8 ms·

Firefox 15 available to download, finally fixes add-on memory leak

188 points by mrsebastian 14y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Mouse lock support for FPS games is really exciting for me. I've wanted to make first-person WebGL games, but before this was available it simply wasn't feasible.
- kuida0r3 14y ago
  Here's tech demo! https://developer.mozilla.org/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai/3baf4ad7e600cbda06ec46efec5ec3b8/bananabread_1346106841_demo_package/game.html?low,low https://developer.mozilla.org/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai...
  - Camillo 14y ago
    Nice! But what are the security implications of giving web pages access to the GPU?
isaacaggrey 14y ago
Release Notes: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/15.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/15.0/releasenotes/
webwanderings 14y ago
I don't like to use Chrome. Updates for IE are not available because I am still on XP. Safari is also not updating itself for Windows. So what are the options left any more? It seems things are getting pathetic in the browser market.
- ck2 14y ago
  All browsers except IE9/IE10 work on XP, I am not sure what on earth your complaint is about. I use XP exclusively too, I only fireup vmware to test IE9/10
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    I am debating this notion of all browsers. There is Chrome, there is Firefox, there is IE and there is Safari. Chrome is a marketplace, so they'll be there selling you products (and yourself to the products) as long as they can. Microsoft doesn't want you to use XP anymore, so they are not providing you updates. Safari for Windows is pretty much the same story now. Which practically leaves Firefox and Opera. Two choices. I am arguing for more credible and substantive choices. I have not used Opera substantively but Firefox to me seems stuck in the past. If I were to add further thoughts, I see that the basic use and function of browser has remained the same for very long time. Just look at the bookmarks manager. Have you seen any browser provide native innovation to their bookmarks manager? The last upgrade in Firefox was several years ago when they introduced Live Bookmarks, but things have gone quiet. This is just one example of basic functions of everyday use of browser. Has anyone seen any innovation in browser functionality in a long time? It used to render HTML websites in the beginning, and it is still rendering websites (so what if the websites have evolved - the browser has practically not evolved for the daily usage of average users).
- gue5t 14y ago
  Presumably, and topically, you might try Firefox. Alternatively, you could try to rally developers to write a native-behaving browser based on the Cairo webkit port. It needs substantial love but it would be a project that would really better the options for a modern browser on Windows. Writing a new web rendering engine is, of course, both virtually impossible and foolish.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Or role your own off QtWebKit, which is surprisingly full featured and works mostly pretty well.
- josteink 14y ago
  When you chose to stay on a decade old OS, 3 major revisions behind what is currently out there, you sort of chose what sort of support you were going to get. Nobody is supporting Ubuntu 6, yet you seem to expect people to support the Windows equivalent. I know XPers refuse to admit it, but they run an antiquated OS, and if you insist on running antiquated operating system software, don't be surprised when the rest of the software you can run starts rusting as well. Sorry.
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    Can you give me one legitimate reason to move off of this OS when 99% of my use of this OS is only through the browser? I made my hardware compatible by upgrading the memory to the max and my computer (browser in fact) runs as good as any Windows 7 or anything else "new" out there. I simply see these OS upgrades as marketing ploy to generate more income (nothing wrong with that but I have to have my choices too). People are simply being suckered in to buying newer hardware which they don't really need.
    - peblos 14y ago
      I guess one reason would be that you struggle to find a browser
    - alttab 14y ago
      Don't want to pay for an upgrade? Get Ubuntu. If 99% of your use is through the browser then this choice shouldn't effect you much. Its just as easy to install as Windows for most OEM's as well.
    - wbkang 14y ago
      A web browser is easily one of the most complex software out there today. Not "just a browser"
    - wtetzner 14y ago
      > Can you give me one legitimate reason to move off of this OS when 99% of my use of this OS is only through the browser? How about so you can use browsers that are supported on your OS?
- CrazedGeek 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers There are plenty! If you want a specific one, Midori's pretty good.
- wisty 14y ago
  Opera, Chromium, WebKit (yes, there's a Windows build ... no idea if it's OK on XP). Plus derivatives of the popular browsers. Safari. What are you looking for?
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    Safari is not supporting latest version on Windows, and if they were to support, I'd assume they'd also want people to have the latest OS. I have not gone the Opera route yet in a substantive way. People above seem upset that there are still people out there using XP. My main point is that there should be multiple choices of reasonable browsers including even for older hardware. The way I have seen things move, the Firefox is as same as anything else when it comes to utilizing a whole lot of memory.
- sandGorgon 14y ago
  Why dont you consider installing Ubuntu for a change ? I'm not sure if antivirus/firewall vendors are even supporting XP and you really dont want to be running XP without protection. Perhaps you use a lot of Microsoft Word - Google Docs is a fine replacement. For basic Excel use, Openoffice/Google Docs is good enough (problem happens when you are doing advanced macros). Perhaps you use Photoshop - Gimp is a fine replacement unless you are using it professionally. Why dont you mention your specific OS software needs and we will be happy to suggest alternatives. FYI, my entire family (wife, parents) use Linux and are pretty happy with it.
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    Nothing wrong with Ubuntu and I'd use it eventually if I really have to. But in order to just use a browser (which is what I use mainly) I don't have a great need to move to Ubuntu from XP.
    - fayden 14y ago
      You seem to do, considering you cannot find an up to date browser to your liking. It also seems to be a valid alternative considering you do not want to buy software upgrades (OS).
- eli 14y ago
  Opera is a pretty decent browser, and it runs particularly well on older hardware (which, if you're running XP, may be relevant). I think a lot of people are still on Windows XP because it was the first version of Windows that was really "good enough" for most needs. That said, Win 7 really is better and is totally worth the ~$100.
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    I don't really have a clunker, so I upgraded the memory to 3Gigs and my XP is using the least minimum services and startup EXEs, hence I am really happy with the host OS to run my browser which is what I use all the time anyway. The bare bone XP with least minimum running services is as good as Windows 7. But if only people could see.
    - RobAtticus 14y ago
      It might be "as good as" if you're just using it to run a browser. But in my experience Win7 has been snappier to use than XP on the same machine, software vendors are starting to stop supporting XP, the UI is more pleasant (subjective), and the 64-bit support is much better. Just a few things.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      It's really not. You seem to be hiding behind the browser, thinking that as long as you have a secure browser, your OS is secure as well. This isn't the case. Windows XP is a major nightmare, especially if "minimum services" doesn't include an active firewall, AV, anti-spyware, and anti-rootkit tool. If you're running XP without all of that (as well as occasional one-off, offline scans with a different AV tool), you're asking for trouble. Windows XP is seriously bad news when it comes to being online, with any browser.
      - webwanderings 14y ago
        I think you've been drinking kool-Aid, or you don't know how keep the running OS secured with the least minimum requirements (assuming you are talking about a home PC which is mainly used for leisure and sometime typical banking needs). You can very well (still) run Microsoft's security software which has virus scan. You can occasionally run (still) freely available good spyware scanners. The firewall that came with the XP does its job. The point I am making, which seem to be lost on everyone here, is that, if you upgrade your relatively decent hardware with enough RAM, and if you remove all the crappy services and EXEs from the startup, you can have a reasonable experience with older OSs and there is no need to go buy new PCs every other year from Walmarts. But Microsoft is in the business of selling OSs and they knew what they were doing by removing IE9 from XP and they also know what they sell with every new updates of Office (go back to Office97 or 2003 and you can still use the basic function as same as today's Office). So when it comes to the browsers in today's time, it really does look pathetic with very few choices on hand. You have a corporation owned Chrome which wants to know when did you pee in the morning and what did you eat last night and where. Then you have a decently run Firefox but that is the only choice right now and it is troubling that it is the only choice right now.
- zobzu 14y ago
  Firefox ESR
technojunkie 14y ago
I applaud the Mozilla team for its huge effort in squashing the FF memory leaks. That must have been such a huge pain to solve and it took many years. Well done and congrats. That said, I really hope the authors of plugins like Firebug, Adblock Plus, and LastPass among many others will do their parts to get rid of bad memory leaks. Using OSX 10.7.4, I opened up FF 14.1 to about 325MB-350MB of memory. After downloading FF 15 and restarting, I saw no change in my memory consumption. Once I disabled the three I mentioned above, I was only then able to start FF around 250MB, still really high but better. I want Mozilla and Firefox to succeed as I really want there to be solid competition for Chrome. Please, add-on authors, do your parts too!
- pilif 14y ago
  By just starting Firefox and looking at the memory consumption, you are measuring exactly that: Consumption. Not leakage. Leaking implies a continuously increasing memory usage. By just opening, measuring and closing again, you don't even get a chance to measure an increase in consumption, so you can't say anything about leakage. Also, 100MB for Firebug, Adblock and LastPass doesn't seem that far off - especially Firebug is huge and has to do a lot of work, so I would expect that to require quite a bit of memory.
  - technojunkie 14y ago
    Good point and I will continue to monitor the browser as I use it. Just in initial browsing, I'm still finding the memory consumption increasing at the same alarming rate it was before sadly. :( But you are correct that I need to give it some time to really measure correctly. That said, even with the 9 add-ons I'm using, I was hoping I could see a total memory usage on startup to be closer to 225MB.
    - mtgx 14y ago
      Also having the lowest memory consumption is not always the best indicator for how good a browser is. For example, I think Chrome uses more memory per tab than most other browsers, because of its individual sandboxing system. But that seems to be a pretty fair trade-off. Has Firefox started using sandboxing yet?
mccr8 14y ago
Here's some detailed information about the addon leak fix from the developer who fixed it: http://blog.kylehuey.com/post/21892343371/fixing-the-memory-leak http://blog.kylehuey.com/post/21892343371/fixing-the-memory-...
ck2 14y ago
Also 16b1 and 17a2 coming out sometime tomorrow. October 9th: Firefox 16 desktop/mobile, 17b1, 18a2 November 20th: Firefox 17 desktop/mobile, 18b1, 19a2 Schedule pace seems insane but getting used to it and I'm fine with the way it doesn't seem to break anything. Firefox 99 in 2017?
- robin_reala 14y ago
  17a2 is out now (or at least my Aurora just updated itself).
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Firefox 99 in 2017? 8.6 releases/year (release every 6 weeks), 2013 will start at Firefox 18, so Firefox 99 will be released in the first half of 2022.
- melling 14y ago
  Why does it seem insane? "Release early, release often" has been around for years. Both Chrome and Firefox both update every six weeks. That means over half of the Internet is now upgrading at a nice clip. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20120828-20120828-bar http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20120828-2012082... The big question is how to get more people on a 6 week cycle.
  - ck2 14y ago
    Because the major version number is now the minor version. In theory we should be on Firefox 9.15 or something. Now big number changes mean small improvements.
    - AndrewDucker 14y ago
      No, big number changes mean that six weeks have passed. That's all. The scale of the change doesn't affect the number at all.
      - lhnn 14y ago
option_greek 14y ago
I'm really loving their fast release schedule. There is noticeable improvement in performance with each release (may be placebo effect ? :) )
- mtgx 14y ago
  It's the same as Chrome's - 6 weeks. What I think made a lot of people before attack Mozilla for it was because: 1) the "Firefox user" wasn't used to this kind of fast updates, the way the "Chrome user" was - and 2) Firefox' updates were not silent, and therefore you knew you got an update and some users may have been getting annoyed having to update it so often, instead of silently upgrading in the background. But apparently they now have silent upgrades starting with this version.
  - jarrettcoggin 14y ago
    This is one of the biggest problems to tackle when updating software: How can the user be uninterrupted? This is one of the biggest problems I have on my WP7. My apps stay out of date for a long time until I manually go update them. I don't think to manually update them very often (maybe once a month). I'd much rather the app be updated silently in the background, and when I re-open it after the updates have been downloaded/applied, I then notice that things have changed. This is pretty much the same way websites operate and you don't have much control over it. You may be able to prolong the update while they are "beta" testing it (a la Google/Facebook), but eventually you get the update and have to deal with it.
    - omaranto 14y ago
      I like silent updates when they're not likely to be huge user-visible improvements, mostly performance enhancements and bug fixes. In the case of Firefox or Chrome, for example, I'm perfectly happy with the current feature set and just want them to keep getting faster and more stable. On the other hand, most of the Android apps I use are missing a couple of functions or have some annoying visisble bug I am waiting to be fixed. Then I prefer updates to be automatic but not silent so I can read the change list and if something I am waiting for has been added or fixed I know (and rejoice) right away.
darklajid 14y ago
Unfortunately I got addicted to pentadactyl after a couple of threads here. Which broke on 15 and made me go back from beta to stable. I wonder what changed internally to lead to irc comments that in effect said 'it's a major undertaking to make pentadactyl work for this new version' and this commit: http://code.google.com/p/dactyl/source/detail?r=2557fa60103046ebfeaee1eb4f3e1377cdd6366f http://code.google.com/p/dactyl/source/detail?r=2557fa601030... Really don't want to miss that addon anymore.
- jvm 14y ago
  This made me switch back to Vimperator and I haven't looked back.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    How is Vimperator these days? Is it comparable to Pentadactyl? I remember switching because of some deficiency, but I don't remember exactly what.
    - xyzzyb 14y ago
      It is absolutely comparable to Pentadactyl. I switched from Chrome to pentadactyl and then to vimperator after getting fed up with all the bugs. http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Pentadactyl_vs_Vimperator http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Pentadactyl_vs_Vimperator
    - danneu 14y ago
      I tried out Vimp because of this very thread and it's almost identical. Even the docs look the same. Which makes sense since Penta is a fork of Vimp. Worthwhile to spend the 30 seconds installing it, typing :mkv (to create the .vimperatorrc), and copying your .pentadactylrc into it. FF15 is feeling great and I'm glad I didn't call it quits at the lack of Pentadactyl. I'm used to FF eating a gig on my 2012 Macbook Air. Now it's sitting at less than half that for the same set of tabs.
    - jvm 14y ago
      I switched to Pentadactyl because of passkeys, but now Vimperator has ignorekeys which I think might actually be even better.
mmuro 14y ago
I guess this hasn't been seeded everywhere? 15 is still in beta according to the website.
- azakai 14y ago
  The press tends to jump the gun a little, because each blog and news site wants to be "first". The actual launch is planned for sometime today.
  - mscrivo 14y ago
    me too, and the new downloads panel is still not in this build, I wonder what the hold up is.
    - asadotzler 14y ago
      The hold up is that the person working on this has higher priorities. It is progressing. If you want to use it, move to the nightly channel.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Mozilla "soft" releases new versions of Firefox over a couple days to manual updaters, then a few million auto updaters, and finally all auto updaters. This allows them to watch for any major issues ("chemspills") that were not found during beta. The general public often reveals different bugs than self-selected early adopters using the beta versions. For now, you can manually update from the About Firefox dialog.
  - mmuro 14y ago
    Yeah, I tried that but it would never install (kept trying to connect to the update server). I went to the website to manually download and that's when I noticed it wasn't updated.
veidr 14y ago
Finally.
o_rally 14y ago
> a completely silent background updater This is not an improvement. I do not like it when my computer changes itself without asking. - Does no one question this anymore? - Why should we blindly accept every single update unquestioningly? - Why should we be forced to deal with the problems they introduce after the fact? - Why will no one contemplate that constant automatic updates are an attack vector unto themselves? The more you force your feedlot of end-user livestock to tolerate potentially disruptive updates, the more they will grow accustomed to not being in control of their own machines, and the less likely they will be to notice a real problem as a signal amidst all the noise. Honestly, why even bother pretending to have control of our machines anymore. When people ask me for help now, my eyes glaze over, and I am often forced to respond "I don't know what the fuck that thing is doing. It clearly has a mind of it's own." This, my friends, is an affront to the very sensibility of the control an "open source" project, should ostensibly extend to it's community and user base. And spare me your bullshit about "Oh, hay guyz, you can just go on GIT or SVN and look at the code yourself!" It's time-consuming, technical, and inaccessible to normal people, never mind the complications of different platforms, and the shifting sands of dependencies, commits and continuous integration. YOU KIDS STAY OFF MY LAWN! /rant
- robin_reala 14y ago
  What’s time-consuming, technical and inaccessible to normal people is updating their software. No-one in my family bothers apart from the people who actually work in the software industry. This isn’t necessarily a problem when it comes to features (apart from version fragmentation) but it’s a nightmare when it comes to security. The more silent and automatic security updates the better for them.
  - o_rally 14y ago
    I disagree. There is a difference between not knowing what to do, or how to do it, versus simply not doing it out of laziness or negligence or an unwillingness to take on the responsibilities implicit in owning your own device. The learning curve for keeping software up-to-date is not particularly steep.
lmm 14y ago
How many releases of firefox have we had now that claim to have fixed its memory problems? I make this at least four, which is a few too many for me to believe it this time.
- azakai 14y ago
  Firefox never claimed to "fix the problem". The press tends to simplify things. What is true is that multiple releases addressed separate, significant problems. It's important to remember that there is no 100% solution to a complex problem like memory usage in a large program that runs arbitrary code (the web).
  - drzaiusapelord 14y ago
    Well, the fix is to have a simpler API that allows less rope for developers to hang themselves. This is how Chrome manages it. Firefox was built with this vision of XUL-based apps, big modifications, etc which never panned out. A lot of what needs to get done by extensions really can be done via simplified API like Chrome's.
    - sciurus 14y ago
      Firefox has that simplified API in the Add-on SDK (aka Jetpack). However, they're stuck supporting all the traditiional XUL and XPCOM based extensions as well. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/tools/builder https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/tools/builder
    - masklinn 14y ago
      > A lot of what needs to get done by extensions really can be done via simplified API like Chrome's. A lot of useless stuff yes, the useful stuff? Not really. Good luck building something as wide-ranging as Firebug through Chrome's API.
    - azakai 14y ago
      That's not a fix, it's a different tradeoff. The important thing is you have choices and can pick the browser that makes the tradeoff you prefer.
Xyzodiac 14y ago
And it breaks pentadactyl, I feel entirely helpless.
- jvm 14y ago
  I said this elsewhere, but I switched over to vimperator and order was restored to the universe.
- xyzzyb 14y ago
  Give Vimperator a shot. I found it to be 100% compatible with my usage of Pentadactyl (bmark bookmarklets, etc.) and it's working just fine with FF15.
  - danneu 14y ago
    Didn't know Vimp was the common ancestor. Copied my .pentadactylrc into .vimperatorrc and most of it works.
specto 14y ago
http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/15.0/mac/en-US/Firefox%2015.0.dmg http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele... http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/15.0/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%2015.0.exe http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele... Direct links to the OS X version and win32 version.
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
Unfortunately I'm still sticking with Chrome. I love Firefox but Chrome loads "instantly" while Firefox: even 15 still has a noticeable lag when you launch it. Firefox has always felt very unresponsive in terms of the UI and loading times. The only browser I've found less responsive is Safari (IE, is very responsive). Memory consumption was an issue at one stage in Firefox's history but they mostly fixed that (from 1 GB/usage down to like 200 MB~ after a day of browsing).
- spitfire 14y ago
  firefox used to be the light, zippy alternative to mozilla. Back when it was called Phoenix. When they renamed it, I guess they changed focuses - firefox became the new hulking monster that was mozilla.
- rufugee 14y ago
  I'd consider switching to Chrome if it weren't for the nightmarish way it expects you to manage tabs. I typically have 30 or so tabs open at any given time, and in Chrome that means a horizontal row of very tiny tabs with only icons (no text...therefore no context) across the top. They used to have sidebar capabilities (on Windows, which didn't help this Linux user) but for some reason I can't fathom they removed them. Contrast this with Firefox, where I can easily get a tab bar down the side via a plugin (I use this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...). Even without a plugin, FF gives me the Expose-like functionality (ctrl+shift+e) which will show me all open tabs and their titles. How Google can think the current tab situation in Chrome is useful is a mystery to me.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - deepGem 14y ago
    30 tabs ? really ? man, how do you keep your focus.
    - 14y ago
homosaur 14y ago
If they did finally solve this, I might be nearly back to using FF as a primary. With Chrome I have had more and more problems with certain sites (not all legacy either) the last few months. Also, I've been impressed with the improvements in speed and reliability of Firefox in the last couple of releases. Everyone remembers the days of 15 second FF startup because you had a handful of add-ons turned on. Now, I've gained some discipline and stopped installing 50K plugins, but Firefox has done the heavy lifting here. On FF 15 I only have a small amount of plugins (partially because I abandoned its usage) but on my work Mac, it goes from shutdown to usable in 685ms. If anyone you know is delusional enough to think that competition doesn't improve products, just point to FF. The existence and popularity of Chrome has turned FF from a decrepit bloatware to a sleek modern web racehorse. I'm proud of those guys because in all honesty, I was convinced they would fail. Kudos.
- shardling 14y ago
  >The existence and popularity of Chrome has turned FF from a decrepit bloatware to a sleek modern web racehorse. Please don't spout this crap. Firefox has definitely improved a lot in some areas recently, and I'm sure competition helped, but this idea that it was getting worse before chrome is an artifact of websites getting more complicated. Try to browse gmail or facebook with firefox 1.0 and it won't feel as slim or fast as you remember...
  - NPC82 14y ago
    Well it's a little bit of both so I think he has every reason to also attribute competition. Firefox has definitely borrowed a few ideas and motivation from Chrome, and vice versa.
  - homosaur 14y ago
    You might want to try reading posts before commenting. I was clearly pointing towards startup time and general app respnsiveness, not actual speed browsing websites. But thanks for saying please.
polshaw 14y ago
There has been some talk about ubuntu here-- what is the best way to keep up to date with browsers on ubuntu (/linux).. there is no 'check for updates' within firefox, and the repositories are often out of date [1] 1. to be fair, i don't know about FF, i can't really complain that it might be a day out of date.. but chromium is way behind. Also what about living on the beta/aurora channels?
- tomku 14y ago
  The Chromium package in Ubuntu is several major versions behind, and I would definitely not suggest using it. Debian has up-to-date versions in sid. Firefox on Ubuntu gets timely (within a couple days of upstream) updates, and the official Chrome PPA (from Google, installed when you use their .deb package) is kept up to date. Edited for correctness, thanks xfs.
  - xfs 14y ago
    "effectively unmaintained"? It has 21 updates till now in this year, probably just one release behind chromium stable channel. http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/chromium-browser/current/changelog http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/chromium-b... Of course you need sid, because of too many bugs.
    - tomku 14y ago
      I'll edit my post, you're absolutely right.
  - jevinskie 14y ago
    Is the "official Chrome PPA" the same thing as the APT repository that the Chrome .deb (downloaded from google.com/chrome) adds to your sources.list?
CodeMage 14y ago
Does anyone know how these "silent updates" handle add-on compatibility? I prefer being "hassled" by update notifications if an update is going to break my favorite add-ons.
lhnn 14y ago
Just for the record: Old people don't like changes, so when Firefox silently changes and updates the wording of a menu, or changes the new tab behavior, etc., my 70 year old dad bitches and calls me to find out what is wrong with his computer. Silent updates: only for bugfixes. Sure would be nice if version numbers meant anything these days.
- dangoor 14y ago
  Actually, I think the effect is better this way: changes are relatively small and incremental (and every release does not have significant user-visible change). This is easier than a huge change all at once (like Firefox 3.6->Firefox 4)
ralfn 14y ago
The WebGl demo video is impressive though. Not just the execution, but the fact that this isnt made specificlly for webgl. Its c++ code compiled to Javascript. This seems to suggest PS2/Wii era games can easily be ported to fully native fully crosplatform html5 applications. I do wonder about security. The videocard drivers are not hardened against abuse: yet they live completely outside of any sandbox. And WebGL is just passing these OpenGL commandos unfiltered to the drivers. Good news for Intel, with their open driver stack. And bad news for NVidea and ATI with their messy legacy drivers and firmware full of unchecked liscenced closed-source 3rd party code.
- bjacob 14y ago
  As someone working on Mozilla's WebGL implementation, I assure you that WebGL is not just about passing OpenGL calls "unfiltered" to the driver. In fact, an implementation doing that could not even pass the standard WebGL conformance tests.
sswezey 14y ago
A feature that no one has touched on is the JS debugger included with FF15, you can now set break points and walk through JS calls.
DigitalSea 14y ago
If Firefox really have fixed the issues with memory leaking, I might go back to using it more again. I was one of those developers that switched over to Chrome like the majority, I have a feeling for some it's a little too late for Firefox to be fixing an issue that has plagued the browser since around version 1.5. I still recall years ago Mozilla even denying that there was a memory leak and were always quick to blame plugins for the leaks and while that's true in some instances to an extent, Chrome showed us that bad plugins can be managed correctly and not break your browser performance. Giving it a shot now, Firefox can't afford to blow this again.
- nnethercote 14y ago
  Please give FF15 a try. We've made lots of improvements. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink and https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ for details.
desinerd 14y ago
Finally much needed improvements to the plugin memory leak! Its pretty much unusable on linux after a certain point .... Trying it out now, look pretty good and works as advertised
huntall 14y ago
Firefox 15: Less Memory, Painless Updates http://huntall.com/firefox-15-less-memory-painless-updates http://huntall.com/firefox-15-less-memory-painless-updates

188 points by mrsebastian 14y ago

Mouse lock support for FPS games is really exciting for me. I've wanted to make first-person WebGL games, but before this was available it simply wasn't feasible.

kuida0r3 14y ago
Here's tech demo! https://developer.mozilla.org/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai/3baf4ad7e600cbda06ec46efec5ec3b8/bananabread_1346106841_demo_package/game.html?low,low https://developer.mozilla.org/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai...
- Camillo 14y ago
  Nice! But what are the security implications of giving web pages access to the GPU?

isaacaggrey 14y ago

Release Notes: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/15.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/15.0/releasenotes/

webwanderings 14y ago

I don't like to use Chrome. Updates for IE are not available because I am still on XP. Safari is also not updating itself for Windows. So what are the options left any more? It seems things are getting pathetic in the browser market.

ck2 14y ago
All browsers except IE9/IE10 work on XP, I am not sure what on earth your complaint is about. I use XP exclusively too, I only fireup vmware to test IE9/10
- webwanderings 14y ago
  I am debating this notion of all browsers. There is Chrome, there is Firefox, there is IE and there is Safari. Chrome is a marketplace, so they'll be there selling you products (and yourself to the products) as long as they can. Microsoft doesn't want you to use XP anymore, so they are not providing you updates. Safari for Windows is pretty much the same story now. Which practically leaves Firefox and Opera. Two choices. I am arguing for more credible and substantive choices. I have not used Opera substantively but Firefox to me seems stuck in the past. If I were to add further thoughts, I see that the basic use and function of browser has remained the same for very long time. Just look at the bookmarks manager. Have you seen any browser provide native innovation to their bookmarks manager? The last upgrade in Firefox was several years ago when they introduced Live Bookmarks, but things have gone quiet. This is just one example of basic functions of everyday use of browser. Has anyone seen any innovation in browser functionality in a long time? It used to render HTML websites in the beginning, and it is still rendering websites (so what if the websites have evolved - the browser has practically not evolved for the daily usage of average users).
gue5t 14y ago
Presumably, and topically, you might try Firefox. Alternatively, you could try to rally developers to write a native-behaving browser based on the Cairo webkit port. It needs substantial love but it would be a project that would really better the options for a modern browser on Windows. Writing a new web rendering engine is, of course, both virtually impossible and foolish.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Or role your own off QtWebKit, which is surprisingly full featured and works mostly pretty well.
josteink 14y ago
When you chose to stay on a decade old OS, 3 major revisions behind what is currently out there, you sort of chose what sort of support you were going to get. Nobody is supporting Ubuntu 6, yet you seem to expect people to support the Windows equivalent. I know XPers refuse to admit it, but they run an antiquated OS, and if you insist on running antiquated operating system software, don't be surprised when the rest of the software you can run starts rusting as well. Sorry.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  Can you give me one legitimate reason to move off of this OS when 99% of my use of this OS is only through the browser? I made my hardware compatible by upgrading the memory to the max and my computer (browser in fact) runs as good as any Windows 7 or anything else "new" out there. I simply see these OS upgrades as marketing ploy to generate more income (nothing wrong with that but I have to have my choices too). People are simply being suckered in to buying newer hardware which they don't really need.
  - peblos 14y ago
    I guess one reason would be that you struggle to find a browser
  - alttab 14y ago
    Don't want to pay for an upgrade? Get Ubuntu. If 99% of your use is through the browser then this choice shouldn't effect you much. Its just as easy to install as Windows for most OEM's as well.
  - wbkang 14y ago
    A web browser is easily one of the most complex software out there today. Not "just a browser"
  - wtetzner 14y ago
    > Can you give me one legitimate reason to move off of this OS when 99% of my use of this OS is only through the browser? How about so you can use browsers that are supported on your OS?
CrazedGeek 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers There are plenty! If you want a specific one, Midori's pretty good.
wisty 14y ago
Opera, Chromium, WebKit (yes, there's a Windows build ... no idea if it's OK on XP). Plus derivatives of the popular browsers. Safari. What are you looking for?
- webwanderings 14y ago
  Safari is not supporting latest version on Windows, and if they were to support, I'd assume they'd also want people to have the latest OS. I have not gone the Opera route yet in a substantive way. People above seem upset that there are still people out there using XP. My main point is that there should be multiple choices of reasonable browsers including even for older hardware. The way I have seen things move, the Firefox is as same as anything else when it comes to utilizing a whole lot of memory.
sandGorgon 14y ago
Why dont you consider installing Ubuntu for a change ? I'm not sure if antivirus/firewall vendors are even supporting XP and you really dont want to be running XP without protection. Perhaps you use a lot of Microsoft Word - Google Docs is a fine replacement. For basic Excel use, Openoffice/Google Docs is good enough (problem happens when you are doing advanced macros). Perhaps you use Photoshop - Gimp is a fine replacement unless you are using it professionally. Why dont you mention your specific OS software needs and we will be happy to suggest alternatives. FYI, my entire family (wife, parents) use Linux and are pretty happy with it.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  Nothing wrong with Ubuntu and I'd use it eventually if I really have to. But in order to just use a browser (which is what I use mainly) I don't have a great need to move to Ubuntu from XP.
  - fayden 14y ago
    You seem to do, considering you cannot find an up to date browser to your liking. It also seems to be a valid alternative considering you do not want to buy software upgrades (OS).
eli 14y ago
Opera is a pretty decent browser, and it runs particularly well on older hardware (which, if you're running XP, may be relevant). I think a lot of people are still on Windows XP because it was the first version of Windows that was really "good enough" for most needs. That said, Win 7 really is better and is totally worth the ~$100.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  I don't really have a clunker, so I upgraded the memory to 3Gigs and my XP is using the least minimum services and startup EXEs, hence I am really happy with the host OS to run my browser which is what I use all the time anyway. The bare bone XP with least minimum running services is as good as Windows 7. But if only people could see.
  - RobAtticus 14y ago
    It might be "as good as" if you're just using it to run a browser. But in my experience Win7 has been snappier to use than XP on the same machine, software vendors are starting to stop supporting XP, the UI is more pleasant (subjective), and the 64-bit support is much better. Just a few things.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    It's really not. You seem to be hiding behind the browser, thinking that as long as you have a secure browser, your OS is secure as well. This isn't the case. Windows XP is a major nightmare, especially if "minimum services" doesn't include an active firewall, AV, anti-spyware, and anti-rootkit tool. If you're running XP without all of that (as well as occasional one-off, offline scans with a different AV tool), you're asking for trouble. Windows XP is seriously bad news when it comes to being online, with any browser.
    - webwanderings 14y ago
      I think you've been drinking kool-Aid, or you don't know how keep the running OS secured with the least minimum requirements (assuming you are talking about a home PC which is mainly used for leisure and sometime typical banking needs). You can very well (still) run Microsoft's security software which has virus scan. You can occasionally run (still) freely available good spyware scanners. The firewall that came with the XP does its job. The point I am making, which seem to be lost on everyone here, is that, if you upgrade your relatively decent hardware with enough RAM, and if you remove all the crappy services and EXEs from the startup, you can have a reasonable experience with older OSs and there is no need to go buy new PCs every other year from Walmarts. But Microsoft is in the business of selling OSs and they knew what they were doing by removing IE9 from XP and they also know what they sell with every new updates of Office (go back to Office97 or 2003 and you can still use the basic function as same as today's Office). So when it comes to the browsers in today's time, it really does look pathetic with very few choices on hand. You have a corporation owned Chrome which wants to know when did you pee in the morning and what did you eat last night and where. Then you have a decently run Firefox but that is the only choice right now and it is troubling that it is the only choice right now.
zobzu 14y ago
Firefox ESR

technojunkie 14y ago

I applaud the Mozilla team for its huge effort in squashing the FF memory leaks. That must have been such a huge pain to solve and it took many years. Well done and congrats. That said, I really hope the authors of plugins like Firebug, Adblock Plus, and LastPass among many others will do their parts to get rid of bad memory leaks. Using OSX 10.7.4, I opened up FF 14.1 to about 325MB-350MB of memory. After downloading FF 15 and restarting, I saw no change in my memory consumption. Once I disabled the three I mentioned above, I was only then able to start FF around 250MB, still really high but better. I want Mozilla and Firefox to succeed as I really want there to be solid competition for Chrome. Please, add-on authors, do your parts too!

pilif 14y ago
By just starting Firefox and looking at the memory consumption, you are measuring exactly that: Consumption. Not leakage. Leaking implies a continuously increasing memory usage. By just opening, measuring and closing again, you don't even get a chance to measure an increase in consumption, so you can't say anything about leakage. Also, 100MB for Firebug, Adblock and LastPass doesn't seem that far off - especially Firebug is huge and has to do a lot of work, so I would expect that to require quite a bit of memory.
- technojunkie 14y ago
  Good point and I will continue to monitor the browser as I use it. Just in initial browsing, I'm still finding the memory consumption increasing at the same alarming rate it was before sadly. :( But you are correct that I need to give it some time to really measure correctly. That said, even with the 9 add-ons I'm using, I was hoping I could see a total memory usage on startup to be closer to 225MB.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Also having the lowest memory consumption is not always the best indicator for how good a browser is. For example, I think Chrome uses more memory per tab than most other browsers, because of its individual sandboxing system. But that seems to be a pretty fair trade-off. Has Firefox started using sandboxing yet?

mccr8 14y ago

Here's some detailed information about the addon leak fix from the developer who fixed it: http://blog.kylehuey.com/post/21892343371/fixing-the-memory-leak http://blog.kylehuey.com/post/21892343371/fixing-the-memory-...

ck2 14y ago

Also 16b1 and 17a2 coming out sometime tomorrow. October 9th: Firefox 16 desktop/mobile, 17b1, 18a2 November 20th: Firefox 17 desktop/mobile, 18b1, 19a2 Schedule pace seems insane but getting used to it and I'm fine with the way it doesn't seem to break anything. Firefox 99 in 2017?

robin_reala 14y ago
17a2 is out now (or at least my Aurora just updated itself).
masklinn 14y ago
> Firefox 99 in 2017? 8.6 releases/year (release every 6 weeks), 2013 will start at Firefox 18, so Firefox 99 will be released in the first half of 2022.
melling 14y ago
Why does it seem insane? "Release early, release often" has been around for years. Both Chrome and Firefox both update every six weeks. That means over half of the Internet is now upgrading at a nice clip. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20120828-20120828-bar http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20120828-2012082... The big question is how to get more people on a 6 week cycle.
- ck2 14y ago
  Because the major version number is now the minor version. In theory we should be on Firefox 9.15 or something. Now big number changes mean small improvements.
  - AndrewDucker 14y ago
    No, big number changes mean that six weeks have passed. That's all. The scale of the change doesn't affect the number at all.
    - lhnn 14y ago

option_greek 14y ago

I'm really loving their fast release schedule. There is noticeable improvement in performance with each release (may be placebo effect ? :) )

mtgx 14y ago
It's the same as Chrome's - 6 weeks. What I think made a lot of people before attack Mozilla for it was because: 1) the "Firefox user" wasn't used to this kind of fast updates, the way the "Chrome user" was - and 2) Firefox' updates were not silent, and therefore you knew you got an update and some users may have been getting annoyed having to update it so often, instead of silently upgrading in the background. But apparently they now have silent upgrades starting with this version.
- jarrettcoggin 14y ago
  This is one of the biggest problems to tackle when updating software: How can the user be uninterrupted? This is one of the biggest problems I have on my WP7. My apps stay out of date for a long time until I manually go update them. I don't think to manually update them very often (maybe once a month). I'd much rather the app be updated silently in the background, and when I re-open it after the updates have been downloaded/applied, I then notice that things have changed. This is pretty much the same way websites operate and you don't have much control over it. You may be able to prolong the update while they are "beta" testing it (a la Google/Facebook), but eventually you get the update and have to deal with it.
  - omaranto 14y ago
    I like silent updates when they're not likely to be huge user-visible improvements, mostly performance enhancements and bug fixes. In the case of Firefox or Chrome, for example, I'm perfectly happy with the current feature set and just want them to keep getting faster and more stable. On the other hand, most of the Android apps I use are missing a couple of functions or have some annoying visisble bug I am waiting to be fixed. Then I prefer updates to be automatic but not silent so I can read the change list and if something I am waiting for has been added or fixed I know (and rejoice) right away.

darklajid 14y ago

Unfortunately I got addicted to pentadactyl after a couple of threads here. Which broke on 15 and made me go back from beta to stable. I wonder what changed internally to lead to irc comments that in effect said 'it's a major undertaking to make pentadactyl work for this new version' and this commit: http://code.google.com/p/dactyl/source/detail?r=2557fa60103046ebfeaee1eb4f3e1377cdd6366f http://code.google.com/p/dactyl/source/detail?r=2557fa601030... Really don't want to miss that addon anymore.

jvm 14y ago
This made me switch back to Vimperator and I haven't looked back.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  How is Vimperator these days? Is it comparable to Pentadactyl? I remember switching because of some deficiency, but I don't remember exactly what.
  - xyzzyb 14y ago
    It is absolutely comparable to Pentadactyl. I switched from Chrome to pentadactyl and then to vimperator after getting fed up with all the bugs. http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Pentadactyl_vs_Vimperator http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Pentadactyl_vs_Vimperator
  - danneu 14y ago
    I tried out Vimp because of this very thread and it's almost identical. Even the docs look the same. Which makes sense since Penta is a fork of Vimp. Worthwhile to spend the 30 seconds installing it, typing :mkv (to create the .vimperatorrc), and copying your .pentadactylrc into it. FF15 is feeling great and I'm glad I didn't call it quits at the lack of Pentadactyl. I'm used to FF eating a gig on my 2012 Macbook Air. Now it's sitting at less than half that for the same set of tabs.
  - jvm 14y ago
    I switched to Pentadactyl because of passkeys, but now Vimperator has ignorekeys which I think might actually be even better.

mmuro 14y ago

I guess this hasn't been seeded everywhere? 15 is still in beta according to the website.

azakai 14y ago
The press tends to jump the gun a little, because each blog and news site wants to be "first". The actual launch is planned for sometime today.
- mscrivo 14y ago
  me too, and the new downloads panel is still not in this build, I wonder what the hold up is.
  - asadotzler 14y ago
    The hold up is that the person working on this has higher priorities. It is progressing. If you want to use it, move to the nightly channel.
cpeterso 14y ago
Mozilla "soft" releases new versions of Firefox over a couple days to manual updaters, then a few million auto updaters, and finally all auto updaters. This allows them to watch for any major issues ("chemspills") that were not found during beta. The general public often reveals different bugs than self-selected early adopters using the beta versions. For now, you can manually update from the About Firefox dialog.
- mmuro 14y ago
  Yeah, I tried that but it would never install (kept trying to connect to the update server). I went to the website to manually download and that's when I noticed it wasn't updated.

veidr 14y ago

Finally.

o_rally 14y ago

> a completely silent background updater This is not an improvement. I do not like it when my computer changes itself without asking. - Does no one question this anymore? - Why should we blindly accept every single update unquestioningly? - Why should we be forced to deal with the problems they introduce after the fact? - Why will no one contemplate that constant automatic updates are an attack vector unto themselves? The more you force your feedlot of end-user livestock to tolerate potentially disruptive updates, the more they will grow accustomed to not being in control of their own machines, and the less likely they will be to notice a real problem as a signal amidst all the noise. Honestly, why even bother pretending to have control of our machines anymore. When people ask me for help now, my eyes glaze over, and I am often forced to respond "I don't know what the fuck that thing is doing. It clearly has a mind of it's own." This, my friends, is an affront to the very sensibility of the control an "open source" project, should ostensibly extend to it's community and user base. And spare me your bullshit about "Oh, hay guyz, you can just go on GIT or SVN and look at the code yourself!" It's time-consuming, technical, and inaccessible to normal people, never mind the complications of different platforms, and the shifting sands of dependencies, commits and continuous integration. YOU KIDS STAY OFF MY LAWN! /rant

robin_reala 14y ago
What’s time-consuming, technical and inaccessible to normal people is updating their software. No-one in my family bothers apart from the people who actually work in the software industry. This isn’t necessarily a problem when it comes to features (apart from version fragmentation) but it’s a nightmare when it comes to security. The more silent and automatic security updates the better for them.
- o_rally 14y ago
  I disagree. There is a difference between not knowing what to do, or how to do it, versus simply not doing it out of laziness or negligence or an unwillingness to take on the responsibilities implicit in owning your own device. The learning curve for keeping software up-to-date is not particularly steep.

lmm 14y ago

How many releases of firefox have we had now that claim to have fixed its memory problems? I make this at least four, which is a few too many for me to believe it this time.

azakai 14y ago
Firefox never claimed to "fix the problem". The press tends to simplify things. What is true is that multiple releases addressed separate, significant problems. It's important to remember that there is no 100% solution to a complex problem like memory usage in a large program that runs arbitrary code (the web).
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  Well, the fix is to have a simpler API that allows less rope for developers to hang themselves. This is how Chrome manages it. Firefox was built with this vision of XUL-based apps, big modifications, etc which never panned out. A lot of what needs to get done by extensions really can be done via simplified API like Chrome's.
  - sciurus 14y ago
    Firefox has that simplified API in the Add-on SDK (aka Jetpack). However, they're stuck supporting all the traditiional XUL and XPCOM based extensions as well. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/tools/builder https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/tools/builder
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > A lot of what needs to get done by extensions really can be done via simplified API like Chrome's. A lot of useless stuff yes, the useful stuff? Not really. Good luck building something as wide-ranging as Firebug through Chrome's API.
  - azakai 14y ago
    That's not a fix, it's a different tradeoff. The important thing is you have choices and can pick the browser that makes the tradeoff you prefer.

Xyzodiac 14y ago

And it breaks pentadactyl, I feel entirely helpless.

jvm 14y ago
I said this elsewhere, but I switched over to vimperator and order was restored to the universe.
xyzzyb 14y ago
Give Vimperator a shot. I found it to be 100% compatible with my usage of Pentadactyl (bmark bookmarklets, etc.) and it's working just fine with FF15.
- danneu 14y ago
  Didn't know Vimp was the common ancestor. Copied my .pentadactylrc into .vimperatorrc and most of it works.

specto 14y ago

http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/15.0/mac/en-US/Firefox%2015.0.dmg http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele... http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/15.0/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%2015.0.exe http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele... Direct links to the OS X version and win32 version.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

Unfortunately I'm still sticking with Chrome. I love Firefox but Chrome loads "instantly" while Firefox: even 15 still has a noticeable lag when you launch it. Firefox has always felt very unresponsive in terms of the UI and loading times. The only browser I've found less responsive is Safari (IE, is very responsive). Memory consumption was an issue at one stage in Firefox's history but they mostly fixed that (from 1 GB/usage down to like 200 MB~ after a day of browsing).

spitfire 14y ago
firefox used to be the light, zippy alternative to mozilla. Back when it was called Phoenix. When they renamed it, I guess they changed focuses - firefox became the new hulking monster that was mozilla.
rufugee 14y ago
I'd consider switching to Chrome if it weren't for the nightmarish way it expects you to manage tabs. I typically have 30 or so tabs open at any given time, and in Chrome that means a horizontal row of very tiny tabs with only icons (no text...therefore no context) across the top. They used to have sidebar capabilities (on Windows, which didn't help this Linux user) but for some reason I can't fathom they removed them. Contrast this with Firefox, where I can easily get a tab bar down the side via a plugin (I use this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...). Even without a plugin, FF gives me the Expose-like functionality (ctrl+shift+e) which will show me all open tabs and their titles. How Google can think the current tab situation in Chrome is useful is a mystery to me.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deepGem 14y ago
  30 tabs ? really ? man, how do you keep your focus.
  - 14y ago

homosaur 14y ago

If they did finally solve this, I might be nearly back to using FF as a primary. With Chrome I have had more and more problems with certain sites (not all legacy either) the last few months. Also, I've been impressed with the improvements in speed and reliability of Firefox in the last couple of releases. Everyone remembers the days of 15 second FF startup because you had a handful of add-ons turned on. Now, I've gained some discipline and stopped installing 50K plugins, but Firefox has done the heavy lifting here. On FF 15 I only have a small amount of plugins (partially because I abandoned its usage) but on my work Mac, it goes from shutdown to usable in 685ms. If anyone you know is delusional enough to think that competition doesn't improve products, just point to FF. The existence and popularity of Chrome has turned FF from a decrepit bloatware to a sleek modern web racehorse. I'm proud of those guys because in all honesty, I was convinced they would fail. Kudos.

shardling 14y ago
>The existence and popularity of Chrome has turned FF from a decrepit bloatware to a sleek modern web racehorse. Please don't spout this crap. Firefox has definitely improved a lot in some areas recently, and I'm sure competition helped, but this idea that it was getting worse before chrome is an artifact of websites getting more complicated. Try to browse gmail or facebook with firefox 1.0 and it won't feel as slim or fast as you remember...
- NPC82 14y ago
  Well it's a little bit of both so I think he has every reason to also attribute competition. Firefox has definitely borrowed a few ideas and motivation from Chrome, and vice versa.
- homosaur 14y ago
  You might want to try reading posts before commenting. I was clearly pointing towards startup time and general app respnsiveness, not actual speed browsing websites. But thanks for saying please.

polshaw 14y ago

There has been some talk about ubuntu here-- what is the best way to keep up to date with browsers on ubuntu (/linux).. there is no 'check for updates' within firefox, and the repositories are often out of date [1] 1. to be fair, i don't know about FF, i can't really complain that it might be a day out of date.. but chromium is way behind. Also what about living on the beta/aurora channels?

tomku 14y ago
The Chromium package in Ubuntu is several major versions behind, and I would definitely not suggest using it. Debian has up-to-date versions in sid. Firefox on Ubuntu gets timely (within a couple days of upstream) updates, and the official Chrome PPA (from Google, installed when you use their .deb package) is kept up to date. Edited for correctness, thanks xfs.
- xfs 14y ago
  "effectively unmaintained"? It has 21 updates till now in this year, probably just one release behind chromium stable channel. http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/chromium-browser/current/changelog http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/chromium-b... Of course you need sid, because of too many bugs.
  - tomku 14y ago
    I'll edit my post, you're absolutely right.
- jevinskie 14y ago
  Is the "official Chrome PPA" the same thing as the APT repository that the Chrome .deb (downloaded from google.com/chrome) adds to your sources.list?

CodeMage 14y ago

Does anyone know how these "silent updates" handle add-on compatibility? I prefer being "hassled" by update notifications if an update is going to break my favorite add-ons.

lhnn 14y ago

Just for the record: Old people don't like changes, so when Firefox silently changes and updates the wording of a menu, or changes the new tab behavior, etc., my 70 year old dad bitches and calls me to find out what is wrong with his computer. Silent updates: only for bugfixes. Sure would be nice if version numbers meant anything these days.

dangoor 14y ago
Actually, I think the effect is better this way: changes are relatively small and incremental (and every release does not have significant user-visible change). This is easier than a huge change all at once (like Firefox 3.6->Firefox 4)

ralfn 14y ago

The WebGl demo video is impressive though. Not just the execution, but the fact that this isnt made specificlly for webgl. Its c++ code compiled to Javascript. This seems to suggest PS2/Wii era games can easily be ported to fully native fully crosplatform html5 applications. I do wonder about security. The videocard drivers are not hardened against abuse: yet they live completely outside of any sandbox. And WebGL is just passing these OpenGL commandos unfiltered to the drivers. Good news for Intel, with their open driver stack. And bad news for NVidea and ATI with their messy legacy drivers and firmware full of unchecked liscenced closed-source 3rd party code.

bjacob 14y ago
As someone working on Mozilla's WebGL implementation, I assure you that WebGL is not just about passing OpenGL calls "unfiltered" to the driver. In fact, an implementation doing that could not even pass the standard WebGL conformance tests.

sswezey 14y ago

A feature that no one has touched on is the JS debugger included with FF15, you can now set break points and walk through JS calls.

DigitalSea 14y ago

If Firefox really have fixed the issues with memory leaking, I might go back to using it more again. I was one of those developers that switched over to Chrome like the majority, I have a feeling for some it's a little too late for Firefox to be fixing an issue that has plagued the browser since around version 1.5. I still recall years ago Mozilla even denying that there was a memory leak and were always quick to blame plugins for the leaks and while that's true in some instances to an extent, Chrome showed us that bad plugins can be managed correctly and not break your browser performance. Giving it a shot now, Firefox can't afford to blow this again.

nnethercote 14y ago
Please give FF15 a try. We've made lots of improvements. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink and https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/ for details.

desinerd 14y ago

Finally much needed improvements to the plugin memory leak! Its pretty much unusable on linux after a certain point .... Trying it out now, look pretty good and works as advertised

huntall 14y ago

Firefox 15: Less Memory, Painless Updates http://huntall.com/firefox-15-less-memory-painless-updates http://huntall.com/firefox-15-less-memory-painless-updates