Topics

1

Browsers / Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 (soon to be Firefox 3.5)

« on: October 14, 2008, 12:13:16 pm »

Beta 3 has finally been released. Slowed down by the huge effort gone in to it's new JavaScript Engine called Tracemonkey making sure it works well, reduced crashes and no performance regressions. There shall be at least a beta 4 before final release and it will be called Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, the version bump is to represent how much has gone in to this release.

You can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html


New features include:

• A much improved faster Javascript engine
• Improved tear away tabs (drag a tab off the window or in to the content and it'll make a new window)
• Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.
• Granular options for history clearing, choose last 1 hour, last day etc..
• Improvements to web worker thread support.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Many standards improvement support from CSS2, CSS3, <video> and <audio> elements from HTML5 and the drag and drop API
• Downloadable font support from @font-face in CSS3
• SVG transformations, even on standard HTML elements

Beta 2 continues from beta 1 and we now expect a beta 3.

New features include:

• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you’ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!
• New functions that make it easy to remove the history of your past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website.
• New support for web worker threads. (faster processing of multiple files at once)
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content. (much faster javascript!)
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.
• Tear away tabs (drag tabs and they turn in to a new window)

Firefox seems to have settled to 93/100 on the Acid 3 test and it looks like it's going to stay there till Firefox 3.2. Tear away tabs at the moment are too sensitive and some old tab dragging behavior is lost, this is expected to be fixed for beta 3.

You can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Mozilla has decided to make an interim step before Firefox 4 (which is going to have some massive code changes), so has created a fast paced development cycle for a Firefox 3.1. There's going to be at least 2 betas, maybe 3, but looking at a much shorter testing time than Firefox 3 as projects have been smaller and more pragmatical to get a final version out hopefully for before Christmas.

New features include:

• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to (ctrl + Tab is the short cut)
• Tab bar on by default to allow more obvious tabbing features like being able to drag a tab from 1 window to another (expect to be able to tear away a tab to it's own window in beta 2)
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search (for example if you use * before searching you just search bookmarks)
• Support for HTML5 <audio> and <video> tag, with native OGG/Theora support an open source codec with the major example of wikimedia using it
• Support for the geolocation specification, expect more on this in beta 2 which will be able to calculate your position through local wi-fi spots
• Allowing multiple bookmarks to be tagged at the same time

You can dowload here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Things to expect in beta 2:

Much faster JavaScript engine when JIT is enabled
about:sessionrestore to allow much finer control over session restore
Yet further improvement in the Acid 3 score (currently 89/100 in beta 1 with no visual errors, score 90/100 on the trunk, this could rise to 97/100 for Firefox 3.1).

2

Gaming / I wanna be the guy the movie: the game

« on: October 08, 2008, 09:46:24 am »

It's a mick take of old school platformer games and is incredibly hard. The plot:

In the year 200x on his 15th birthday... a child left home on his dangerous and epic quest to become The Guy! Many years ago, "The Guy" left world and retreat to "Dungeon of Doom". Now "Young Boy" goes to defeat "The Guy" and become "The Guy" with his gun pass handed down by former "Grandfather the Guy". Go find the "8 units". Now become "The Guy".

The web site: http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

3

Bugs & Feature Requests / Bug: Pasting in to the text box should focus to the text box

« on: September 06, 2008, 11:21:44 am »

I've seen other users post this problem and I've experienced it many time and it really puts people off the free software. I think this is why. Many times I paste to the text box and hit enter, instead of getting new results I get the message "to do this you need the Guevara Edition", now it doesn't actually mean search but open a new tab, however it's actually rather hard to know that for a normal user.

4

General Discussion / Gamers Discover Glitch, Send Death Threats To Developer

« on: June 10, 2008, 11:11:00 pm »

Game developer, Infinite Interactive has said the the developer of one the company’s games has been receiving death threats over a glitch in one its PSP games.

Eurogamer reports that a glitch in Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords made gamers so mad that the developer received several death threats and even a bomb threat.

Despite the fact that the company thinks two of the threats were ‘serious’, it seems relatively upbeat about the whole thing.

"One death threat in 25 years of game development. Puzzle Quest comes out and I had six death threats and one bomb threat."

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/game-developer-death-threat,news-28449.html (read the full article, it's hilarious).

5

Other Projects / MOVED: FEATURE REQUEST!

« on: February 13, 2008, 09:40:30 pm »

This topic has been moved to Bit Che.

http://convivea.com/forums/index.php?topic=965.0

6

General Discussion / Firefox 2 Updates (2.0.0.x)

« on: December 06, 2007, 09:23:47 pm »

This thread is a bit of a container for the moment as I try and see if it's possible to cut appart the Firefox 2 Beta 2 thread to just have a Firefox 2 Updates thread.

Latest version of Firefox: 2.0.0.11

Url: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html#en
Release Notes: http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/2.0.0.11/releasenotes/




Mods feel free to update and edit this thread to make it neat

7

General Discussion / Firefox 3 RC2 (out of beta!)

« on: November 21, 2007, 01:34:30 am »

Firefox 3 RC2 has just come out, you will almost not notice any difference between RC1 and RC2 unless your running Firefox in conjunction with certain other applications on a Linux platform and you don't get your Firefox from your distributor.

Get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

RC2 will likely be renamed to Final Release and officially launched before the end of the month.

Firefox 3 is finally out of beta have just released their first (and maybe only) release candidate.

Download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

There's not been very major changes between beta5 and rc1, just lots of polish, general bug fixes, visual tweaks, security fixes, minor performance improvements, and crash fixes. The idea of a release candidate it to get the code tested across a very wide number of people as possible, then if the code still holds up to release it, if any major bugs appear when testing it across so many people then to fix any critical things like security holes and frequent crashes.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

This is the final Beta, the number of Priority 1 Blocking Bugs for Firefox hit 0 the other day, which gives them the clear to start working on the first Release Candidate (they need to get the number of priority 2 blocking bugs down to 0 until they can release that). This Beta the main work has been on:

• Further improving JavaScript Performance
• Improving XP / Vista / Mac / Linux integration based on user feedback
• Polishing off the AwesomeBar
• Expanding the number of languages it's ready for (now at 45, expects to be at 50 for final release)
• Implementing JSON Backup, to fully backup the whole of Places (history and bookmarks), so in event of error there will be full restores to backup from
• A lot of general polish, security features and reduction in the number of crashes

Known issues with Firefox can be found here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b5/releasenotes/#issues

Firefox 3 Beta 4 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Major improvements include:

• New Vista theme and polished Mac theme
• New improved memory allocator to reduce long term memory fragmentation (Firefox shouldn't increase in memory too much over a long period of time)
• PGO enables much faster JavaScript, currently beating all other browsers in benchmarks by a long way
• Improved support for HTML 5 features
• Awesome bar (the address bar) now includes full adaptive learning
• Better search of the download manager and of bookmarks

Also for fellow British users, now includes a British localisation.

Very interesting read about memory usage improvements: http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/


There will be one more beta, beta 5, just to polish things off and then they will be heading towards RC1. Code freeze for beta 5 is already scheduled for just 1 week, so hopefully will be out in about 3 weeks.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements for Beta 3 include:

• Refresh of visual theme with XP, Vista, Mac and Linux (or at least the GNOME variety) (more coming in beta 4 later this month)
• Improvements to download manager's easy of use (more coming in beta 4)
• Improved security against phishing
• Location bar and autocomplete improvements (much easier to find stuff
• 'Get Add-ons' integration
• Huge improvements in speed and memory management, including getting rid over about 100'000 allocators and jumps in the performance JPEGs are rendered

Beta 4 is still to come, it will provide polish to the visual theme and also introduce a new memory allocator called jemalloc which should speed things up significantly and keep total memory usage under tighter control.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 just got released: http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/12/18/firefox-3-beta-2-now-available-for-download/

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements given on the development centre pages are:

    * Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
    * Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
    * Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
    * Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
    * Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

Also the bug of opening JavaScript in a new tab use ctrl click or middle click has been fixed  , this one used to annoy me no end.

Various visual improvements all over the place, particularly 'awesome bar' (the codename for the replacement of start bar, where you type urls in at the top).

There also seems to be a lot of memory and performance improvements going on: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/12/18/bye-bye-allocations/



Anyway, all looks to be going well on track for a very improved version of Firefox.

It's been a very long road to Firefox 3 Beta 1, but it's finally here, you can download here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Remember this is not final release, bugs are expected, please go through the big finding process if you do catch one.

Some key improvements:

• Introduction of "Places" an SQLite based background manager which now controls your Bookmarks, History and Download History. The old system used an extremely bizarre system to store History, which was only secure in how difficult it was to learn. This unifies a large part of Firefox, so improvements made to Places affect a large part of the browser.
  
  
• Introduction of "Cairo" a new internal graphics library so Firefox doesn't need depend on OS dependent rendering, this should mean speed improvements made in rendering will uniformly affect all versions of Firefox
  
  
• Fix of the 'reflow' bug, a bug which affected Firefox's correct rendering of tables and CSS objects by +/- 1 pixel, Firefox 3 now conforms to Acid 2 test, try it here and see how well your browser performs: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2
  
  
• Huge focus on memory leaks, no longer plaguing the browser. Over 300 have been fixed and a new C++ implemented garbage collector has been introduces.
  
  
• New Offline Support Api, so online tools like Google Docs can actually integrate themselves on to your desktop using only Firefox
  
  
• Improved address searching
• Full Page Zooming, not just the increase of text size
• Easier Password manager (no pop-up anymore, instead a nice non-intrusive bar that comes up at the top)
• A more unified GUI ( e.g middle clicking works on more and "open in new tabs" on the books marks doesn't kill all your current tabs)
• Plug-in management (no messing about with about:plugins)
• Better integration in to Vista and Mac OS X
• You can now highlight text word-by-word by double clicking and dragging, clicking and dragging, will highlight letter by letter.
• Support for Animated PNG (APNG)
• Support for Web Apps 1.0, the predecessor to the up and coming HTML 5
• Improved Support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
• Loads of improvements for Extension Development including FUEL: http://wiki.mozilla.org/FUEL
• Over 11'000 Bugs fixed in Bugzilla, including some which have been around since before Firefox 1.0

What's upcoming:

As well as the usual 100s of fixes that go on during a regular Beta life cycle there should be a couple of things of particular note. There should be a visual refresh of the browser, the look of the password manager in particular has been a little controversial, so we may see improvements to the look, especially if a lot of people think the same who start Beta testing it. A new focus on memory fragmentation improvement before final release, read about it here: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/11/10/memory-fragmentation/


Firefox 3 in the news:

Firefox has made 2 big splashes in the news recently. 1 was digg saying Firefox 3 Beta 1 was released some time ago, this unfortunately was a RC of the Beta. Firefox has gone through extensive Quality Assurance to get to Beta 1, part of the reason for the huge delays.

It was reported in the New Your Times that they had a leaked 'meeting notes' that only 1/5 of current bugs would be fixed before final release. This is somewhat out of context as the reporter didn't really understood what a bug meant for Firefox 3, to add proper context to the situation you can read here: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/11/16/what-makes-firefox-3/

But simply but, it was bugs for Beta 1, and it was of the 700 remaining bugs, over 11'000 have already been fixed. And the meeting notes weren't 'leaked', Firefox is a completely open project, all meeting notes are freely available: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page



Well if you download, I hope you like, I'm off to do a clean install to Beta 1 (I'm currently on the nightly build). 

8

General Discussion / Web Games

« on: November 18, 2007, 07:25:44 am »

Post what web games you know and enjoy 

I'll kick the ball rolling with a rather festive and enjoyable one I like:

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm

My highscore is just over 133 million if anyone wants a target to reach

9

Computers - Technology / 8800GT - The only graphics card that matters

« on: October 31, 2007, 02:39:25 am »

On Monday (29th October) nvidia launched the launched the 8800GT, price positioned in between the 8600GTS and the 8800GTS it should retail for $200 - $250, but nvidia expects price to quickly drop so that even the 512MB version (256MB is the other version) should retail for $200. It outperforms the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS (640MB) making much of nvidias 8xxx linup obsolete and almost all of AMDs 2xxx lineup obsolete.

Development around the G92 processor revolved around reducing the thermal and power draw on the GeForce 8800 GTX (G80) processor.  G80 was manufactured on TSMC's 90nm process node while the G92 is manufactured on TSMC's 65nm node.  This shrink allows a single 8800 GT to operate on a 105 Watt draw, almost 80 Watts less than the 8800 GTX during heavy operation.

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Debuts+Considerably+Cooler+GeForce+8800+GT/article9424.htm

AMD will respond with the ATi HD 3800, launching along side their new Phenom line of processors in a few weeks.

10

General Discussion / Rules: Read before posting a new article!

« on: October 16, 2007, 12:26:43 pm »

• Don't link to news articles where you have to sign up to view the page

• Please include a quote from the news article summarizing the story, it should be about 1 paragraph and not the whole article: e.g:

Scientists think they have found a new species of giant plant-eating dinosaur, Futalognkosaurus dukei, that roamed the Earth some 80m years ago.

It would have measured at least 32m (105ft) in length, making it one of the biggest dinosaurs ever found, Argentine and Brazilian palaeontologists say.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7047381.stm

11

Bugs & Feature Requests / Bug (Very Minor): Bit Che logo location

« on: October 07, 2007, 01:10:35 pm »

The Bit Che logo stays at the bottom left of the results field when you resize, but not when you move up or down.

12

Bugs & Feature Requests / Feature Suggestion: Auto-update scripts

« on: October 07, 2007, 01:08:55 pm »

Would it be possible in the preference menu to have an option that was "auto-update scripts" and keep it hidden so it just does it. A lot of bugs that are spotted can quickly be rectified by update the scripts.

I would suggest to make it on by default, but others might think otherwise.

13

Bugs & Feature Requests / Bug (Very Minor): Menus

« on: October 07, 2007, 01:05:47 pm »

I don't think the menu system is very logically thought out. A few examples:

> In the about menus, both "Help" and "Forums" take you to the same place, I think either it should be called Help / Forums, or the Help should take you to Bit Che sub-forum.

> Update Scripts is under "tools", but Check for Updates is under "about". It seems to make sense that they both go under the same one and tools seems to make more sense.

> Options just has 1 thing to click, it seems to make sense either to make options to either be a button or under tools.

What do you think?

14

Bugs & Feature Requests / Bug: Default Language

« on: October 07, 2007, 12:54:21 pm »

The default Language selection is the first alphabetical one, now while I'm all about internationalisation, I don't think the largest demographic of users is Arabic.

15

Bugs & Feature Requests / Bugs?

« on: September 10, 2007, 06:58:58 pm »

Hey, I was just wondering what's the policy on reporting bigs these days? As you know, I used to report them on a very regular basis (averaging probably a little more than 1 bug per publicly released build). It's not that I've stopped spotting bugs in the application, it's just that I didn't think reporting minor bugs was worth it until build 60 was out. But it's now been 9 months since we've been on build 59.

Is it worth reporting bugs? Would they get fixed in some sort of mini 59.5 build? Or should I just leave it?