

Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New - lforrest
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/16.0/releasenotes/

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SeanDav
Still my favourite browser by far. I usually have 3-4 windows open and up to
several hundred tabs and Firefox handles this better than anything else.

~~~
Achshar
I can't fathom a reason for "several hundred tabs" unless your job
specifically requires you to open that number of tabs for some (albeit
strange) reason.

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dbaupp
I use them as a replacement for bookmarks. My browser chrome is ridiculously
small, just tabs, so no bookmark bar, and if I did bookmark everything into
the bookmark system (which is hidden under several mouse clicks), I'd have to
keep it organised, whereas tabs are at least in chronological order
(approximately), which is more useful than alphabetic order when I'm looking
for something without knowing what it is called.

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SeanDav
Pretty much this. I keep tabs as temporary bookmarks, usually related to
projects I am busy with at the time. I have regular cleanups where I bookmark
any tabs that are long term keepers and delete the rest.

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melling
How many people here have stuck with 3.6? It looks like it's only a few
percent of FF users (<1% of all users).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox>

It was a really long road but with 3.6 essentially gone and silent updates,
developers can worry a lot less about legacy in the Firefox world.

~~~
Timmy_C
Anecdotally, I have an oddly large population of vistors to my site with
Firefox 9. I don't know what changes were made to how Firefox updates around
that time. But it seems like the update train has unwittingly left few users
behind.

~~~
leif
As a reference, Firefox 9 is the version in the packages repo for FreeBSD
9.0-STABLE and it's probably the same for a fair number of other oses that peg
versions on release.

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AdamGibbins
One of the primary reasons I switched to Chrome was due to the awesome syncing
abilities with Android Chrome.

Does anyone know if Firefox Mobile has matured to a point where it doesn't lag
incredibly due to the huge memory footprint on Android?

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gkoberger
It has. They semi-recently switched from XUL to native Java, which has made it
as fast (maybe faster?) compared to Chrome or Browser on Android. Definitely
worth checking out again.

~~~
cgranade
My only real complaint with Firefox Mobile is that it doesn't play that well
with Intent filters like the one the YouTube app uses to catch
<http://*.youtube.com/*> requests. That said, I'm not sure how to fix that
without introducing the annoying per-link popup asking me if I want to use
Chrome or Firefox.

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estacado
I still use FF, but switch to Chrome for JS heavy stuff. Even amazon.com is
laggy on FF. The things that's stopping me from switching to Chrome full-time
is the Extensions that FF has. I can really customize things to work exactly
the way I want. My biggest gripe about Chrome is that the download bar at the
bottom doesn't go away when you finish a download.

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Aardwolf
Still not the feature I'd like in there: A way to open link here instead of in
new tab or window

~~~
sabret00the
Hasn't that been a feature from day one. Are you sure you haven't got the
option ticked that forces links to open in external tabs/windows?

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Aardwolf
If I right click on a link, I see options "Open link in new tab" and "Open
link in new window". What's missing there is "Open link in this tab", to
circumvent these pesky websites that configure every single link to open in a
new tab/window.

~~~
Ironlink
Workaround: Drag the link to the address bar.

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ineedtosleep
I hope they keep plugging away at making their developer tools better. I use
Firefox as my main browser, but I often have to switch to Chrome because
Firebug's performance is pretty crappy even on my Ivy Bridge laptop (with 16GB
of RAM).

~~~
dangoor
We are indeed plugging away on the tools (and they are getting better each
release :)

Firebug will be getting faster as well as they are working on putting Firebug
on top of the new debugging API in Firefox (which has much better performance
than the old).

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freehunter
I wish they'd just bump the version number to 30 then save major revision
numbers for major revisions. I don't see anything in here that would warrant
anything but a bump from 15 to 15.5 under the old Firefox revision standards.

~~~
chousuke
The thing is, given the Firefox project's new development model, their old
versioning scheme makes absolutely no sense. Deciding which version numbner to
bump would be completely arbitrary and exactly as informative as just using a
single number that tells the user "this version is newer than the one with a
lower number", which is the _only_ useful information they can convey using
version numbers.

Would you also be one to complain about the Linux kernel versioning scheme? It
conveys exactly as much information as Firefox' does and works on the same
principle. They just happen to have that extra first "major" number there, but
it exists only for compatibility reasons. The change from 2.6.39 to 3.0 was
exactly as "major" as pretty much every "point" release since 2.6.0. Yet I
don't see people complaining about the version numbers every time a new kernel
version is released.

~~~
freehunter
I had originally included Linux in my complaint, but removed it because I
didn't want to open that can of worms.

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MatthewPhillips
So it adds Webapp support, but the Firefox Marketplace is not yet open to the
public, is this correct?

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gkoberger
That is correct. The Firefox parts have to land before the Marketplace can
open, otherwise the Marketplace is useless.

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Ensorceled
Is 16 worth installing? Firefox used to be my favourite browser, but I stopped
using it when the almost daily install and "reload or disable" addons cycle
became too painful.

~~~
abraham
That cycle should be invisible now. It updates silently in the background and
should only notify you if an extension gets disabled.

~~~
shardling
And unlike in previous eras of Firefox, extensions are not typically disabled
by the version bump.

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abraham
They should only get disabled if the use a feature that got removed.

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sahaskatta
Was hoping for HDPI support, doesn't look like this update includes it.

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asadotzler
HiDPI is available in Aurora this week (the code that will become Firefox 18).

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sahaskatta
Thanks, will checkout the Aurora build when I get a chance.

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johnyzee
Tabs in separate processes is the only thing I care about when considering
switching back to Firefox. As long as a single poorly coded site or plugin can
freeze or kill the entire browser, I simply cannot use Firefox.

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mbchandar
i am worried. even though it touched 16, it still sucks most of my memory and
slows down the system and drains the battery immediately (1 hour of power)

Firefox still needs to improve its memory usage.

~~~
mccr8
Can you be more specific about the kinds of problems you are seeing? Can you
reproduce these problems in safe mode? You should file a bug at
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/> and put [MemShrink] in the whiteboard.

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vnuk
Why does Firefox's roadmap look like "copy everything that Chrome has"?

If Firefox users needed (or wanted) marketplace for (web) apps (or any other
Chrome feature) they'd already be using Chrome ...

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sabret00the
Web Apps are a very real part of the future of the web. The fact that this
space exists in the first place whereby there was only desktop apps previously
should be testament enough to that. I may not personally agree with Mozilla in
regards to the role of web apps, but I think that we all agree, it's better to
be in a position to allow users to make their own minds up rather than go off
of what a few loud naysayers want.

~~~
vnuk
If Wev Apps are a very real part of the future of the web why isn't there a
standard for that? Or in another words, if it is the future why haven't they
all sat down and agreed upon a standard??

This way we'll be begging jQuery for Web Apps or some other abstraction layer
that will do all the dirty work of cross browser compatibility...

I don't see a standard for Web Apps on <http://www1.webplatform.org/> anywhere
...

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sabret00the
Did you take the week off? <http://www1.webplatform.org/>

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vnuk
All I see there is another "dry as bone" index of all web technologies, like
there aren't enough of those on the Internet already ...

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webwanderings
After being a FF user for so many years (since at least there was no hype
behind it among average users), I caved in to Chrome finally and completely.
Moved my bookmarks (lost tagging), history and sync, all to Google.

~~~
shardling
So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with
the article?

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webwanderings
I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a
parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest
in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take
opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements.

Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with
the article or not? Perhaps something is lurking behind the shadow you may
want to look after?

~~~
shardling
>Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with
the article or not?

For the simple reason that noise drowns out signal, and because _every damn
article_ mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing.

If you had in some way brought it around to this particular release, your
comment would have been on topic. Maybe there's a particular feature you've
finally given up waiting for. Maybe some recent change in the UI that you
dislike. Whatever! Don't just post empty blather, though.

("Fuck" here is simply used as emphasis, to indicate that I am exasperated by
the prevalence of such empty comments.)

~~~
webwanderings
"every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same
thing."

Agree, but people making such comments are also real and they may be as
exasperated as you are.

