it directly and users new to the application might be confused by the lengthy adresses it shows most of the time. Just make it a pop up (what else?) for the advanced ones. A user definitely never should have to type in or edit, or even see a URL adress by hand.
I love the highlight feature. I use the MSN toolbar and it has this feature. Not only does it hightlight the words, it provides a zoomed out window so you can quickly locate each instance at a glance. Hopefully Firefox will do something similar.
I don’t mind this method of notification at all, my only complaint with IE is the fact that it shofts the page down instead of merely floating above the page as it should. I’d also rather see it appear from the bottom but that’s not a big issue for me.
Am I missing something? Firefox is not part of Gnome and does not need to follow Gnome HIG.
I do hope, however, that both find and pop-up notifications can be turned back to their current form. The find feature might nice if it can be combined with the status bar at the bottom, but the pop-up notification takes up too much real estate and looks intrusive to me.
Instead of adding more GUI stuff, I would rather have them make Firefox more responsive. The GUI is very slow compared to Opera. Focus moves extremely slow. For example, use your middle mouse button to open many links in new tabs in the background. You’ll notice that the focus is trailing way behind. I assume that this had to do with Gecko and not Firefox. Even GMAIL is more responsive in IE than Firefox. If you have a few tabs that are loading, you can’t change to another tab until all have loaded. I love Opera because of the Zoom feature and its responsiveness. I hope that they devote more time to Gecko, or whatever makes Firefox’s GUI slow.
I’ve noticed some serious issues with Firefox:
1. there are definitely memory leaks *still* in 0.9.3 on Windows and Linux.
2. is threading broken on Windows or something as if you open a site in a new tab, you can do nothing else in the browser until the page has been fetched (e.g; you cannot go to another tab). single-tasking is not good folks!
3. why have most of the extensions not been updated for 0.9? are we going to be able to use even less with 1.0?
4. the popup notification bar had better be optional, or i’m sticking to 0.9.3, jees you might as well have a banner ad in the toolbar like Opera!
5. same goes for that find toolbar – jees is this project being funded by monitor manufacturers or something, as my 19″ is running out of screen real estate already!
Anyone up for a fork of 0.9.3 to bypass these features in 1.0?
Well, in fact Firefox does try to follow the Gnome HIG. Obviously, they are not quite there yet, but good progress is being made (e.g. using the GTK file picker in the latest nightly builds). Tracking bug for Gnome integration:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233462
I’m using Epiphany 1.2.6 and when i click on History icon (or: Go -> History), select All (default) and then Edit -> Clear History it should be gone. I’m not gonna try it out now though.
“1. there are definitely memory leaks *still* in 0.9.3 on Windows and Linux.”
Please do point them out here and on the Firefox bugzilla. Share your research! Provide feedback!
“why have most of the extensions not been updated for 0.9? are we going to be able to use even less with 1.0?”
Because the internals are not static… yet! We’re discussing 0.x software; e.g. no 1.0 or stable version. After 1.0 this won’t happen anymore. So its up to the authors of the extensions to update their software.
[…]and to go conform with the spatial metaphors, they should abandon the URL Field alltogether.[…] A user definitely never should have to type in or edit, or even see a URL adress by hand.
And how Joe Sixpack will be able to type the address he saw on a business card or on his grocery bags?
Seriously, for the most modern browser in the world — what is it with the ancient looking widgets in FireFox? Just look at the horrible jagged edges on the radio buttons. And the text input fields are really ugly too with the border defined as a 2 px dark grey on top and left and *nothing* on bottom and right. Is there anyway to make the widgets in FireFox look like they were designed for computers sometime this century?
What FireFox and Mozilla really needs is to compile SVG in default! We need this feature so bad MOZILLA TEAM!!!
if svg came as default in mozilla… then it would feed back to web site creators within the more enlightened circles at least.
My firefox is really really beautiful, I even named her Sarah
1. there are definitely memory leaks *still* in 0.9.3 on Windows and Linux.
I’ve not noticed any memory leaks, and I tend to leave the same browser running all day, frequently open tab groups, and on occasion go to websites that have java applets, embedded flash, or pdf documents.
The one problem I HAVE noticed is if you close the browser before a plugin has finished loading, the window closes, but the application remains memory-resident, shows up in the windows process list, and prevents opening up a new firefox window on the same profile until that process is killed.
2. is threading broken on Windows or something as if you open a site in a new tab, you can do nothing else in the browser until the page has been fetched (e.g; you cannot go to another tab). single-tasking is not good folks!
There appear to be some blocking operations, but I’ve not experienced anything so bad as you describe. When opening a whole tab group, there is sometimes a 1-2 second pause, but this delay effect scales down to no noticeable delay for opening a link in a new tab.
3. why have most of the extensions not been updated for 0.9? are we going to be able to use even less with 1.0?
API isn’t final yet. Same with themes.
4. the popup notification bar had better be optional, or i’m sticking to 0.9.3, jees you might as well have a banner ad in the toolbar like Opera!
It sure is. When it pops up, it lets you know that you can disable it.
5. same goes for that find toolbar – jees is this project being funded by monitor manufacturers or something, as my 19″ is running out of screen real estate already!
meh. I’m running 10×7 on a 15″ LCD, and it’s not abominable. It’s less intrusive then the floating dialog box. My only beef with it is Ctrl+F brings it up, but Ctrl+F doesn’t put it away again.
Anyone up for a fork of 0.9.3 to bypass these features in 1.0?
Feel free. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. In fact, it shouldn’t be too hard to produce patches from the diffs that will strip those features out of current versions of the source.
Heck, maybe its even a build option, like a lot of other things.
One thing that I think is worth bearing in mind is that the Gecko engine is the most portable of the popular rendering engines. On windows, Opera or IE might be faster or more responsive, but there’s simply no comparison in any heterogeneous computing environment.
Well, in fact Firefox does try to follow the Gnome HIG. Obviously, they are not quite there yet, but good progress is being made (e.g. using the GTK file picker in the latest nightly builds).
So that’s why the buttons and menu items are in funny places on the Linux version!
is threading broken on Windows or something as if you open a site in a new tab, you can do nothing else in the browser until the page has been fetched
Uhh maybe your Windows is broken, I have never had that problem myself.
Just look at the horrible jagged edges on the radio buttons
Is this a troll? I have no idea what you mean. They look exactly the same as normal Windows/GTK ‘widgets’.
Personally, I still hate the download manager. It is so annoying that I switch it off and when I need to clear it CTRL+Y it back up. It should clear itself, I have no need for a history of downloads. And I would like to close the browser and continue an unfinished download, why on earth does this not work?
if svg came as default in mozilla… then it would feed back to web site creators within the more enlightened circles at least.
All you need to do then is use an exploit in IE to install an SVG plugin! Now *that’s* deployment.
If you want to greatly improve my user experience then how about moving my last selected url to the top in the address bar? This is the one thing that annoys me about firefox that I really like in IE. Other than that I’m looking forward to 1.0. Wonder if there will be any 9.x releases inbetween.
I hope the popup blocking capabilities gets improved as well. I’ve been getting random popups lately even with the blocker turned on – see http://www.aol.com with 0.9.3.
I was also hoping to customize more stuff on a per-site basis than just the pop-up blocker, such as Flash, customized font settings, etc. It would also be hella cool if you had the ability to only spoof IE6 on sites that required it.
Is there an approximate ETA on when this beast will be released ?
Does anyone know if they will ever implement the ability to read and write .mht files? I really need this and the lack of it keeps me from going fully Firefox. I know it was listed as a “bug” ages ago.
I hope the popup blocking capabilities gets improved as well. I’ve been getting random popups lately even with the blocker turned on – see http://www.aol.com with 0.9.3.
I’m running Firefox 9.3 on Fedora, I get no popups when I just went to AOL.com (*shudder*). Double check your setting?
er.. ment 0.9.3
I’m still running firebird and am a little afraid to upgrade if they are going to take up part of my window letting me know that a popup has been stopped. I don’t want ANYYYYYYY pop ups.
Acording to here:
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/
Direct link to screenshots:
http://gemal.dk/archives/000630.html
it is a small view from my winBox(XP pro Sp2/XP1800AMD with 512Mb in RAM)as running mozilla 1.7.2 with mail client and calendar built-in (.xpi extension installed later) compared with firefox 0.9.3 + thunderbird 0.7.3 +sunbird 0.2a:
mozilla-1.7.2 expensed ~ 47MB total in memory (even when you r running mail client and calendar
turn off mozilla then pop up:
-firefox 0.93: ~25Mb in memory expense
-thunderbird 0.73: ~15MB …
-sunbird 0.2a: ~12Mb
total for 3 combo: ~52.0 Mb mem expenses
I have given it a try on slackware 10.0 (ker 2.4.27) 128Mb in RAM and it shows a bit similar result to the above
Then, i ve made decision to keep using mozilla combo instead. however, the choices are very personal and up to yours
have a great weekends
I’m running Firefox 9.3 on Fedora, I get no popups when I just went to AOL.com (*shudder*). Double check your setting?
Well, I do have the box checked to block popups in Options, but I am still getting a popup on aol.com. What else coudl be the difference other than the fact that I’m in Windows? Are you running adblock?
Also, whatup with the new plugin installer? This appears to me to be the IE ActiveX installer nightmare all over again – you KNOW users are going to install anything and everything that shows up, this could possibly be the worst idea in the history of bad ideas
I too get a pop-up when visiting aol.com. I’m running 0.9.3 on Gentoo and that’s the first pop-up I’ve encountered. And yes, I have pop-ups disabled.
no popup here on win2k using firefox 0.9.3. interesting…
I’m sure as customizable as firefox is that these new ‘features’ will be taken care of quickly.
0.9.3 on Win2K, I’ve been surfing for about 5 minutes and have three tabs open, it’s at 51Mb right now, think it started at about 25Mb?
Opera 7 is taking 12Mb, MSIE 6 is taking 7Mb.
So does it look like Firefox has memory issues?!
I’ve seen the same thing on all my installs – RedHat9, SUSE 9.1, 2x WinXP Pro, 2x Win2K Pro. I wonder if it’s one of my extensions?:
PrefButtons
AdBlock
X
Developer
Paranoia
Plain Text Links
Occurs on this machine WinXP Pro
OK weird in help Firefox says version 0.9
Maybe time to upgrade
Upgraded to 0.9.3 and the popup disappears.
“Just look at the horrible jagged edges on the radio buttons”
Is this a troll? I have no idea what you mean. They look exactly the same as normal Windows/GTK ‘widgets’.
No, they do not look the same! I repeat: they do not look the same!
– On Windows it looks like Firefox has its own control set that looks like that of Windows but with much less polish.
– On Linux GTK+ is used, but a) not withing Gecko, so that controls within forms look just as ugly as on the Windows version, and b) on the places where GTK+ actually is used, it is obvious that it is just a hack as the controls don’t feel like real GTK+ controls. Sometimes things don’t even look the same – just compare how Firefox and a native GTK+ application mark the default button of a dialog, to give an example.
so they are just going to add only 3 features???
out of which that pop up blocking toolbar is a shameless rip off of IE6 SP2,
& as for RSS feed it is a rip off of Safari
as for as find toolbar is concerned it is good however I have found it to be a little buggy hope they improve it a bit
& what about size people??? they said it was going to be lean mean browser & it is still almost 5 MB download on the other hand Opera is only 3.5 MB including all the features & a mail client!
& as far as memory thing goes common people in todays days 256 mb ram is minimum so u people wnat to keep 90% of memory free why?
does it really matter if your web browser takes 10mb more????
i find the speed stability & features more inportant than any other thing
MAF = Mozilla Archive Format
it can do mht, and also compress with 7z or zip or other compressors. it can open IE mht files. and save mht that IE can open.
try http://maf.mozdev.org/
works pretty nice. and u can also archive a full set of tabs.
the interface isn’t streamlined yet, but it’s working pretty well.
Upgraded to 0.9.3 and the popup disappears.
It may be a sort of thing where they only feed you the pop-up once a day, cuz I’m not getting it fight now either. I’m just pointing out that I’ve seen a few of them lately, also on cnn.com and other sites.
Anyone here ever used iCab? (Macs only)
Haven’t had a pop-up in 5 years.
Maybe not the fastest or prettiest, but has the best set of user preferences of all of them.
The issue with changing tabs while they’re loading is either windows only or a specific conflict I would guess. Searching bugzilla/filing a bug is probably the way to go, to find out who else it affects.
The comments at the linked site say that the popup notification bar only appears once, so it’s hardly a big deal. The Firefox site specifcally mentions the limited use of screen estate, so they aren’t likely to ever force something so big on users.
As to HIG, I don’t feel the find bar is too bad an infraction, simply because people don’t use web browsers like other apps, so there needs to be some flexibility in the interface rules.
The AOL popup is a nasty little trick to make the popup appear after the page is loaded, circumventing the blocker. You might see the same thing at http://www.dabs.com/uk if you haven’t opted out/they haven’t seen the light yet.
And finally, I’m looking forward to these GtkFileChoosers, now we just need them in OOo so my parents won’t complain about having to mount floppies from computer: before they can save to them… sorry, lost myself for a second there.
The AOL popup is a nasty little trick to make the popup appear after the page is loaded, circumventing the blocker. You might see the same thing at http://www.dabs.com/uk if you haven’t opted out/they haven’t seen the light yet.
Interesting. Can the Mozilla code not differentiate between a JavaScript command exectuted by the page and one executed by a mouse click? I can’t see a technical reason why 100% foolproof pop-up blocking can’t be implemented.
A few days ago, a friend had access to all my banking transactions on the internet that I had accessed using Epiphany (thanks to history pages and cookies).
That’s bollocks, because your history and cookies should be stored in your own user directory. Your friend should be using another user login. If he/she is using your login, well, they’re going to see your history and cookies no matter what.
Firefox devs took a rather bad direction deciding that the find dialog should not show up as a pop up any more. This obviously is not allowed by some Gnome HIG. See the for example hidden files dialog in the File Chooser.
Get this: Firefox is multi-platform, and as such, does not follow the Gnome f*****g HIG!
Well, in fact Firefox does try to follow the Gnome HIG. Obviously, they are not quite there yet, but good progress is being made (e.g. using the GTK file picker in the latest nightly builds).
That’s Gnome integration work, but it is not part of core Mozilla or Firefox.
and to go conform with the spatial metaphors, they should abandon the URL Field alltogether, because most users never edit it directly and users new to the application might be confused by the lengthy adresses it shows most of the time. Just make it a pop up (what else?) for the advanced ones. A user definitely never should have to type in or edit, or even see a URL adress by hand.
I sincerely hope this is some sort of joke, and is a classic example of why Gnome usability thinking has gone off to la la land.
“2. is threading broken on Windows or something as if you open a site in a new tab, you can do nothing else in the browser until the page has been fetched (e.g; you cannot go to another tab). single-tasking is not good folks! “
Multitasking in f/fox works fine for me on Win2k and XP, I can’t reproduce your problem. Could we have some more detail as to which version of Windows you’re running? Also – unlikely but possible – do you have any extensions added?
Wow, you people are complaining about a non-issue.
As far as the pop-up blockers, it comes up with a message that says “A Pop-up has been blocked. Click here for more options”. As soon as you click that, you can hit “Don’t show this message again” and it will revert back to exactly the way it worked previously.
Feel free to download some branch nightlies here and see the new features yourself:
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/
“Get this: Firefox is multi-platform, and as such, does not follow the Gnome f*****g HIG!”
later…
“That’s Gnome integration work, but it is not part of core Mozilla or Firefox.”
Way to prove yourself wrong. The fact of the matter is, Firefox /does/ follow the Gnome “f*****g” HIG. Do you use Firefox with the gtk2 default toolkit? If so, you’ll notice it is taking steps to comply with the HIG. For one, what is “Tools>Options” on Windows, becomes “Edit>Preferences” with gtk2. Look at button order. Yes/Accept and No/Decline have been reversed (i.e., Yes is on the right, No is on the left). There is NO OTHER REASON to do those kind of things, except to comply with the HIG.
As for new features: quit overreacting, and quit demanding that every single little change has a pref to disable it. The Info toolbar is a great step towards making Firefox useable. And for all of you 1337 haxx0rz, you can turn it off (*gasp*).
For a good summary of new features in the upcoming 1.0PR, see http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/bigger-picture.html#newin1.0p…
I’m looking at that site for the first time and no popup comes. But the status bar says “Transferring data from http://www.thehighstreet.com...” and the page is fully loaded. Hitting refresh doen’t bring up anything any different. When I go to AOL now there is a icon on the bottom right about popups.
Deleting cookies from AOL does not bring back the popup. I will no remove 0.9.3 and retry 0.9 on those two sites
No AOL popup, so perhaps it is cookie related.
About the guy saying that the URL toolbar should gone: Hey man, let’s think a bit: the vast majority of users use this toolbar, even the mythological joe user. We don’t need such extremisms.
And for people that goes mad when they read “gnome HIG”: I know that some people loves to flame gnome, saying:
“They stole all my preferences, mom”
People, get a life! KISS. Simple is beautiful. If we can make firefox simple, stable and fast, more people will use free software. This is good. You can allways download extensions to make your browser behaves the way you want to. No need for flames.
BTW, I’m a KDE user.
i’m another icab-user. great pop-up blocking, ad-filtering, many effective prefs and an advanced download-manager… and it’s quite fast. cons: mediocre ccs support, engine needs refining badly! …
It works on build 21-Aug-2004
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-0.9/
Nevermind.. it doesn’t. :/
and the ability to disable iframes without disabling normal frames too.
the abillity to do multiple installations of firefox would really be nice too.
how about drag and drop on the tabs, so i can arrange the order of the tabbed windows.
and finally, put a gui interface to some of that shit that’s in all those *.js files, like turning off gif animation, for example.
Heres the way I see it.
Visuals are great but I think functionality should come first and for most.
I have been using firefox for quite some time and I’m using the nighties and using some of these new features.
As far as the pop up info bar is concerned, I don’t think it takes up that much space at all. Im running 19 inch monitor at 1280×1024….AND! its nice to be able to let a pop up through if you want it with out having to go into prefs and turn off blocking and go back and turn it on.
Now for “find”……I don’t care either way but I still don’t think the bar is all that bad.
I have noticed that people want instant gratification and I think goes against what most of the OSS community yells at MS for. Who wants a rushed uncomplete product. I think they are doing a great job and that time will prove the Mozilla/Firefox project as a whole, is a great project.
…the only thing is I thought the old theme was pretty cool but whats a theme when you can get a NEW ONE!
“One thing that I think is worth bearing in mind is that the Gecko engine is the most portable of the popular rendering engines. On windows, Opera or IE might be faster or more responsive, but there’s simply no comparison in any heterogeneous computing environment.”
Beg to differ. Opera is faster in Linux as well from my usage. Faster to startup and faster to render.
about:config will allow you to edit the hidden preferences (stored in the .js files).