Mozilla Firefox 0.9
Firefox 0.9 is out. Read the press release, or the release notes.
10 Comments (skip to form)
Leave a Comment
Comment Information and Guidelines
- Trackback URI for this post
- Comments are the properties of their posters.
- Email addresses will never be shown or shared with third parties.
- Offensive, distasteful, and irrelevant comments will be deleted.
-
HTML is optional, but if you do use it, please make sure that:
- markup is well-formed and valid XHTML 1.1
- ampersands (&) are encoded as
& - angle brackets (< and >) are encoded as
<and> -
HTML allowed (please close tags):
seriocomic.com
Comment on June 15, 2004 at 2:56 pm
Have you upgraded yet?
Any problems?
The forums are littered with problematic upgrades, especially having to delete the profile directory.
0.8 is fine for me at the moment (and I like the default theme). I will wait until 1.0 or the release that allows for automated upgrades.
Did you know that the latest builds are named after New Zealand suburbs?
Lars Holst
Comment on June 15, 2004 at 5:27 pm
No, I'm still on 0.8.
I was just about to upgrade when I saw your comment.
Sounds like a reason to wait out the 0.91 release (don't think I could wait for the full integer release though....I'm a browser junkie).
Ah, One Tree Hill. No, I didn't know. Why New Zealand suburbs of all places?
seriocomic.com
Comment on June 16, 2004 at 2:13 pm
Because we are the bee's knees.
The southern hemisphere is up on the downside and all that other phooey...
Lars Holst
Comment on June 17, 2004 at 8:39 pm
Well, I have 0.9 running, but I am not happy.
It didn't pick up anything from my 0.8 install: no bookmarks, no extensions, no themes, no nothing.
I think it might come down to having chosen the wrong profile upon first launch. There was a dialog box prompting me to select either the "deafult" or the radically different "Deafult User" profile. I didn't have the faintest, really. I just picked one, and hoped for the best. Apparently, it was the wrong one. And here is the thing: there is no way (that I know of) that you can change the profile once you've installed the browser. I even tried deleting the install directory and reinstalling, but the damn thing must have written my choice to some file somewhere.
Not sure what you are meaning by deleting the profile though, but it doesn't sound like it would help my case.
I would consult the forums if I could be bothered, but for now reinstalling 0.8 will have to do.
Opera has never screwed up a single upgrade for me.
MaThIbUs
Comment on June 20, 2004 at 4:10 pm
I upgraded and didn't experience any problem so far. I love the new look.
Lars Holst
Comment on June 20, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Well, there you go. Did it pick up your bookmarks too?
Like I said, I might have chosen the wrong profile. I still haven't found a way to change it though, so we will never know.
And I thought I was one of them power-users...
Eddie
Comment on June 21, 2004 at 1:55 pm
When you download 0.9 (on windows) it makes the profile in
../Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/..etc but with 0.8 and before it always put profile data in../Application Data/Phoenix/..if you want your old bookmarks close down 0.9 then delete thebookmarks.htmland paste in your one from the old directory. You will however have to re-download any themes and extensions as they can go a bit crazy when being used with the wrong version.Lars Holst
Comment on June 21, 2004 at 3:55 pm
Thanks Eddie, that is very useful information for people looking to upgrade. I found my 0.8 bookmarks file yesterday, when I made a renewed effort to install 0.9, and managed to import it through the bookmarks manager.
But it's far from the seamless upgrade it needs to be if the goal is to win over Internet Explorer users, or indeed to keep existing users like myself. I have been a happy user so far, accepting its little odds and ends, and even major things like the continuous interface changes, but as the 1.0 release approaches my patience is running out.
As an example, the import function under the File menu doesn't allow the import of any bookmark file. Instead, it only gives you a set of predefined browsers to import from, and previous versions of Firefox is not included in the list. I had to go to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks to do it. I realize this particular quirk won't be an issue from this version on, assuming they don't rename or change the profile directory again, but it does show that the development team hasn't addressed user friendliness to the extent one would expect from their strategic goals.
The same goes for the heavy version dependency of the extensions and themes. I don't know why this is the case, or whose fault it is, if anyone's, and it really doesn't matter. It should just work.
They need to fix all these things for the 1.0 release, or I will be looking into browsers that don't waste my time.
Eddie
Comment on June 22, 2004 at 12:24 pm
You say they will have to sort this if, they want to get IE users. But, you have to remember that, lots of users will only download the browser once. So when v1 is finally released, and people download it, they will probably stick with it until version 2 comes out. You can see this by looking at how reluctant some people are to move from IE5, to IE6. People that can be bothered to upgrade at every milestone however, will be the people that can be bothered to spend 30mins, downloading new extensions, themes, ect...
Just how i see it. Also i believe they will finally sort everything out before releasing v1.
Lars Holst
Comment on June 29, 2004 at 10:03 pm
Eddie, yes you have a point. But in addition to winning over IE users, the aim seems to be to try and get people to upgrade more often, assuming the 1.0 release will allow for automated upgrades as Mike suggests in comment #1. Now that would be a big step forward. But, if the target group extends beyond the geeks that already use Firefox, then it will require a 100% seamless upgrade process. I really hope they will have this sorted soon.
I did find some positive indications in the release notes though:
This implies that the extension API will not change after 1.0, which would be good news.