Firefox 6, anyone tried it yet? (previously discussing 5)

[ibdoomed]

A lot of people around here hated how 4 looked and went back to 3 and 5 doesn't look much different than 4 so far. Wondering if anyone else is trying it out.

[Freezer-TPF-]

Wha, 5 is out?  I'm still using 3!  Great, now I have a Firefox backlog. 

[metallicorphan]

i thought they had only just released FF4?


think i will wait this time,see how it fares,i didn't like FF4 at all,and it didn't like me

[CeeKay]

add me into the 'buh?  FF5?' crowd.  are they trying to catch up with Chrome?

[Rumpy]

Are you from the future? How's 2015? Do they have flying cars yet?

[Eel Snave]

I'm using FF7. It's great, except some guy with white hair stabbed my girlfriend in the chest while she was casting a spell.

[Eel Snave]

Now I feel like a jerk, BTW:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/firefox-5-beta-lands-right-on-schedule/12906

[Eel Snave]

I'm using Firefox 5 now. It seems fine.

[CeeKay]

Käytän Firefoxia 5 nyt. Tuntuu hyvin.

wha?

[Eel Snave]

What are you talking about?

[Zinfan]

Google toolbar not compatible with FF5, bummer man I need my google bookmarks.  Hope they update the toolbar soon.  Other than that seems to work just fine.

[Knightshade Dragon]

So far, the exact same bugs that plagued me from 3 and 4, are present and accounted for in 5.  Good job Firefox!

[Laner]

The majority of my add-ons are working, thank goodness.  It's still a gigantic memory hog.

[Rumpy]

I have one add-on that wasn't compatible, but the rest were. It's Awesome Screenshot, and it lets you take a screenshot of the screen and annotate it, which is very handy.  I kind of think that the shorter dev cycle will make it harder for add-on makers to catch up due to needing to update so often.

[Jumangi]

Mozilla is going the way of Google /w Chrome. Spitting out a new "version" every few months. Guess they think that will make people think they are moving forward faster or something.

[ibdoomed]

My test machine is doing other things right now (like not working at all heh) so I can't test 6 yet. Anyone taken the plunge yet?

[CeeKay]

My test machine is doing other things right now (like not working at all heh) so I can't test 6 yet. Anyone taken the plunge yet?

now you're just making versions up 

[metallicorphan]

I just read that they plan to release Firefox 6 and 7 within 2011

with Firefox 4 released March 2011 and Firefox 5 released in June 2011

WHY???

[ibdoomed]

I just read that they plan to release Firefox 6 and 7 within 2011

with Firefox 4 released March 2011 and Firefox 5 released in June 2011

WHY???

Because I love maintaining our website and staying compatible with 5 versions of firefox, 3 versions of IE, and a safari in a pear tree.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, simply a terrible decision on their part. Firefox 4 started to feel like Chrome, and starting with Firefox 5 they copied Google's update model, which is fine for Chrome I guess since it's more of an incremental model than full version updates done stealthily, and I don't think they have to worry about the large community of add-on devs like Firefox does. It makes me feel like in doing that, Firefox is going to leave many developers in the dust if any of them can't keep up with the pace. It's kind of like the tortoise and the hare syndrome. Tortoise is done fine for himself until the hare challenges him to a race, yet we all know how that ends, the slow and steady approach winning out. I'm sensing deja vue too. I seem to remember when Netscape had done the same. When IE5 was released, Netscape was on version 4 and instead of releasing version 5, they released version 6, which was actually version 5 in sheep's clothing, so it was cosmetic only, but it had the same effect of looking like they were ahead.

[zinckiwi]

I just read that they plan to release Firefox 6 and 7 within 2011

with Firefox 4 released March 2011 and Firefox 5 released in June 2011

WHY???

Just don't get the angst I guess They're just numbers, and this shift is indicative of the fact that it's a rolling product, always on the move, as the web has always been. The concept of "major versions" is rooted in the desktop. You could go and number the major feature and cosmetic updates of Facebook if you liked, and we'd be well up there by now. (In fact I assure they they do, internally, even if just by build number. In which case they're probably up to the tens or hundreds of thousands by now.)

It's just easier to lump things together into a name/number/symbolic marker. It's funny to see people complaining that they should have gone with 4.3, 4.4, 4.5.2, etc. They could have gone with "Quiznarg.54.Beta" for all I care. The practical (i.e. code) difference isn't going to change. Just starting thinking of Firefox as Firefox.

[CeeKay]

they're claiming that Firefox 7 will be lean and fast.

[ibdoomed]

I just read that they plan to release Firefox 6 and 7 within 2011

with Firefox 4 released March 2011 and Firefox 5 released in June 2011

WHY???

Just don't get the angst I guess They're just numbers, and this shift is indicative of the fact that it's a rolling product, always on the move, as the web has always been. The concept of "major versions" is rooted in the desktop. You could go and number the major feature and cosmetic updates of Facebook if you liked, and we'd be well up there by now. (In fact I assure they they do, internally, even if just by build number. In which case they're probably up to the tens or hundreds of thousands by now.)

It's just easier to lump things together into a name/number/symbolic marker. It's funny to see people complaining that they should have gone with 4.3, 4.4, 4.5.2, etc. They could have gone with "Quiznarg.54.Beta" for all I care. The practical (i.e. code) difference isn't going to change. Just starting thinking of Firefox as Firefox.

Except that websites render and behave differently depending on which version you're using, at least ours does, and those of us that maintain the website have to keep up while not alienating previous versions since not everyone else can keep up. Therefore, I have 5 virtual machines used for testing and I have to sign off every time I correct one typo that all 7 browsers work.

[Blackjack]

I'm using Firefox 6 at work but really don't notice much in the way of performance differences. I still find the "tab group" feature a little baffling, and find I'm better off sticking with the Speed Dial extension.

Even though I have broadband at home, the browser can't ever quite seem to finish downloading the Firefox 6 update for some reason.

[CeeKay]

Even though I have broadband at home, the browser can't ever quite seem to finish downloading the Firefox 6 update for some reason.

have you tried downloading FF6 through IE?

[ibdoomed]

Even though I have broadband at home, the browser can't ever quite seem to finish downloading the Firefox 6 update for some reason.

have you tried downloading FF6 through IE?

The irony there is thicker than your shorts in the morning.

[Rowdy]

I really liked the idea of pinned app tabs and promptly pinned several different gmail accounts, gmail docs and reader and facebook.  That worked great for a few days, until I opened a new browser window for some reason or another - then later closed them both.  The next time I opened FF expecting to see all my pinned app tabs, they were all gone.  I've readded them and subsequently lost them several times since then.  They seem very flaky.

[CeeKay]

Even though I have broadband at home, the browser can't ever quite seem to finish downloading the Firefox 6 update for some reason.

have you tried downloading FF6 through IE?

The irony there is thicker than your shorts in the morning.

Actully, I prefer to sleep au natural.

I figure I'll give FF7 a try since I'm feeling outdated with FF3 right now.

[CeeKay]

looks like they've got FF8 (Aurora) available for download.

[CeeKay]

and the release candidate for 8 is now out: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

[Rumpy]

Firefox 8 is odd. I dislike the way it's doing updates now. I liked it better when it would just download and prompt you that it's ready to install rather than telling you there's an update and clicking on a button to make it download, and then restarting. There are more steps involved now, but it's doing this even when I have download and prompt checked. Not as transparent as it used to be. Seems like a step backwards.

[CeeKay]

apparently my Firefox just decided to upgrade to 8 for me.  I closed it down, then when I started it up again a screen popped up about add-ons and sure enough when I checked the 'about' section I'm suddenly on 8.

[Blackjack]

apparently my Firefox just decided to upgrade to 8 for me.  I closed it down, then when I started it up again a screen popped up about add-ons and sure enough when I checked the 'about' section I'm suddenly on 8.

Under Options>Advanced>Update (I don't know why they "nest" it so deep into the menu tabs), you can set it to "Ask Me What I want to Do." Although mine wasn't set to that, I didn't get prompted to update until I happened to check the Help>About menu after seeing your post. So I too am a little puzzled how it's handling the update.

I seem to remember Firefox being more specific that "Version X.0" is ready and was d/l etc. in the past.

[heloder]

It's been working fine for me so far. There is one minor annoyance, though. For some reason the address bar is no longer acting as a search bar. I've become accustomed to just typing searches into it, so I'm hoping it gets fixed soon.

[Blackjack]

It's been working fine for me so far. There is one minor annoyance, though. For some reason the address bar is no longer acting as a search bar. I've become accustomed to just typing searches into it, so I'm hoping it gets fixed soon.

Maybe that was a "bug" that they "fixed." 

[Rumpy]

apparently my Firefox just decided to upgrade to 8 for me.  I closed it down, then when I started it up again a screen popped up about add-ons and sure enough when I checked the 'about' section I'm suddenly on 8.

Under Options>Advanced>Update (I don't know why they "nest" it so deep into the menu tabs), you can set it to "Ask Me What I want to Do." Although mine wasn't set to that, I didn't get prompted to update until I happened to check the Help>About menu after seeing your post. So I too am a little puzzled how it's handling the update.

I seem to remember Firefox being more specific that "Version X.0" is ready and was d/l etc. in the past.

Yep, exactly what I'm talking about. It seems really weird. There was a popup telling me there was a new version, but I didn't click on it as I was doing something, but what I expected out of the previous behaviours was that it was downloaded and ready to install. Went to check next time I loaded up and I was still on the previous version and the about menu was telling me to click to download and install. Just download and prompt me, already.

[heloder]

Upon further inspection it not only doesn't function as a search bar anymore, but if you type in a URL without including http:// it doesn't work, either. Seriously annoying.

[CeeKay]

Upon further inspection it not only doesn't function as a search bar anymore, but if you type in a URL without including http:// it doesn't work, either. Seriously annoying.

odd, I just tried doing that and it works fine.  I made sure they were sites that weren't in my history just in case, but, for example, typing in ebgames.com brought up the site right away without issues.

[heloder]

Crud. Must be a problem with an extension or something.

[heloder]

And it was. I updated VideoDownloader and NoScript and the problem is solved. NoScript was probably to blame.

All is well!

edit - All is not well! Turns out when I first start the browser and search from the address bar it works fine, but if I make a new tab and search from that address bar it doesn't! Disabling TabMixPlus solves the issue, though.