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Firefox

Is Mozilla’s Firefox 5 a More Stable Browser Than Its Predecessor?

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

This week’s release of the Firefox 5 browser came shockingly fast for Mozilla. Firefox 4 came out of beta barely 3 months ago–the previous numbered release, Firefox 3, was released way back in 2008.

A quick look at the features and improvements in Firefox 5 however reveals what the Mozilla foundation did to accomplish the fast release: There are some significant upgrades under the hood, but this is really more of a 4.1 release than a full new version of the browser.

However, the big news is that the release of Firefox 5 may finally solve the stability issues users have complained about since the beta builds of Firefox 4. When the Mozilla foundation released the last major overhaul of Firefox back in March, it was a huge step forward for the browser. The update brought with it a host of new features like improved tab navigation and the ability to sync bookmarks across multiple computers.

Perhaps most importantly, Firefox 4 improved the speed of the browser which had been lagging in recent years.

However, Firefox 4 also brought a lot of complaints about random crashes. A user named bigdaddyken on Mozilla’s support forums posted that “firefox 4 crashes constantly, on opening, different pages, etc. Old firefox worked fine.” More than one thousand users reported the same issue, and this report was only one of many crash complaints on the forums.

PCWorld users have also had problems with the browser. In a comment on our early hands-on with Firefox 4 report, user xvMATTLEEvx said “Sure it has added features but that is just to keep up with everyone else it’s nothing innovative like Mozilla used to be. On top of that Firefox 4.0 is suffering the same crashes and memory spikes Firefox 2.0 suffered. I am talking without add-ons not with add-ons.”

Firefox 5 Feature List

The list of Firefox 5′s new features isn’t exactly designed to thrill. It’s headed by “added support for CSS animations” and features other improvements like “improved discoverability of the Do-Not-Track privacy feature preference” and “improved spell checking for some locales.”

Clearly the features listed here aren’t the real news in Firefox 5. Users will probably be a lot more excited by the list of hundreds of bug fixes that come along with Firefox 5. While there is some reason to worry that this rapid update strategy brings as many problems with it as it solves, with any luck, these bug fixes will make Firefox 5 as crash-proof as it is fast.

Today, we asked our Facebook page users if they had any similar problems with Firefox 4 and quickly got more than 40 responses like Irving Cool who says “FF4 crashes a lot :S” or Wali Khan who stated his “New Firefox crashes every 5 minutes.”

Let’s hope Firefox 5 really solves the problems.

Get Firefox

If you need a fresh new copy of Firefox, you can get it here:

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Spread Firefox Co-Founder Slams Tech Giants for Stealth Plug-Ins

Spread Firefox's Asa Dotzler

Spread Firefox's Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler, co-founder of the Spread Firefox project, is more than a little miffed at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and RockMelt for installing plug-ins into Firefox without first asking for permission from Web surfers.

Dotzler made the stealth plug-in discovery when he installed software like Apple iTunes, Google Chrome, and Windows Live Photo Gallery.

“When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?” he asked in a blog post.

“Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office? What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?” he asked.

Firefox stealth plug-in and extension security issues

Microsoft, Google and Apple install plug-ins without user's permission

Dotzler compared the companies to those that manufacture malware, as a secondary software installation occurred without user permission.

“These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.”

The Firefox advocate had some strong advice for the offending companies. “Microsoft, stop being evil. Apple, stop being evil. Google, stop being evil. And you upstarts like RockMelt, don’t follow in those evil footsteps.”

RockMelt, Microsoft, and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Google representative said the Firefox browser plug-in is simply Google Update, which automatically pushes software updates to Google products. The representative stated that Google utilizes this method as a non-intrusive way to deliver updates, and that it doesn’t constantly run, eating up CPU resources.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson replied to our inquiry with the following statement: “We use web/open standards where possible. To reach as many customers as possible with our web experiences, we use HTML/JS/CSS and try to avoid plug-ins. Office Web Apps are a great example of this. Sometimes we need plug-ins to enable key features. For example, Silverlight improves animations in PPT web app, Office 2010 plug-in lets people switch from web editing to Office 2010 on the desktop to do video editing etc.”

Dotzler’s blog post was first reported by The Register.

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Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla have released new versions of their browsers, plugging plenty of security holes along the way.

Hundreds of bugs have been fixed in the Google Chrome update, after the company said it would be releasing a “new stable version” of the browser every six weeks.

So far Google has followed through with its promise and introduced the patches along with a new HTML5 parser and file API, among other features.

“Also, if you choose to block sites from setting any data in your browser’s content settings for cookies, you can now use a new dialog for managing blocked cookies in bulk,” noted Jeff Chang, product manager for Google Chrome, in a blog.

Google recently launched a security advice page offering some tips on how users can protect themselves from hackers.

Mozilla, meanwhile, has made Firefox versions 3.6.11 and 3.5.14 available for download, patching nine vulnerabilities along the way.

Five of the flaws were ranked as critical, meaning they could be exploited “to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing,” Mozilla explained.

“As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11,” advised Firefox release manager Christian Legnitto.

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from » http://www.itpro.co.uk

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