text:  9, 2004
  This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier.
  The first noteworthy change since 0.8, or at least the change that is first
  notable, is the addition of an installer for Linux users. Past releases of
  Firefox for Linux came as tarballs without any kind of installer. For this
  author, the difference between using an installer or simply uncompressing a
  tarball of the latest build into a convenient directory is
  negligible. Still, many users will probably find the installer much more
  friendly.
  At install time, the new release copies over the profile from previous
  versions of Firefox from the ~/.phoenix directory that was used to store
  user data. If the ~/.phoenix directory does not exist, then Firefox will
  import user data from Mozilla. This author tested both methods, and Firefox
  imported the data from Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla 1.7 without any
  problems. User profiles on Linux are now stored under ~/.mozilla/firefox/.
  A few items have shifted around in the new release. Specifically, the
  "Options" dialog is now "Preferences" and found under the "Edit" menu,
  rather than the "Tools" menu. Themes and Extensions now have their own
  managers, rather than being part of the Options/Preferences dialog. The
  Extensions manager is a bit slicker now, and apparently will enable the
  user to update their installed Extensions through Mozilla Update. At the moment,
  however, this feature does not seem to be operational. Presumably, one will
  also be able to use Mozilla Update to install and update themes in the
  future as well.
  One minor quibble with the Download manager: in 0.9, the default download
  folder is "Desktop," which hardly seems like a suitable choice even for
  Linux users who run a desktop environment that supports saving files to the
  desktop. It's fixed easily enough, but one hopes that the Mozilla team will
  switch the default to prompt the user for a download location.
  Though this author did not conduct any scientific testing, the latest
  Firefox release does seem faster than the previous release. The interface,
  menus and so forth, seem a bit more responsive than previous releases, and
  rendering also seems a bit snappier. Firefox 0.9 RC also seems a bit more
  stable, though it has crashed once during testing. The 0.9 RC is certainly
  more stable than the 0.9 nightly snapshot releases that this author had
  been trying out.
  The most obvious change, and one that has generated a great deal of
  discussion, is the replacement of the current Firefox "Qute" theme with
  a new theme called "Winstripe." For this author, it seems like far too much
  fuss over a simple change. The browsing experience itself is not hampered
  by the new theme, and one expects that new themes for Firefox will become
  available for those who do not enjoy the default. The fact that users are
  able to focus so much attention on Firefox's theme may be a good sign,
  however. This may indicate that Firefox already meets their needs in terms
  of speed, stability and feature completeness -- allowing users to focus
  their attention on more superficial areas. If this is the case, the Mozilla
  developers should regard the theme complaints as something of a compliment.
  In all, the latest Firefox is an impressive browser. It lacks polish in a
  few areas, but it is a solid browser with an impressive array of
  features. We'll be quite interested to see what the final 1.0 release of
  Firefox will look like when all is said and done.
  A look at Firefox 0.9
  Posted Jun 10, 2004 9:21 UTC (Thu) by rjw (guest, #10415)
  [Link]
  People are either going to install it thmeselves, from source, or they'll get it as a package. The import wizards should surely be part of the program proper, nothing to do with installation. They can run on first use as well.
  I really hate this desire to make installation like windows. Windows is *far* far worse at package management than linux.... why copy a badly broken system?
  One argument is that people want to install in their home dirs - this is an argument for a relocatable package , and also more work put into making programs installable for just one or a small set of users. GoboLinux probably has the right idea here - each package is in its own directory, bt I'm not too sure about their dependency system....
  Posted Jun 11, 2004 16:01 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137)
  [Link]
  Of course I was able to do this almost as easily with prior versions by unzipping the tarball in the correct directory and changing a few permissions. Both methods are a lot easier than editing a package so that it installs where I want it.
  Where will it *run*
  Posted Jun 10, 2004 19:47 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
  [Link]
  If you want to run it on a 386, goes our notional argument, and you're willing to be that patient, go for it.
  Comes now the milestone builds of Moz and FireFox.
  Which will not run on my *586* laptop.
  Someone decided that they should be built for P-II's and above; Pentium's need not apply.
  I invite you to visualize my trying to build from source on my P-266 96MB laptop with KDE running, with only a couple hundred meg free on the 10 GB drive.
  I invite you to imagine third-worlders trying to run it on their 486's.
  I invite you to read the open bug , see all the comments and merged duplicates... and note that it's 4 months (and a couple of milestone builds) old, and that it hasn't even been assigned to the release manager yet.
  Can This Project Be Saved?
  Is anyone in the penthouse suite at mozilla.org listening?
  Is it just me?
  Cause, y'know, so many things are just me...
  Posted Jun 12, 2004 22:20 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)
  [Link]
  Optimizing for a particular processor can often speed up the code. If I were running something much slower than my PIII-450, I'd find a faster browser, an older Netscape, or possibly Konqueror or Opera, or Lynx. Given that there are very few pre-Pentium II users left for Mozilla, taking the speed advantage over the compatibility with older chips seems to be reasonable.
  Posted Jun 12, 2004 23:23 UTC (Sat) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
  [Link]
  My perception is that this line of thinking, which clearly is that of the Mozill build team as well, is probably quite insular thinking; it may be true in the US (though I'm not even sure of that), but I guarantee you there are easily 5 times as many Pentiums outside the US as there are Pentium-II+'s inside the US....
  Posted Jun 17, 2004 8:05 UTC (Thu) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)
  [Link]
  I
  guarantee you there are easily 5 times as many Pentiums outside the US as there are Pentium-II+'s
  inside the US....
  I keep saying
  Posted Jun 18, 2004 16:00 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
  [Link]
  Posted Jun 18, 2004 22:37 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)
  [Link]
  You're right; it wasn't here I'd said it
  Posted Jun 21, 2004 23:58 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
  [Link]
  Posted Jun 10, 2004 21:38 UTC (Thu) by Klavs (subscriber, #10563)
  [Link]
  1) kde actually restarting firefox - instead of mozilla - when it saves the session (KDE gets everything else right - so I don't know whose to blaim KDE or Firefox).
  2) A bit more resillient extensions - wrong permissions on extensions, and installation in anything else than the common extensionsdir makes it crash horribly for me. Luckily after some forum digging it works quite well now :)
  3) a Bug fix of the Password manager - I once entered the password wrong - and then just choose cancel - it then deleted ALL passwords saved. - more over - it does not support saving a password pr. URL - so when I have f.ex. mysite.dk/somestuff/ and mysite.dk/otherstuff/ with different usernames and/or passwords - it doesn't remember them seperately and I can find no option/extension for this :(
  4) For some reason my webbank does not work properly - links in one frame to another makes it open the frame in which the link is - in another window - instead of just doing as it is suppose to - luckily I have backup browsers for that purpose :)
  Even with all these annoying bugs - its still the best browser around :)
  I haven't reported these as bugs (althought I usually always do on projects) but I figured they were so obvious so they must have been reported already.
  if any one knows if they are or not - let me know - and I'll report them :)p.s. who needs an installer when you're running Gentoo Linux ;)
  New Theme
  Posted Jun 11, 2004 15:50 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137)
  [Link]
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