Firefox 2.0 Alpha Released

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1. Hexxenn
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

   I hope they finally fix this crap in 2.0.

2. Keith Dsouza
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

   Woh thats cool, i have always been looking forward to this release

3. Woody
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

   What screen grab extension?

4. Saul Weiner
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

   I read Om Malik’s post about this and one thing strikes me w.r.t. firefox. Does anyone else look at the application and wonder why it’s been designed as a huge ram hog. My computer takes strain after using firefox for longer than 1 hour. I certainly hope 2.0 is better.

5. John
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:52 pm

   Just a word of caution. This is very “alpha” especially in it’s use of the new bookmarking technique called Places, which is a radical reworking of how to manage bookmarks and is still very very buggy

   Just a heads up.

   John

6. Michael Arrington
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

   Woody - https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=1146

7. Phil Ringnalda
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

   Wow, that’s even better than the usual “it’s released even though they don’t say it’s released” links. Usually, they point to a nightly build (which you’re welcome to use, but you should know you’re using a nightly build, not even an alpha, and thus dataloss is to be expected), but those links go to whatever build most recently dropped from a tinderbox. At any given time of the day, those could be anything: they’re the equivalent of checking out from CVS without even looking at recent checkins, building, and letting it loose on your (un-backed-up, no doubt) profile.

8. Niall Kennedy
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

   I believe the Mozilla team is shooting for a Tuesday release of Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1. It’s called “Bon Echo” in these early stages to avoid confusion with better tested versions. Alpha 1 is frozen but enters QA testing before official release. The copy of Alpha 1 you download tonight will likely differ from the officially released Alpha 1 as the team tweaks for a developer release.

   Firefox extensions check for your current version to ensure compatibility. Some plugin developers like to test and tweak for each new version of Firefox before releasing a new version.

   You can always download the latest nightly build of Bon Echo anytime you would like and keep up with Firefox 2 planning and progress on the public wiki.

9. Kingsley
   

   March 19th, 2006 at 11:49 pm

   You need SessionSaver, Mike.

10. Gary King
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 12:05 am

    Michael,

    I’m guessing you aren’t using your regular Firefox profile, and instead using a new profile? Or are you?

    I’d be very afraid of using my current profile. Anyways, I’m still very excited with this new build and am going to use it immediately.

11. Leonard Lin
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 12:06 am

    For those running newer builds, I recommend the Nightly Test Tools extension, which will allow you to “make compatible” extensions (enabling them regardless of the version numbers the extension specifies). There’s no guarantee the extensions will function, as there may be actual compatibility issues, but most of the times they work hunky dory.

12. Papuass
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 12:14 am

    Someone has jumped the gun?
    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org.....ses_1.html

13. Thomas Stache
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 12:51 am

    Guys, as stated on Asa’s blog this is _not_ the Alpha 1 release! Come on, you read on some random blog that there were an release, and you believe it!
    The “BonEcho Alpha 1″ release, as it will be called, is aimed at developers to test the underlying frameworks. And as such it will be released very quietly to make sure no end users use it and raise a “Firefox is half-baked and sucks” storm throughout the internet.

14. Gtox
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 1:24 am

    This guy has found a solution that should make it safer to try out this new version of FF, by using the ‘Portable’ version: http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=411

15. hi
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:36 am

    “One new thing that is going to take some getting used to is the “x” close tab button right on the tab header instead of off to the right where it used to be. I’ve hit it accidentally twice now, and lost a bit of unsaved work on my Skylook post above.”

    Use the undoclosetab extension, you can find it at:

    http://mozilla.dorando.at/

    I use it in Firefox 1.5, cause i installed “tabX”, that creates a close X in every tab.

16. Steve
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:38 am

    Tried it, and AJAX apps like
    e-Messenger seem to work faster

17. Chrono Cr@cker
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:40 am

    Nothing really seems to be new & innovative here.. Just a couple of features from IE & Opera. Has firefox become complacent?

18. jooliaan
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 4:05 am

    Asa Dotzler said:

    Just in case there’s anyone reading who doesn’t already know this:

    When we make a new release, we’ll say so. Please don’t report new releases because someone checks in a change to the user agent or similar. If we’re actaully doing a release, we’ll announce it. Thanks.

    I think there’s nothing to add to Asa’a post…

19. stuart
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 4:19 am

    Disappointing Mike - for starters, Mozilla haven’t announced it because it hasn’t yet been released. Just because you can download it, doesn’t mean that it’s been released. Also, this is alpha software that hasn’t been completed - you’d be crazy to install this on your main system without knowing the implications of running alpha software. I’ve posted screenshots and a mini-review on my blog already. And what do you mean by saying that it must be more stable than the current 1.5 release? That must be a huge insult to any of the Mozilla developers. Millions of users (including me) run Firefox on a daily basis and don’t experience any stability issues. As far as the “memory leaks” go, most of the “memory leaks” that people witness is just Firefox caching pages in memory to make browsing quicker.

20. seocase
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 5:03 am

    More details here

    http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefo.....4#Features

21. Zoli Erdos
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 6:50 am

    Stuart, calling 1.5 unstable is not an insult, it’s a fact. Denying it is ignorance.

22. kp
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    Too late…I have switched to IE7 and am loving it!!

23. RJ
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 8:11 am

    I would love to switch over to FF2.0, but would err on side of caution, mainly due to compatibility issues for the extensions.

    @ Mike & Woody: This may be old news!: For screengrab, I use a popular and efficient product - SnagIt - the FF extension can be found on their website.

24. Tom
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 9:38 am

    Zoli Erdos,

    Man, that’s absolutely awesome! I happen to be a computer savvy individual with lots of tech experience and I use Firefox only (on my Windows machine, Camino for teh mac). I can honestly say that instability is extremely rare, and I happen to open a lot of pages at once.

    To be fair, I happened to get some help from Jesse Ruderman on running the new leakchecker for memory. The time we really got it to be “unstable” was opening TechCrunch’s favorite “Tagworld” in several tabs as users crammed as many embedded audio and video files as possible into a single document. Of course Firefox’s size went down after closing the tabs, but if I continued to use any of the tabs the memory usage stayed high (as these pages are stored in memory, 5 pages past by default for each tab, for FastBack).

    In short: Where are you getting these unstable remarks, are you using Myspace and getting frustrated? On a large array of websites I do not have these overhyped but never-experienced problems, and while I don’t say Firefox is perfect (a friend of mine experiences a weird “grey bar” which he still has not been able to explain how he got on his), it’s not as bad as some people try to make it sound. Firefox 1.5 is pretty good.

25. paolog
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 9:52 am

    Thanks for the link Michael!

26. dusoft
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 9:53 am

    I have been using TabX since maybe v0.8, so I am glad it finally made it into the offical distribution/browser options.

27. Zoli Erdos
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 9:58 am

    Tom,

    Don’t get me wrong, I am also using Firefox and still like it - tried to switch to Opera, but am missing the extensions. We all like the features but that does not mean we should be blind. Individual experience varies, I got to the point where it crashed within minutes on a machine. Ended up removing all the extensions.. got a little better - still not quite good. Not experiencing the same problems on another PC. You don’t experience these problems, good for you. But it’s not about random samples, just google “firefox 1.5 crash”, and you’ll see what I am talking about. The number of users complaining about unexplainable crashes radically increased with 1.5, and we cant ignore that.

28. winsnomore
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    Why don’t you mention other problems with 1.5.

    1. Horrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrribe startup time.
    3.5 MINUTES on my Pentium 2Ghz (512 MB)

    2. Starts with ~100MB minimum
    (maxthon is faster with 20MB)

    In short Firefox Sucks on win platform .. on Linux it’s fine.

29. Sohail Mirza
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

    Michael,

    You may want to provide an update to this post in light of the following:

    http://weblogs.mozillazine.org.....ses_1.html

    Besides, pointing people to alpha-quality software probably isn’t the best thing to do

30. none
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

    winsnomore, It takes Firefox 90 seconds to start on a pentium60 (yes, a Pentium I 60MHz) with 48MB RAM (Win98). Once running it has no problems running, and goes as fast as IE6 (not great, but very useable). On my P4 2.4GHz (WinXP), it takes less than 2 seconds. Though I believe the times and memory you quote, there’s something more wrong with your system than just Firefox if you’re getting 3+ minutes start up time. You really think anyone would release general software that takes that long to start up (and that millions of users would put up with it?)

31. Scott Yu
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:10 pm

    The CLOSE icon within each tab is a TERRIBLE idea.

    I have accidently clicked it 3 times so far and lost a lot of information in the process (I was posting info).

    So BAD idea. They need to make the button smaller or not have it at all.

    I bet it will be gone in the final release. If not.. I think people will complain.

    I use CTRL+W to close my tabs currently and that works perfectly.

32. Scott Yu
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:13 pm

    Some further thoughts on that CLOSE icon within each tab.

    The problem is the icon interferes with the web site icon that shows up on the tab. Because the distance between both is so close, it makes it hard to click the right one.

33. Dennis Howlett
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:17 pm

    Sorry Mike - while I can see a performance improvement, too many business critical plug-ins are not ready for the alpha - tried and ditched.

34. Jason
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 3:28 pm

    Doesn’t look to bad!

    ======

    File Sharing Software w/out The Download
    http://www.xtme.net/download.html

35. Matt Davis
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

    Well, alpha or not quite alpha, doesn’t matter to me, needed to see two things. First, does it handle my brackets on my site better now (like IE handles them) and the answer is yes. Second, does it let me leave netvibes.com “up and running” in the browser for more than a couple hours unattended without locking up and having to kill the process? Answer: Remains to be seen. 1.5 wasn’t perfect guys, don’t think anyone with Firefox would pretend it was. Just one more step along the way, don’t get your panties in a wad.

36. daniel
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 4:36 pm

    with the close button in fixed location, it was easy to close multiple consecutive tabs.. i bummed

37. Justin
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 6:35 pm

    I *just* found this blog, and I saw you used ’swimmingly’ and I just had to say something. How fun

    As for FF2.0, it is time to go check it out and see more of this! Glad I found this site

38. Christian Koch
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    http://limited-exposure.blogsp.....e-bug.html

39. Doug
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    And to think that all this news was started from here:

    http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=410

    looks like he created quite a stir. Even SlashDot jumped on the band wagon:
    http://slashdot.org/articles/0.....6233.shtml

40. sdsd
    

    March 20th, 2006 at 11:10 pm

    so.. is it released yet? jump the gun to early but who cares, it’s an early release..i supposed, anyways confusing..

41. Techi
    

    March 21st, 2006 at 10:29 pm

    Nice thing about Opera - if you do close a tab by accident, just hit command-z or choose ‘undo’ from the the edit menu. The page will load right back where you were.

42. Matt Davis
    

    March 22nd, 2006 at 4:53 am

    My second question has been answered. The alpha does NOT lock up when netvibes is left up and running. Good enough for me. I’ve made the switch and am sticking with 2.0 in whatever forms come along.

    Hoping for full release, sooner the better. Just hope it doesnt get enough market share to become a big fat target.

43. Peter Cooper
    

    March 26th, 2006 at 9:57 am

    The whole Firefox 1.5 thing is really weird. It clearly has problems by the numbers of people reporting them, but I’ve not had a single problem on my install (OS X). It’s streets ahead of Safari on the stability and memory front which used to crash at least once a day.

    I do, however, make sure to restart Firefox every now and then though, so that may be saving me.

44. Teoh Han Hui
    

    April 10th, 2006 at 8:09 am

    Yes! The search box tooltip problem has been fixed, but there is a new problem arising…

    Whenever I use my arrow key to move back in a textbox(for example, this comment box), there will be tracks left over.

    Of course this won’t show up in the final release though.

45. Josh
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:12 am

    ok reading a few comments on here, if u really think firefox is unstable - jump off a cliff…. 1.5 does crash, just not as often -> try IE 6.0 if u wanna see crashing…. yes individual experiences may differ but what the “heck” are u running it on a 386 16mhz with .5 mb of ram??? dude i seriously suggest u check your system for problems like bad ram - overclocked timings or overclocked processor firefox is one of the most stable browsers ive ever seen, and thats counting every other one thats around.
    if u really think its that bad i think the firefox community as a whole should expel u to the world of IE 6.0 where u can get spyware and adware just from using google :S

    how can i say this … hmmm blow a goat

46. Josh
    

    April 28th, 2006 at 4:15 am

    oh and just so u guys know - i dont suggest u use alpha software even if u really wanting FF2.0 better to wait unless you wanna be a tester for fun

    my personal experience is like 2 crashes in 6 months with firefox and both were only when i closed the browser so do you think i really cared… no

47. Firefox Boy
    

    June 30th, 2006 at 4:10 am

    When will be ready the final release of Firefox?