Posts Tagged ‘Firefox’

Again: New tab switching interface in Firefox 3.1

I've previously written about new tab interface in Firefox 3.1.

Well, now it's changing again — this time for the better.

Pictures (click for original sizes):

New session restore handling in Firefox

I'm running the latest Firefox trunk version (currently "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081015 Minefield/3.1b2pre ID:20081015032107") and when my browser just crashed (it does repeatedly at the time, the builds are seriously unstable), I saw this window:

Click image for larger version | View on Flickr

It looks as if there's going to be a new session restore handling coming in Firefox 3.1. In the smaller window (with the columns "Restore" and "Windows and tabs") Firefox lists all windows and tabs in every window that were opened when Firefox crashed.

Consider this: You know what page made Firefox crash. And you know reloading that page will make Firefox crash again. So a session restore is no good. Well, no more - because now you can just uncheck that page in the list and it won't be restored. Nice.

By the way, the session restore local URL in Firefox is "about:sessionrestore" in case you wanted to know.

See what others are saying about the "about:sessionrestore" feature
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Google Chrome has been released into the wild

You may have heard (you probably have if you're reading this post) but Google has announced it's web browser named "Chrome". Read more about the announcement at TechCrunch.

Chrome is now available for download, as a matter of fact, I'm typing this in Chrome. It's fast. It's really fast. But I lack some features, most of which I get from extensions for my Firefox browser.

TechCrunch also a first review of the browser.

Now, I've only been using Chrome for a short amount of time, but it still needs to impress me. Just signed into Gmail expecting Chrome to say something like "Wow, I can see you're using Gmail - good choice! Since Gmail and I have the same parents check out these cool Gmail features that were built into me".

But it doesn't.

Chrome seems, after at first test, as a fast browser. But that's not gonna make it my preferred choice for browsing. I might use it for Gmail and Google Calendar, but I already have Mozilla Prism for that.

I think I'm going to have quite the struggle finding a place for Chrome in my browsing habits.

This just out: WordPress MU 2.6, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1

WordPress MU 2.6
The new version of the multi user version of blogging software WordPress it out, and it now matches the feature of the "standard" WordPress 2.6. Download at mu.wordpress.org | Donncha has more info

Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1
The first alpha in the Firefox 3.1 branch has just been released. New features include a new tab switching interface (which I have already disabled) and »several improvements« to the Awesome Bar, the new address bar introduced in Firefox 3.0. Read more at Mozilla Developer News

New tab switching interface in Firefox 3.1

I just updated my Firefox nightly to the latest build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1a1pre) Gecko/2008072103 Minefield/3.1a1pre ID:2008072103) and noticed a visual update to the tab switching interface.

It appears when you have three (or more) tabs opened in your browser. It looks very Mac'ish, if you ask me. You can activate it by pressing CTRL+TAB.

Of course it may be a plugin, but if so, I think I would have noticed earlier. Anyhow, it looks cool. Notice how the favicon is included. Click image for a larger version.

Update 1:
Okay the new tab switching interface might be pretty, but so far also pretty useless.

CTRL+TAB (previously one tab to the right) allows you to flip through the two most recent tabs, and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (previously one tab to the left) flips through the tabs sorting by last visit, starting with the oldest. Quite the useless feature when you're use to the old right/left interface…

Update 2:
I should mention that the above is when you press a shortcut combination and then release the keys. If you press for instance CTRL+TAB and hold the CTRL key down you can jump right by pressing the TAB key again. Going the other way? Hold CTRL and SHIFT keys down and press TAB.

So if you use it like that (which I have to get accustumed to :-)) you can actually use the feature in the same way as you used to.

Update 3:
I just couldn't get along with flipping through the history of the tabs instead the location of them (forward/backwards contra left/right), so I deactivated the new tab switching interface. Here's how to do it:

Type "about:config" in the address bar and change browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed to false. Restart Firefox and you're done.

Update 4:
Just discovered that my solution is also listed in this thread.

Firefox 3.1 alpha code freeze approaching, might be out July 25

Although it seems that Firefox 3 has only just been released there's no rest in the Firefox code. The work on Firefox 3.1 (due to be released at the end of 2008/beginning of 2009) is already underway, as you can see in the about box for the Firefox nightly builds:

(Although the screenshot is some days old the Firefox trunk is still called "3.1a1pre" - meaning a prelease of Firefox 3.1 alpha 1.)

Paula Rooney reports that the code freeze for Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 is next monday which could mean a release of the first alpha on July 25.

As you can read in Paula's post the list of new features in Firefox 3.1 is far from finished.

Firefox 3 Download Day hits the Mozilla servers…hard

At this moment the Mozilla servers (including Mozilla.com, Mozilla.org, GetFirefox.com, SpreadFirefox.com) are taking a serious pounding at Firefox 3 Download Day - news service MozillaZine is still up.

The Download Day is an attempt to get Mozilla and the Firefox browser in the Guiness Book of Records.

If you want to follow the development of the Download Day and the server outages, auto updating Twitter search tool Summize is your best friend.

Hint: Firefox 3 can be downloaded at:
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/

Update:
The Mozilla servers appear to be back up - except addons.mozilla.org, as Spiri points out.

addons.mozilla.org not working with Firefox trunk?

Today I realized that, for some reason, I did not have the Better Gmail 2 extension for Firefox installed.

So I go to addons.mozilla.org to find it (click the link above) but I can't install it, instead there's only a "This add-on is for older versions of Firefox" button.

Nightly Tester Tools of no use
I understand why, since the latest trunk version is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008032805 Minefield/3.0pre ID:2008032805" and a lot of the extensions out there won't work in the trunk.

But that's where the Nightly Tester Tools come in handy, since they can make the extension(s) work with the trunk versions of Firefox.

However, this is of no use to me, since I can't even install the extension in Firefox, because the addons site won't let me.

Does anyone know a solution to this? I would sure hate to give up the thrill of updating my Firefox once every 24 hours ;-)

Solution found: Check the 1st comment to this post!

Firefox 3 Beta 4 released

If you are a Firefox user/fan you probably know this, but Firefox 3 Beta 4 has been released.

As you can read in this Computerworld article it contains 900 fixes, and the code for the Beta 5, which will probably be the last beta before the release candidates, is on March 18th.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 out soon?

My Firefox trunk has just changed version number to "3.0b5pre", which indicates that Beta 4 might be rolled out soon. I've heard March but no particular date..yet.

Not a lot of news in b4 compared to b3, I guess.

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