A Quick Look at the Firefox 1.5 Beta
Posted by Harry McCracken | Sunday, September 11, 2005 10:18 PM PT
On Friday, the Mozilla Foundation released the first beta version of what will become Firefox 1.5--the first major upgrade (codenamed "Deer Park") to the browser that did the seemingly impossible by grabbing a serious chunk of marketshare from Internet Explorer in just a few months. (A shade over 20 percent of PCWorld.com visitors are typically running Firefox these days.)
A word of caution for current Fireficionados (hey, I just coined a word!) about the beta: When I installed it, I found that it disabled the two extensions I use most, the A9 Toolbar and Greasemonkey. Neither is compatible with 1.5's new-and-improved framework for extensions. Other folks who are trying the beta are also reporting problems with some extensions. I have no doubt that extension updates will fix things, maybe soon, but unless you're positive that your favorite extensions work with the beta, you might want to hold off for now.
Other than that glitch, the beta's been working well for me. As befits its 1.5 moniker, it's no radical departure from 1.0. In fact, I keep forgetting whether a particular machine I'm using is running 1.0 or 1.5. But 1.5 does have a few worthy tweaks. Such as...
Drag-and-drop browser tabs. If you've got multiple tabbed windows open, you can reshuffle them at will.
Faster back-and-forward page navigation. Mozilla says that if you bop forward and backward between pages, the pages will load more quickly...and while I haven't done any comparisons here with version 1.0, navigation does seem darn speedy.
Streamlined configuration. What was once the Preferences dialog is now the Options dialog, and it's been modestly reworked to make finding and tweaking various settings easier.
Smarter updating. When updates for Firefox 1.0 show up--and even Firefox has security fixes, such as one that was released on Friday--you need to download and install a fresh copy of the browser. 1.5 introduces an updating engine that can download patches in the background, for faster and simpler browser upgrades.
Better ad blocking. According to Mozilla, that is. For what it's worth, I haven't seen a single pop-up since I've been running 1.5.
More privacy. A new feature lets you wipe out stuff like your browsing history, cache, and passwords more easily. And the cookie manager now lets you rummage through the cookies on your system more quickly.
Various under-the-hood changes. Firefox 1.5 will use the latest version of the Gecko rendering engine, for instance, and Mozilla says it'll support various Web standards better.
My only gripe about this beta: I like the way Firefox lets you turn an RSS feed into a toolbar-based list, but I wish setting up feeds was a quicker process. If Firefox doesn't autodetect a feed (and it often won't), you still need to go into Manage Bookmarks and set it up manually. Which isn't hard, but it feels like it takes more clicks than is absolutely necessary.
Also, if you simply navigate to a feed, Firefox still does what all browsers used to do--which is to display it as an unformatted avalanche of tags and text, with a message that makes it sound as if you've made some sort of mistake. The
new, much better approach--practiced by Safari and the beta version of IE 7--is to smartly reformat all that XML code into a browsable, readable Web page. (Opera doesn't do this, but it asks you if you'd like to add the feed to its built-in reader.)
The final version of Firefox 1.5 is due to show up later this year. Judging from the beta, it'll a minor-but-worthy upgrade--and new reason for anyone who's still running IE to give this extremely well-designed product a try.
But if you're looking for big-time browser upgrades, hold on--Mozilla says it's shooting to release Firefox 2.0, and maybe an update beyond that, in 2006. Also still in (private) beta: Internet Explorer 7, in which Microsoft will mostly play catchup with features that Firefox (and Opera, and Apple's Safari) have had for eons now.
If you want to try the Firefox 1.5 beta,
here's your link. Like I say, proceed with caution if you're running any extensions. But if you take the plunge, let us know what you think...
What i find great about deer park (1.5) is ability to drag&drop tab straight onto my Bookmarks toolbar, or into some subfolder of it. It's very intuitive way of adding bookmarks.
The Deer Park alphas had a feature to format RSS feeds in a nicer way for viewing, but it was pulled from 1.5 because it was buggy. I would expect it to be in the 2.0 release, whenever it comes out.
The Beta 1 release was good enough. It was a little bit alarming when running this beta and watch the memory usage jumps from 10, 20 then 30 to 40 MB. But still, I haven't experienced any slowdowns just by using it.
Even in Beta 1.5 is a wonderful browser. Navigation,speed and stability are excellent.Themes and extensions of older versions normally do not work on new releases and are disabled till they are upgraded for working properly with the latest release.Some have already been upgraded and are working fine with 1.5
dfd
Yea, I'm sticking to the 1.0.6 for now.
the beta disabled most all my extension which i could live with , but i couldnt find a way to disable
it looking for updates at the start of each day so
i went back to the old version,,it seemed slower too
Also a new Reporte tool has been added, making it easier than ever to file a report when you encounter a web site that doesn't work with Firefox (this, is the web site is not web standards compliant). Just click Help/Report broken websites provide some details about the glitch and you're done and hopefully on your way to have it fixed.
Also, just to note that "Options" have been called like that for a long time (at least since been Firebird 0.6). Preferences is still the word used in Mozilla Application Suite.
FeedView, the feature Anonymous referred to in Deer Park alphas for viewing formatted web feeds was nice but as said it was buggy. I hope however it doesn't wait until 2.0 which I guess is a year ahead or so.
There is a "LiveBookmarkThis" Firefox Extension at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=274 that "Gives an Add Live Bookmark option when right-clicking links" which helps to speed up adding RSS feeds to Firefox. It "Requires: Firefox: 1.0PR - Deer Park"
I'll wait until maybe beta two. I don't usually like using firefox betas because you can't switch from 0.6 to 1.5 without installing the other one first. I tried it for a couple of days though and the back and foward buttons did seem much faster...
i like it so far. about the Ipod nano... i think I'll wait for a pico which is the logical next step if they keep scientific terms. FF is great though and really fast
i like it so far but only 4 of my 12 extensions worck it seems a tad bit faster and the drag and drop bookmarcks rocks
the cnn popup comes through
get your news from fox instead
I like the way the preferences are formatted in 1.0.6 it is much worse in the the 1.5 beta. The vertical navigation is so much simpler - there are no stupid tabs.
I find it funny that PC World editors and writers constantly refer to those pesky pop up ads that other sites use.
Anyone freaking notice that PC World has an extremely irritating subscription popup that Firefox doesn't block?
Come on, guys- get rid of that stupid thing. Oh, and stop calling EVERY new mp3 player a potential "iPod killer". Thanks.
The Netcraft Toolbar that worked on FireFox 1.0.6
does not add in nor yet work with FireFox beta 1.5;
Although most of the Yahoo! toolbar seems to work OK.
The IDN Fix work around ALSO needs to be made to Beta FFox 1.5.
The Netcraft Toolbar that worked on FireFox 1.0.6
does not add in nor yet work with FireFox beta 1.5;
Although most of the Yahoo! toolbar seems to work OK.
The IDN Fix work around ALSO needs to be made to Beta FFox 1.5.
What you didn't mention in the article is that Firefox 1.5 will render SVG without using any plugin, such as Adobes.
This is something many of us have been looking forward to for a very long time ( Internetwise ).
Flash is fine, but proprietory.
SVG is XML like modern (X)HTML, so its a baby in the family.
Now it's presentable in a standard browser outside the "proof of concept" Amaya browser.
Give 'em a hand guys 'n dolls.
Almost all of my extensions have been disabled and
I couldn't be happier.
I bookmark tab groups ten to twelve tabs at a
time and the end result navigation between them
and from one page to the next on any one tab
seems speedier.
If fewer extensions is the tradeoff to pay for greater stability, speed and ultimately (hopefully) less buggy extensions, then, I can hold off on
my extensions, although I do agree about the
RSS. I used Sage quite a bit in 1.06.
I've consistently had far fewer problems and bugs in Firefox than I ever had in IE and if all IE can
do is play catchup then, I'm QUITE content with Firefox!
SVG is really something that will bring major improvement on webpages rendering. No more images to fake fonts, no more fake background images to try to make it look nice. Now you can add 2D drawing into you webpages !
A form of SVG has also been pushed to Opera.
So only IE is lagging ... but who cares now about IE ? ;-) MS anybody ?
Been using 1.5 for several weeks now. Even the extensions that were disabled initially (Roboform, weather, IE View, for example) are now working as the extensions have been updated.
As Mozilla claims, forward and back reloading are a bit faster; and I love the ability to reshuffle the tabs.
A great alternative to MS IE 6.
i have nothing but problems, copy do NOT work now anymore 80% of the time randomly, not from menu , not from righ click , not ctrl c. pictures apear at wrong places. i try to type in a field (even google serach) 20% of the time a search on this page serction aperas and start typing there but its impossible to go type where i want to - i have to type in in there and paste it in the field i need it in (if i in luck and copy works), closing firefox entierly and repopening solve the problems temporary, but for me this is useless like this, now often i have to open up IE to get done what i need, i will uninstal beta today
for all those folks whose extensions topped working..
check out:
http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/nightly.html
this is an extension called "Nightly Tester Tools" that allows you to run most of your favourite extensions on firefox 1.5 !
rejoice!
"get your news from fox instead"
Fox has news now? When did they start doing that? :)
interesting that most if not all of the new features have been available on Maxthon (IE shell extension) for ages.