Better to take longer and release a good product.

Nobody in a rush to get new features, it's the clean straightforward no surprises stability we look for in Firefox.

This is why software has such an image problem.

Ok so they not be show stoppers, but if you know there are bugs in, why the bloody hell release the software? What may seem minor niggle to one person can be a total screw up for someone else....

I'd sooner wait a bit longer and have an application that is fit for purpose.

Besides, I'm not going to install 'Fox 3 until it's had a few months to settle down. Installing any software - whether it's an OS or an application - at first release has proved unwise. Just ask early adopters of Vista or Ubuntu 7.10

...would be -- well, two things, actually.

I'd care if they fixed whatever stupid bugs have lately been making their browser crash on random simple Javascript (don't believe me? Install the 2.0.0.9 update, but only if you don't need to get anything done on the web), but I know better than to think they'll bother.

What'd REALLY get my attention would be fixes to even just a few of the memory leaks we've been putting up with since back when we were calling this thing Phoenix. You know, so that if I recklessly and with malice aforethought do a stupidly careless thing like leaving a browser open overnight on my work machine, I don't have to come into work to find that Firefox has eaten up all of my physical memory *and* all of my page file, for a total of 2.35G memory allocated -- a high score, necessitating of course a restart of the whole system -- and just because I incautiously left open an MRTG window which refreshes itself every five minutes. But I know better than to think, &c.

No, they'd rather keep on fighting the browser wars, adding in a whole slew of buggy new features -- well, not counting the ones which were there already but have now had a name change and been made harder to use -- probably slopping in a half-dozen new random crash bugs and two megabytes per minute of new memory leaks, because they're too stupid to realize the browser wars are over, and also they're plenty cynical enough to realize that, for all that Firefox frankly sucks, there's really nothing very much better out there unless you're willing to go with a browser nobody uses (and, by extension, a browser which doesn't run any of the nifty Javascript stuff you like).

In short, while Phoenix and Firebird were the plucky, lovable underdogs, Firefox has become the US Democratic Party of browsers: "Yeah, we suck and we know it. We don't care, though. And, really, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go over to the dark side and use IE? Are you gonna go Green Party and use Opera? Yeah, I didn't think so. You know we're the only ones who'll give you any pie, so shut up and eat your pie and stop whining at us about all the fingernails in it."

......or did it define them?

I'll get my coat......

I too would prefer they delayed the launch if it means creating a totally clean browser.

And if they could fix the ridiculous memory-hogging problems that mean I need to restart Firefox every few hours to flush the gigabyte-sized memory hole it has created, that would be nice too.

But - ideally - they should be stripping it down, not adding more features. The reason I and many others originally switched to Firefox was to take a step back from the slow, ponderous, feature-heavy monster that was IE. Firefox is getting that way again - and with IE's new minimalist look, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people start switching back. (Even if under the minimalist hood, IE is still a clunky horror)

but wasn't use of Beta Blockers made illegal?

If I had one wish for Firefox it would be to get a decent bookmark manager. It's been on the cards for ages but always seems to get dropped as a low priority. I just hate it when you search your bookmarks and you can't tell from your results which folder each bookmark is in.

@Aaron

Memory leaks were well documented in FF 1.x, but I've had no memory problems with FF 2.0.0.x. Yes, I do keep it open for *several* days with multiple tabs open.

Javascript problems is new to me. FF does occasionally crash, but I've not had it do it consistently on any site. Examples?

It's true that FF is a bit of a memory hog and not the fastest browser on the web, but it's simplicity in conjunction with the vast array of extensions means it will always be the only option for me.

Mozilla should *only* release it when it's ready. Not before.

The only competition is that IE thing from Microsoft.

And that's so awful there's not really any competitive pressure. The only hurry would be to rid the planet of the useless trojan-spreading, bug-ridden, non-standard pile of festering smeg.

It's an "Aggressive Caching Policy"

Only for driving tests : )

Anyway as long as you don't mix them with monoamine oxidase inhibitors I believe you'll be alright. Now then I must make sure I uninstall that ecstasy plugin...

I agree with most of the people here who would much rather have a clean browser than another IE.

A stripped down version that is just a browser will be fine thankyou - let us decide what we want to install by ways of plugins etc!

I've been using the Alpha's for months (Posting this with Alpha 8). I know its not recommend but I haven't had a crash or bug that I know of and I tend to leave it run 5 days a week.

I think the Mozila Devs just have a really high quality outlook which is causing them to rate bugs higher than needed.

"No hurry; it is by far the best browser already"

I assume you mean "the best browser apart from Opera already".

FF is dog-slow and buck-ugly. I can't stand using it.

@Aaron

I've had Firefox open for about a week now, with a couple of tabs that refresh every 5 minutes or so, and it's memory usage currently stands at about 83Mb.

I was under the impression that the majority of memory leak bugs were fixed back with the release of version 2.

Personally, as long as Firefox 3 isn't a backwards step in terms of stability from Firefox 2, I don't really mind how many bugs there are when it's released. I'm sure there are loads of Firefox 2 bugs that will get fixed in 3 so it's probably much of a muchness.

I also keep Firefox 2.0.0.x open with multiple tabs for multiple days -- and I'd keep it open longer, if it weren't for the combination of steadily, if slowly, increasing memory allocation (even with the cache disabled entirely, as is the case with the FF install that racked up that 2.35G high score) and steadily decreasing responsiveness. I surely can't be the only person who finds himself, after a couple of days with Firefox un-restarted, waiting up to thirty seconds for a "New Window" menu command to actually create a window.

As for the Javascript crashes, I haven't been able to do much debugging of this, because it mostly happens on my work machine, which it's been more than a month since I've had time to fix anything on that because I've been way too busy fixing things *with* it. (Which of course begs the question of what I'm doing on the Reg's comment section at 9:30 Monday morning, instead of hard at it, but what can I say? The caffeine hasn't kicked in yet.)

And now, of course, that I've said something, I find that I can't even reproduce the Firefox bug which has been among the banes of my existence for the last month. Frightening: it's not just contrary, it's *smart*.

I agree that FIrefox is by far the best thing currently available, which is why I use it in spite of the way it often frustrates me to the point where I want to squirt blood from my tear ducts; I just think that any devteam emphasis at all, or even any devteam *interest* at all, in new features for Firefox 3 is completely and utterly misguided, when they could be spending all that time and effort on making the browser work right in the first place, and when that'd make the users so much happier than the Firefox 3 we'll be getting.

"Best by far of a bad lot" doesn't automatically equal "good", and, just like the US political system, it'd be really, really nice if there were a viable third option which could serve any higher purpose than splitting "principle" votes away from the "tactical" votes for the lesser evil, so the greater evil wins and we all get it that much harder in the end. (Yes, I *do* mean the ass end. Get your mind into the gutter. And, yes, I'm equating Opera with Nader. I hope that's as funny as it is stupid.)

Am i asking for trouble if i say that FF is now in the extensible do-it-all browser category and Safari is (to me) the poster-child of a simple fast just-a-browser?

yeah, thought so... </coat> </dodge thrown fruit>

To the people who have said that no software should be released until *all* bugs are fixed, please think a little harder about what you're asking for.

All software has bugs, and even if you only consider known bugs, it's simply not possible to reach the point of actually releasing software without some known bugs still in it. It's too high a threshold for the real world.

If you were to postulate that no software is ever released by anybody until all known bugs are fixed, you simply would not have any software. At all. You wouldn't have had DOS, Windows, OS/2, OS X, Linux or any other operating system. You wouldn't even have a BIOS on your PC. You wouldn't have a mobile phone. And you most certainly wouldn't have a web browser. Not that that would matter, because apache and IIS wouldn't have been released either, so you wouldn't have any web servers to browse with your non-existent browser.

The question is simply how high to set the bar. Set it too low and you release software which falls over and people consider to be full of bugs. Set it too high and you simply don't release software, or you release it years too late. It would be pointless trying to release Firefox 3.0 in time for the 2012 olympics, because by then the web standards and features will have moved on, Opera and IE will have moved on, and nobody will use Firefox any more. It will be great for browsing archive.org, but nothing else.

So come on, leave them alone. Let them get on with their release engineering process. And then it's your choice whether to use what they release.

I finally got the thing to work properly, and I am not in the mood for more changes.

@AC 1.I don't know what you mean by slow it's as fast as your hardware/internet connection 2. thats what skins are for (I still like noia).

The memory leak is fixable as well, though I haven't got the link handy there is a setting to limit how much memory it uses, use it if you are likely to leave the thing open all the time, they need to put that in the gui settings . Face it, you're all a bunch of slothful creatures, you're on a tech site complaining because you won't do even the most mundane tuning of the most commonly used program you have, I expect you to know better. As for FF 3 I can wait.

My own experience of FF:

- switched to 2.X by way of 2.0.1 (after reading of it in El Reg !)

- it crashed any time I visited one web site (that happens to be the one I read most): nwvault.ign.com

- switched back to 1.X

- only was back to 2.X when it popped out in the automatic update

- is solid ever since

Lesson learnt: switch to 3.X only when it's general deployment, and pops out in automatic/manual updates.

This article confirms this even more.

If you want to see the Javascript crash:

1) Install Firebug

2) Go to a site with Googleads

3) Enable firebug for that site

4) Refresh the page a few times (or move round the site)

After a few pages FF will crash totally.

So is it firebug or the Googleads? Who knows but it only started doing it in the past couple of releases and its an interaction between Firebug and Googleads. There is no way that the Googlead script should be able to blow up Firebug to the point it takes the browser out.

by this criteria, I wonder if IE would ever get released.

Either youre for the monopoly, or youre against it.

xx00

shooby

Yup, on my G4 Powerbook FF rapidly escalates to 125 plus megs, then eventually slows to a crawl. Really, Photoshop uses less resources.

Then again my newsreader Vienna has the same issue, as does my e-mail client Gyazmail.

Those three bring the system to its knees on a daily basis. It's as if these three programs are only intended for light use, not for heavy users.

There is one thing everyone seems to need explained, especially the journos involved. Not all bugs are bugs. Anything that is scheduled to be done to Firefox is a bug, not just the errors you understand as bugs.

Want JavaScript to run quicker? That's a bug.

Want a security hole fixed? That's a bug.

Want a new icon? That's a bug.

Want to change the splashscreen? That's a bug.

Want to change the background colour of the address bar? That's a bug.

Hell if you wanted Firefox to have a default home page that listed all the pubs in your area that would be a bug too.

Some of these 700 bugs may be enhancement requests that would be nice to have but are not vital, do not cause errors, do not impact your browsing security, do not eat memory, etc. So get your facts straight before you all yell OMG I'm never using Firefox again.

"for all that Firefox frankly sucks, there's really nothing very much better out there unless you're willing to go with a browser nobody uses (and, by extension, a browser which doesn't run any of the nifty Javascript stuff you like)."

I hate to keep pointing it out, but Opera is a browser used by more and more. Does everything FireFox does (in fact, most of FireFox's 'new features' were on Opera first. Oh, and those Javascript things, supported natively, no need to even use a plugin to run them.

Never got why FireFox got so popular, except for maybe the millions spent advertising (and most of the adverts were lies)

Umm, Javascript -is- supported natively in Firefox. It's just the java applets that need a virtual machine to run that aren't. And if Opera supports <i>Ithat</i> natively, it's probably breaking a law somewhere.

It will come out in August. Mozilla will say probably it will be an April release but it will be delayed and not be ready then and will get released in August.

Watch...

There is actually a speed for a given rendering engine, and (At least the last time I checked, I avoid the browser on general principal now) Firefox's is quite slow compared to Opera. Even things that are cached locally go far more slowly in FF.

The first time I tried Opera (When 8.5 had that 10 year anniversary w/ free licenses) I hit the back button once. I was used to the delay that FF had when looking through history, and Opera had the previous page fully rendered in that time. As a result I managed to not even notice that my page had changed until I looked at it hard. For the next week or so the difference in timing clashed so hard with my eyes that it would scare me on occasion. But it was a good scare.

I also love how Firefox is supposed to be a small, fast stripped down browser, but the installer for Opera is smaller than FF's, even though Opera has loads of built in features that you have to find by scrolling through a giant list of mostly harmless extensions.

I really don't know why FF exists.

It was free (beer) at the start, while Opera was encumbered with ad.

Epiphany (webkit) anyone?

I took continue to suffer memory leaks with FF. Several different machines, some XP, some Vista 32, some Vista 64. It's nowhere near as bad as it was in 1.x, or the early releases of 2.x, but it's definitely still a problem. Sure, I have a lot of tabs open, but no reason FireFox should a) take up 300mb+ to begin with nor b) have a disproportionate affect on system performance at that level, not when I have 2GB-4GB backing the machine. Various other pieces of software will perform pisspoor, or not at all, until I kill the FireFox process, when the memory use climbs like that.

Opera wasn't free originally and when it first was, it was plastered with advertising.

That's why Firefox is more popular (plus its ability to add extensions such as Adblock).

Simple really.

Personally the memory leaks always seemed to be tied to Flash.

Visit timesonline.co.uk and leave many tabs open with flash enabled uses up tons of memory. Avoid installing flashplayer and you're much better off. It's possible there's a fixed version of Flashplayer by now, but maybe not.

Epiphany, a descendant of the Galeon browser, is built on the Gecko rendering engine, using Gnome desktop components rather than XUL for a "native" desktop look. Think Mac.

Webkit is a fork off the KHTML engine which powers Konqueror and its KDE desktop components.

The next sub-major version of Gnome (v2.22, currently 2.20) will switch to the Webkit engine for Epiphany, but for now, it's a Gecko based browser.

The KHTML/Webkit engines are significantly less mature than the Gecko engine, but getting better.

Any browser engine, Presto (Opera), KHTML, Webkit or Gecko is better and safer than Trident (IE). So, take your pick

cheers

Your point of enhancement requests is of course correct. However no wonder people get confused if everything gets labeled a bug. This really hacks me off about things like Bugzilla etc where enhancement requests have "bug" numbers etc and are called bugs. It's not a bug so don't call it that or at least don't be surprised when people get confused.

Want JavaScript to run quicker? Is NOT a bug. The developers should not call it that.

Want a new icon? Is NOT a bug. The developers should not call it that.

...

...

etc.

It's important to have the distinction between a bug and a request especially for estimating potential delivery dates and for high level numbers. If people are confused, it's the mechanism for tracking issues that's at fault because they have redefined what a bug is.

Running 2.0.0.9 (on Linux), I can say it's a mixed experience here... And I mean HERE, your mileage will vary. It will NOT hog memory, even if left on for long periods -- it sometimes did in previous versions, sometimes not. Javascript does not seem to be a problem, but Java usually gives me trouble. Flash is kinda fickle too. VERY frequently, Amazon.com's home page crashes FF, and stopping the loading quickly when opening it sometimes works.

I think the problems I have are due to software interactions. You know, complex systems and all. My OS is oldish (SuSE 9.2), and many libraries cannot be upgraded without breaking everything else. Some that could be updated, were. The most recent Firefox versions were sure made with more recent software. Then I get in trouble. And that's why my home Kubuntu 10.7 does not get in nearly as much trouble with the same FF, Java, etc.

But opening some menu entries is still slow as hell most times (the "History" seems to be the culprit here).

@Anonymous Coward:

Thanks for explaining to me why my firefox keeps on crashing on me. I also have firebug (on by default) and it FF has been crashing several times daily recently. Not goog at all. Am thinking of switching back to IE7!

User Javascript might be natively supported in Opera, but I've yet to see a decent ad-blocking plugin for it, and I haven't the time or the interest to write my own. (On the other hand, it's been > 1 year since I investigated Opera. Maybe it's gotten much more worthwhile in that span of time.)

Some (anonymous) clever dick babbled about a way of reducing Firefox's memory usage. I hadn't seen it before, but I did find something very interesting at http://www.lifespy.com/2007/firefox-quick-tip-limit-ram-usage/: apparently, setting the about:config key "browser.cache.memory.limit" to an integer will limit Firefox's memory usage to the value you set. I've set it to 12800, which as I understand it from the blog post will limit Firefox to 128M, or one-eighth of my total RAM, or about one-third of what Firefox likes to allocate itself.

So far, I haven't had Firefox running long enough to tell whether it's working. Should be interesting to see; at any rate, I hope somebody finds it handy.

Never seen problems described - but then I don't leave browsers open for days.

Never got on with Opera - but will give it another try - FF has become too popular and is therefore too big a target now.

Surprised at how many -ve comments there are about it.

(But I rarely blame programs when they are running on a MS operating system - 'cos the platform is dodgy to start with.)

Ok, to all those who don't understand why an open-source outfit like FF would need to meet their own deadlines. The gist: follow the money.

Firstly, open-source development does not exclude itself from the competitive commercial market. In fact, it needs to be ahead of it, given the general bias that "commercial" means "better".

Secondly, we need to understand who is backing FF and why, namely Google. Google has a large stake in FF (some reg article, talks about it), and I'm sure they want their searchers to use browsers that can handle all the goodies Google is cooking up - namely ajax/comet-goodies. It's the same reason MS wants us to use IE: monopolize the platform. (Ever heard of Windows or iPod?)

I had a third reason, involving companies paying for FF software improvements, but that's less founded, and probably passe.

FF might develop out of truly principled open-source passions, but they are also delivering on a promise to someone paying their bills. The better their browsing platform, the higher retention of said funders, and the more funding they receive. Imagine when goverment agencies make FF the standard browser, or Nokia funds FF to polish off their mobile browser.

Mozilla is a software company, like any other. Being open-source is like McDonalds using containers from recycled materails: a nice sentiment that is still about profits.

In its current state, it's still better than any of the GA crap from MS...

IE - infuriated

then

FF - irritated

then

Opera - happy

Opera just needs an Ad Blocker to achieve pure bliss

I've been using...and buying...Opera since 1999. I am ok with paying for a superior product.

I've never understood the FF hoopla. It does not allow one to customise the look, (less a button or two...which are offered as extensions) adding removing toolbars, etc.

I Don't know a single person running FF who is not using a metric ton of extensions.

I open Opera, I run it. It does everything OOTB that FF can only do with 15 extensions added on.

I don't get why people like FF so much. Opera, unfortunately, is a browser that one might have to put a little time into learning. It does have an IE skin though which should make it easier for the people who complain that they have no time to learn. Apparently they have the time to search the Mozilla site for hundreds of extensions though.

Opera hogs memory too. Not gigs, but enough that sometimes you have to reboot because it doesn't want to give the memory back. The memory problem is a problem with ALL browsers but I didn't know it was that bad in FF. I actually though Opera was a worse memory hog. Go figure.

And I'm unclear as to the "Opera needs an ad blocker." It has ad blockers. You can prevent pop-ups and you can block content on a page by page basis or tweak out your hosts file to suit you needs. I really hate that people, even people who are already using Opera, always fixate on ad blocker. RTFM already!

I use both FF and IE to test the html and css I write and to get to important sites like bank and credit card sites who, for whatever misguided reason, choose to belive that activeX is safe and needed. Otherwise, if I come across a site that refuses to build to standards, and not for IE, I just move on. Their crappy site is not important enough for me to open another browser.

I've been using...and buying...Opera since 1999. I am ok with paying for a superior product.

I've never understood the FF hoopla. It does not allow one to customise the look, (less a button or two...which are offered as extensions) adding removing toolbars, etc.

I don't know a single person running FF who is not using a metric ton of extensions.

I open Opera, I run it. It does everything OOTB that FF can only do with 15 extensions added on.

I don't get why people like FF so much. Opera, unfortunately, is a browser that one might have to put a little time into learning. It does have an IE skin though which should make it easier for the people who complain that they have no time to learn. Apparently they have the time to search the Mozilla site for hundreds of extensions though.

Opera hogs memory too. Not gigs, but enough that sometimes you have to reboot because it doesn't want to give the memory back. The memory problem is a problem with ALL browsers but I didn't know it was that bad in FF. I actually thought Opera was a worse memory hog. Go figure.

And I'm unclear as to the statement, "Opera needs an ad blocker." It has ad blockers. You can prevent pop-ups and you can block content on a page by page basis or tweak out your hosts file to suit you needs. I really hate that people, even people who are already using Opera, always fixate on ad blocker. RTFM already!

I use both FF and IE to test the html and css I write and to get to important sites like bank and credit card sites who, for whatever misguided reason, choose to believe that activeX is safe and needed. Otherwise, if I come across a site that refuses to build to standards, and not for IE, I just move on. Their crappy site is not important enough for me to open another browser.

I did try Opera 9.5 beta. Hated it, removed it, reinstalled it. They've screwed with the email formats,, jpw the wand works and some other things that piss me off. I'm unhappy with it at this point. I hope they do not drop the ball with this version.

So yeah, I love Opera, I don't understand why anyone would even want to use FF but I'm glad they're using FF over IE.

Simply right-click on the page, select "Block content..." and you're off

Its time to slow down this space race. I've just grudgingly moved from FF 1.5 to 2 within the past month. I still prefer most things about 1.5. The only feature in 2.0 that I appreciate is the session resume. I wouldn't mind if they continued to provide security bug fixes for the past versions but every new major version just rearanges the furniture needlessly.

Where's the Preferences dialog in this version? They move it back and forth from Edit/Preferences to Tools/Options in every other release, 2.0 has it back where it was in Mozilla and FF 1.0. And every new release just adds another 10M of bling in the form of gold plated spinner skins and other doodads to slow down the already sluggish browser.

The problem with Opera's ad blocker, while it is very user-friendly to select and block ads, is that it doesn't have a subscription list the way AdBlockPlus has. When you install ABP, you get a choice of subscription lists, which are automatically updated daily to block more ad servers and to counter anti-adblocker techniques being introduced by advertising companies.

Now while I do like Opera as well as FF, I don't want to have to run around on every new site I visit blocking ads before I can settle down to read the content. FF+ABP means I almost never see ads at all, and on the very rare occasion when I do, it's usually only one or two that are being hosted on the site server (to get around the adblockers) and these can also be blocked quickly. Opera badly needs support for popular blocklists like the EZ-List that ABP uses. Then it will definitely be the equal of FF+ABP.

Some people commenting seem to have the view that if Firefox does not leak for them it is not an issue.

As a JavaScript developer I am pretty aware that both the page code and the browser contribute to the issues, but that it does seem to be mostly down to the browser, some pages can bring a 2gb system to its knees in minutes!

I am sure what the user really wants at this point is a faster more stable browser and not more useless bells and whistles.