Mozilla Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 AvailableSaturday May 17th, 2008The preview release for Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser is now available for testing. Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform which includes 33 months of platform improvements over Firefox 2. Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 can be downloaded from the Firefox Release Candidates page. The Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Release Notes have more details, including information about what's new in Firefox 3. The Firefox 3 for developers article on Mozilla Developer Center includes useful links for Web application and add-on developers. 2 days late...like always...but I guess 2 days isn't bad...not as bad as 1 month. What's late? Some sites/people post the release a few days before the actual release causing mozilla a lot of problems including server problems. These same sites/people never learn and do the same thing the next time a release is going to be out. In this case, the RC was still being tested by mozilla before releasing and if the person got it 2 days before, the testing certainly wasn't finished and thus they downloaded and installed it before it actually came out (the RC could have been pulled if there was a serious enough issue found during testing and thus another release would have been called RC1). It is really annoying to everyone else including the people in the mozillazine forums to have to deal with all the moronic people posting comments about releases before they've actually been officially released. So it hasn't officially been released yet? The date on the file in the Mozilla FTP is May 15, 2008 the exact day I got it from that exact same source. You don't believe me? Check it out yourself: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/3.0rc1/win32/en-US/ Hmm.... See that proves my case. That is a single ftp server that usually beta testers and mozilla staff use. Releases are usually mirrored across many servers in order to do load balancing so the primary ftp server doesn't get overwhelmed and crash. If all the people who downloaded Firefox RC1 went to that link, the server would get overwhelmed and either be very very slow for all or crash due to not being able to handle that many connections (I'm sure many did go to that exact server due to the load balancer directing them to it). BTW, just because there is a file by that name on that server does not mean that it has been officially released. Official release is at the time the staff at Mozilla officially announce the release is available for download via an official post with relevant links to release notes etc. The official release/download has to ofcourse, be on the servers before the announcement is made and has to fully propagate to all the mirror servers before the servers are hit with download requests which is, again, all done so that the primary ftp server doesn't get bogged down or crash. Further proof: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0rc1 --- Look at the date the release was announced. also http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Schedule --- Look at the date for Release Candidate 1 under Firefox 3 milestones also http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2008/05/16/firefox-3-release-candidate-now-available-for-download/ --- Look at the date of the announcement (sarcasm) so, I assume all the people who posted on those urls are wrong and the RC was actually released 1 day before. I sure wish someone had told all the developers and testers and all those other people actually involved in the release process that. Maybe Shadow_Fox should not have dropped the ball by not letting the developers and other staff know. still futher proof: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433340#c37 According to that comment from one of the devs, RC1 hadn't shipped yet as of 2008-05-16 11:38:04 PDT but naturally, he's dead wrong as it had already been released the day before. I never said they were wrong or that the Official Release date wasn't May 16, 2008. What I am saying is that the file which is the same being mirrored everywhere (same MD5 checksum) was on the server on May 15, 2008. So I would have assumed that they would have posted the Official announcement on that same day...especially since I downloaded it May 15, 2008 at approx. 14h30 ADT (Atlantic Daylight Time) which is 4 hours more than PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), the timezone in which Mozilla is located. So in reality, I downloaded this thing at 10h30 PDT quite early in the day...wonder what took them so long to announce it... So the my point being that from my point of view, MozillaZine is still late...even if it was Officially released on May 16, 2008. So your posts are pointless, I know all of that info, I just stated an opinion. What I don't get is you motivation behind trying to prove me wrong...it does not make sense. Two different issues: #1 - News posted here was a day late. Agreed. I posted the news upon seeing the official release, and I didnt see it the same day. Also, Official announcements are on developer.mozilla.org, or the mozilla.announce newsgroup. Mozillazine is not affiliated to Mozilla. #2 - Date of release. While you are correct that the released binary has a timestamp of May 15, 2008 - it was not released on the same day. It was still undergoing testing. There was still a chance that it might have had a critical bug and get pulled. Once the testing was complete, it was released on May 16, 2008. The user comments you're seeing above reflect criticism of websites that jump the gun on the announcement. This page (the wiki for rc1) had the builds available as soon as they were built, which was a few days ago: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0rc1 In the release and tracking schedule, they provided a link to the builds as soon as they were done. I suppose it was possible the could have pulled the builds if they found a problem but in practice it's unlikely once they've gone through the previous stages. The rc is based on the beta testing which has been going on for some time now. If their own wiki regarding the release candidate is providing links to builds before the official announcement, I think it's ok to download from there and distribute the links. If they don't want people doing that, they should keep the builds private until they're ready. Dan This page (the wiki for rc1) had the builds available as soon as they were built, which was a few days ago: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.0rc1 In the release and tracking schedule, they provided a link to the builds as soon as they were done. I suppose it was possible the could have pulled the builds if they found a problem but in practice it's unlikely once they've gone through the previous stages. The rc is based on the beta testing which has been going on for some time now. If their own wiki regarding the release candidate is providing links to builds before the official announcement, I think it's ok to download from there and distribute the links. If they don't want people doing that, they should keep the builds private until they're ready. Dan I can't believe the site changed :) I remember the days when it would change throughout the day.... someone use to post new on it :) There was more news in them days... The were calling it RC1 candidate1, which seems pointless to me. Call it RC1 to start with, if it has problems go to RC2. Having candidate candidates is clumsy and confusing. "Having candidate candidates is clumsy and confusing." Then what's a primary election supposed to be? Half my extensions (including my favorite Web Developer Extension) that worked just fine in beta 5, are suddenly incompatible in RC1 Wonderful Are clippings, adblockplus, chromeditplus, chatzilla, download statusbar, bbcodextra, splash, and tab permissions any of them? Sorry to ask about so many, but It'd be great if I knew so I didn't upgrade and lose any of my extensions. Use the Nightly Tester Tools extension and override compatibility for the affected extensions. I have Web Developer here on RC1 and it works great. My impression is that most extensions have been updated by now or work reasonably well with FF3, provided you do the above trick. #18 embarrassedly that MAJOR BUG hasn't been fixed :(!by robertmarley Sunday May 18th, 2008 12:47 PM embarrassedly that following Major bug hasn't been fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424658 = ""show my windows and tabs from last time" conflicts with having "Always clear my private data when I close Firefox" chosen with the "Browser History" checked" https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398817 = "Clearing browsing history on shutdown causes previous session to be forgotten" (Duplicates) Also this bug hasn't been fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426875 That's not a bug. How can Firefox remember your last session if you tell Firefox not to save your past sessions? #19 Additional changes I doesn't like in new FF3preRC1by robertmarley Sunday May 18th, 2008 1:16 PM Also I doesn't like the icon changes in FF3preRC1, compared to in FF3B5. Here is a screenshot of them: http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/3425/ff3b5to3prerc1changesry1.png I liked the old ones better. (Try it yourself to experience the differences in the window appearance. I preferred the old lighter Back/Forward buttons. And I preferred the old Privacy icon as well with the red mark on it. In addition I have just discovered that the bookmark manager (CTRL+SHIFT+B) has been downgraded in functions. Now it is no longer possible to make the left window narrower/wider or hidden by dragging or clicking on the horizontal border. Also the same is not possible with the bottom box where you can edit the 'Name','keyword' and so on P.S. Maybe the in this comment mentioned bad changes is because I tried FF3preRC1 "portable style*". (*with "Portable style" I mean like this: http://portableapps.com/node/12721 or this: http://portableapps.com/node/12311 Even with the RC, Firefox 3 can't handle RSS feeds well at all. Every single time I open the browser, it takes 3-4 minutes just to load up. The only time it doesn't do that is when I delete every RSS feed from my bookmarks. :-( WTF??? I have some shortcuts with keywords and %s. Seems to bog the browser down now. Seems to be on https only. Browser completely freezes on each entry for half a second. Those of you who use firebug should be aware that Firefox 3 partially breaks it, in a way that can't be worked around currently: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391177 Please vote for this bug if you use firebug or want to see improved firefox html development. Dan Unless I am misunderstanding then the message I'm replying to was a bit misleading - this actually only means that Firebug can't be used on pages that were generated with an XSLT transform. (Which is about, oh, 0.000000003% of the web - and probably isn't a critical problem as you could run the XSLT server-side instead and work on a stored version of the page.) Obviously it would still be better if it could work on these pages, but basically there is no need for most Firebug users to worry about this issue. --sam Those of you who use firebug should be aware that Firefox 3 partially breaks it, in a way that can't be worked around currently: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391177 Please vote for this bug if you use firebug or want to see improved firefox html development. Dan Virtual Software Packages (VSPs) for Firefox 3.0 RC1 (English-US, Dutch and German) are available from Symantec here: http://juice.altiris.com/download/4299/firefox-30-rc1-virtual-software-packages-us-nl-de To use, you will need SVS (Software Virtualization Solution), a small filter driver that allows use of Symantec VSPs. SVS may be obtained at http://www.getsvs.com Depending on the nature of the testing you want to do, testing in a virtual layer can be very useful. I could not get to first base with SVS on Win XP Pro SP2. I closed all apps when advised to do so. I obtained and entered the personal license code. I got an error msg saying that "pending file operations" required a reboot. I rebooted, tried again, and got same error msg. Firefox really does not require this sophisticated sort of protection anyway. Betas and RCs install their executables to a separate directory. And it is a very simple matter to create a new "profile" or back up an exisiting profile. #38 Re: Re: Virtual Firefox 3.0 RC1 Available fm Symantecby neilparks1 Monday May 26th, 2008 1:45 PM (quote) Betas and RCs install their executables to a separate directory. (end quote) Seems I was wrong about that. The betas go into a separate dir, but the RC by default goes to the Firefox dir. So back that up before you try the RC. I hate that pending file operations check that we do on install... Windows leaves those behind all the time. Our install shouldn't be so picky. Delete the PendingFileRenameOperations value from HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager and try again. We use Firefox as a sample app for our virtualization technology. There are several good articles out there that talk about how useful it can be for the techy who tries lots of software. For example: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/software-reviews/install-software-virtually-and-protect-your-computer-using-altiris-software-virtualization/. I'm also not worried about containing Firefox itself, but by running Firefox in a virtual layer it's very easy for me to download something, install it, and then wipe it away clean with My biggest complaint about Fx3.0rc1 is that all My Bookmarks from Bon Echo did not make the jump. What/Where are the Files I need to manually transfer? I am also not happy with the 'Blank' Advanced Tab under Options. I have not encountered that problem. FF, unlike the leading browser, stores all bookmarks in one file. So I don't know why the RC would pick up some but not all. ... is people ranting about why didnt they fix something or the other thing... hey... this is free... by people investing their time instead of doing other things... if you want something fixed... go, learn C/c++, fix it. If only it were that simple. If every Firefox user could its fix bugs, well, you'd probably have a 1% market share. Besides, the air I breathe is free, doesn't mean I have to know how to get rid of smog to complain about air quality. I thought this release of ff was really slow, causing crashes, and using a ton of memory - turns out it was an addon installed by avg8 - which you can't uninstall easily. I was wondering what all the stupid spinners were next to google links, I thought google (and ff) had lost it - avg is endlessly scanning every link on pages. If you have avg8, here's the link to get rid of it once and for all from ff: http://free.grisoft.com/ww.faq.num-1241 -------------------- LinkScanner is a new security component included in the AVG 8.0 Free Edition, which provides the Search-Shield functionality. Its purpose is to scan all results of the supported Internet search engines (Yahoo!, Google, MSN), and provides you with an evaluation of a safety level of each found website. At the same time, the LinkScanner also checks all Internet addresses typed into the address bar of your browser, or linked on other websites. I've been using rc1 all day and, thanks to a hacked version of MR Tech Local Install that has allowed me to use most of my normal extensions, it's been OK... except for the handling of security certificates. OK, so security certificates are a vital security measure and I can understand the good intentions behind this, however sometimes there are valid reasons for needing to override a 'non-matching' certificate, and FF3 MUST make sensible provision for this, rather than just blocking the page with a semi-cryptic error message and offering zero user options. In my case, I need to access my personal website's control panel + my webmail, which both use valid security certificates belonging to my web host, rather than my own domain. Sure, I could get around FF3 blocking access by using their http URLs instead of using https, but then I'd be accessing them LESS securely! Fortunately I found a workaround at http://www.smop.co.uk/blog/index.php/2008/03/25/firefox-3-security-madness/ but this really must be handled in a much smarter way. I see that there is mention on the smop page of “Get me out of here” and “Add an exception” buttons, but these clearly didn't make it to rc1; I hope they are reinstated ASAP... |