Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Got the update notification just now (9:23 Central), seems to work as it should!

I had some weird update activity today...

I had left Firefox 1.5beta2 running over 24 hours and when I returned there was a dialog box saying that an update had been downloaded. I selected the "details" link in the dialog box to see what would be shown and the page that was brought up was the 1.5 beta 2 release page. I thought maybe there was some problem with the details button so I went ahead and had it restart Firefox to install the new update (I was thinking that RC1 was ready). After the restart, I checked the About... dialog and it said I was still using 1.5 beta 2. Then I noticed that it was downloading an update again. Hmmmm, maybe something was not working correctly so I let it finish downloading and did another restart. After that installation, it still says I'm using 1.5 beta 2:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051006 Firefox/1.4.1

So something is wrong but I'm not entirely sure how to characterize it.

Checked for updates but nothing came out. May be I should check later.

Checked for updates and it found it. The partial update failed and it had to download the full thing, though. (I was running the regular beta 2 build, not a nightly or anything.)

I got the update notification earlier in the day (I'm in australia), but it said the "partial update failed" then it seemed to download the full 6MB which then installed. I restarted and Help->About still said "1.5 beta 2".

When I saw your post I tried the check for updates and it once again told me that an update was ready. It downloaded the ~600Kb but the partial update failed again. It then downloaded and reinstalled the full 6MB, and prompted me to restart again.

After restarting it still says this is "1.5 Beta 2" in Help->About.

Weird!!

Any info I can get you to understand why this is happening.

I had the same issue earlier today: when I went to Help | Check for updates..., the dialog said that “Firefox 1.5” was available, then proceeded to download the small patch. Upon restarting, I went to Help | About Mozilla Firefox, and it still said “Beta 2.” In the Help menu, the “Check for updates...” menuitem was replaced by a “Downloading update...” menuitem. After clicking on it, Firefox downloaded the entire update, then had me restart Firefox. Still Beta 2, so I went back to Help | Check for updates... just to see what would happen, and the whole cycle happened all over again.

I resorted to manually downloading and installing RC1.

I think all the problems relate to a failed partial patch, which I encountered, too. I'd so love it when it actually works!

Yeah, partial didn't work for me, too, nad after installing the partial update it displayed that red text on the bottom "

Hi! Great news! One question: should we expect to get the update if we're running the test rc1? I'm not getting it and was just wondering if I need to do something (besides wait/hit update) to get it. Thanks.

My 'Help | Check for updates' is grayed out. Guess I'll have to manually update.

I installed FF RC1 and it is still slower than beta2. I did not have any problem during the process of updating though the automated system it went smooth. The only problem is the performence on the speed it renders webpages.

Also the same problem: partial update, restart, full update, restart and now it's 1.5beta2 and donloading again

On one of my machine, after first updating and restarting, the Firefox was still 1.5 Beta 2, with the "Check for Updates..." replaced with "Downloading update...". On the second try, it works and Firefox was updated.

On another machine, it works on the first try.

I guess it was probably a problem of the update server.

I'm also running RC1test1, and not seeing the update. Guess I'll install it manually.

Was running Beta 2 and used the "check for updates" to update to the release candidate 1 without any problems. now that i'm running it though, it's crashing a lot more often than Beta 2 ever did...

German Beta 2 - no notification and no update found by manually checking. But it looks like I can download it by hand, that's great!!!

I booted into my Windows partition to test out 1.5 rc1 and had the same problems as Matt Doran:

running Beta 2...
downloads 6 MB file
restarts...
still says its Beta 2...
downloads 686 KB file
restarts...
[repeat from start]

The way out of this infinite loop is simply to download and run the install file from the link Asa gave.

What about bug 269138 ?

I am running 1.5 beta 2. This morning it downloaded an update. The pop-up window said that 1.5 was ready to install. The link "Details" opened this url:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/1.5beta1.html
with the informative text: "1.5 beta 1 release notes".
I aborted as I do not know what this means. 1.5.1 on top 1.5.2 and no RC1 download?

Using 1.5 b 1. Didn't get update notification; checked for updates manually, and found it. But the partial update failed, and it tried to download the 6 Mb package, which I cancelled. This will be great when the bugs are ironed out!

I misspoke in my previous post: I am using 1.5 b 2.

I use German Beta 2, no update notification, no update found manually :-(

running:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051101 Firefox/1.5 ID:2005110103

Tried all four update channels just now (default, nightly, beta, release), nothing to update.

Muxt say I never knew about the help>check for updates :D it's awesome

Yes, it worked perfectly for me.

Checked and found the update, downloaded, restarted Firefox, instead of having to dl the installer, uninstall old version etc, it just upgraded it all nicely.

Perfect, thanks Asa and the rest of the team!

Chalk me up as another Windows Beta 2 user who had the infinite update loop problem. I went to "Check for updates", and it downloaded about 600k and restarted. Then it downloaded 6 meg, and restarted, but it was still running Beta 2. Clicking "Check for updates" again just produces the same behaviour. My install is entirely standard (I believe) - the stock beta 2 (which was autoupdated from Beta 1), with a handful of common extensions.

Interestingly, my OS X machine automated updated successfully, but stalled when checking for extension updates (clicking Cancel and manually checking worked fine). The only difference in Firefox terms was that it was a virgin Beta 2 install, rather than an autoupdate from Beta 1.

I'm sure these little foibles will be ironed out (or are some mistake on my part).

Thanking the FF team for all it's excellent work,

adamw

Asa, for RC2 please approve this patch that fixes a serious CSS regression in 1.8 that is going to piss off a lot of webdesigners since it breaks a popular CSS-positionning technique that used to work on all browsers (even IE mac !):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312777
Negative margins cause floated elements to be placed to the right of incorrect earlier boxes

Roc said :
"This fixes a significant layout regression that at least some authors are
complaining about. The fix is conservative; it only changes behaviour in
situations that were guaranteed to go wrong before. It would be great to get
this into 1.8."

And when asked about how risky this patch is for 1.5, dbaron said :

"This is very low risk, since it only affects floats with negative-size margin
boxes, which are very rare."

just to let you know,

the automtic updater works flawlessly on linux from a 1.5 beta 2 insalled as user.

Thankx loads.

Congratulations for the excellent simultaneous release of all (localized) 1.5 RC1 builds. :)

I had the same problem as previously stated: ailed partial patch and the About box saying I had 1.5 beta2, plus the "menu_HelpPopup_reportertoolmenu" bug.

All of this solved by manually downloading and installing with the provided link.

Now it's working ok. All extensions working (many of them manually patched for this release).

It seems Automatic Update needs more "tweaking" than expected...

Keep with the great work!

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051006 Firefox/1.4.1

Help > Check for updates
*UPDATE FOUND*
*PARTIAL UPDATE DOWNLOADED, must restart to install

***RESTART***

*Partial update failed, downloading full update
tika tika tika tika tika

I'm expecting it to be 1.5b2 and not rc1 like many here say. It's going to be another 10 minutes 44 seconds before it downloads said file :(

Tom: sounds like you're caught in the infinite loop on a dial-up account (either that or we're beginning to see a /. effect)... Either way, get out as fast as you can and d/l the regular installer from Asa's link... ^_^;

Firefox 1.5RC1 preferences subdialog cutoff on Mac OS X.

Go to Preferences>Content
Click on the Colors buttons under Fonts&Colors
The colors dialog that comes up is cutoff on the right side. The sentence that begins with Allow Pages to choose is cut off half way through the word about with the o only partially drawn.

Since this looks sloppy, you may want to have someone look at this to fix before final release.

Best of luck getting this out the door soon!

I experienced some problems while updating, descriptions and screen shot here:

http://un.regne.net/dotclear/index.php/2005/11/02/68-problems-upgrading-beta-versions-of-firefox

Congratulations to the Firefox team. I can't wait to actually get RC1 installed (I would have done it last night, but it was past my bed time!). As an aside, Googlebar Lite 3.1 should be out tonight, providing support for RC1. My final translation came in this morning, and I'll put it together after work.

everyone vote for 312777.

As many others, I can see 1.5RC1 being significantly slower than 1.5b2. Something happened along the way, don't know what. 1.5b2 was really zippy when compared to 1.0.7, now it's pretty much the same.

I also had similar update problems. From 1.5b2 I did a partial update, restart, and it was still 1.5b2 but with an ugly thick gray bar at the bottom of the screen with red error text. The throbber next to "Help->Check for Updates" was constantly spinning. I clicked that menu option, it did a full update, restarted and still had the same problem. I had to end up uninstalling and doing a fresh install.

Add me to the list of windows beta 2 users that keep on getting the loop. I had to download the exe myself and install it.

I still love you guys though.

I've released an updated version of Portable Firefox for those that like to carry it with them or who want to try it out without affecting their local profile (or messing with Profile Manager):
http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/deer_park/

I did a check for updates from b1 today and found that "Firefox 1.4.1" was available, then did another check and got "Firefox 1.5" rc1. I assume I missed an update some time ago, but that could probably be simplified to where it downloads both updates and applies them with one restart.

Good news is the partial update worked and I got the right version in the end.

Was running DeerPark Nightly zip 10-31-05.
(http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/)
Late PM on 11-01-05 received a update notice, allowed update, re-started.
Have Nightly Tester Tools edited to screen display version / gecko version / and Build date. Build date changed to reflect November 1 version build.
Program stable, no issues. Would appear update worked correctly.

Yet another victim of bug 302087. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1849143#1849143

Deleted his files. Too bad, this severe data loss bug would be incredibly easy to fix with just a few minutes of work.

asa it still says beta 2 at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

come on give me a download link

Auto update didn't work for me. It found the new update downloaded it restarted said it was doing the update then restarted in beta2. I tried again and this time it tried to download all 6mb.

Still seeing problems with Save As... and Save Image As... on Linux. The first time one of them is used, the page gets reloaded and the context menu pops up again after the file picker appears, causing focus problems (bug 305970).

Hi,
When I run the check for updates function, firefox reports no updates found.
The auto update is from Beta 2 to RC1 (Beta 1 > Beta 2 worked previously).

I am running XP SP2 with all patches

I wrote earlier to report that I didn't get automatic update notification; I initiated a manual update request, but the partial update failed, and it tried to download the 6 Mb package, which I cancelled.

Now, 4 hours later, and without notifying me first, Firefox attempted to download the partial update, the update failed, and it started trying to download the full package. I aborted the download and turned off automatic updates for now.

I am running WinXP on a dialup connection.

This is a great idea, but not quite ready for prime time.

My experience:

- Started Firefox beta 2. No automatic notification, so I used Help -> check for updates.
- Screen "An update is available". I explored the various buttons and options (noting details such as the Later button not having an accelerator key, and the default button keeping its focused appearance even when tabbing to other buttons). I followed the link to read more information. Upon returning to the original window, it surprised me by saying the update had already been downloaded (without my accepting that, and without any download activity notification, which is bad as people might decide not to download the update, have to pay for each MB transferred etc.) and prompted me to restart.
- Restarted. Firefox told me the partial update was unsuccessful and had to do a complete download.
- Complete download 6,0 MB!! (I thought you were to keep it under 5MB?) Again a restart.
- Restarting still gives me a Firefox beta 2 window (in the title bar and in About Firefox). While starting the application, a second window is automatically opened saying it is going to download the 6,0 MB package, which I already did. It gets stuck at the "Connecting to update server..." message now though. The pause button is greyed out for no apparent reason.

Conclusion: this thing is still badly broken, both in its fundamentals and in little details. Please give it an extra month before unleashing it.

My 1.5 beta 2 unattended downloaded 1.5 RC 1 probably the 6mb file. Well, it went along installing and the RC 1 seems to work fine - basically.

After I messed up my settings in firefox (not profile specific) so the mousewheal and tabs didn't work I decided I needed an update anyways and Im using 1.5rc right now, and have no complaints so far. I'll report back

bwt, Nightly tester tools is the best extension ever! I always end up with incompatible extensions, and it makes them work, no pun intended.
http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/nightly.html

To everyone in the "endless update loop":
That's bug 314684, which has been fixed already, so the update to RC2 should work. To workaround, delete this directory: defaults/profile/{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314684

Still no good! I initiated the update manually and asked for more info, it took me to a page describing 1.5 b 1. I went ahead and downloaded the 600+ Kb and restarted Firefox. No good - and it kept trying to download the 6 Mb package without asking me if I wanted to. I had to reboot to get out of it.

Didn't try deleting the directory though. Seems like they ought to be able to make it work without drastic action.

The only problem I have is now when new windows (wanted - opening upon a click) are opened by javascript, it actually opens a new window rather than a new tab like it is supposed to after having it set up that way under the tab preferences in Firefox. I am using the Mac OS X version of RC1. Any way to solve this? This is irritating.

Ive had the same problem here - auto update didn't work (tried 5 times, got a weird dialog at the bottom of the screen, 600kb download...then 6MB download). I downloaded the Full RC1 from the FTP server and it worked fine.

Also, AMEX's website STILL isn't fixed (its been reported SOO MANY TIMES on the forum)...lets fix it for RC2!

Asa, for RC2, will http://www.deltaxml.com/svg/svg-show-changes.html work? All I see right now are boxes with "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." SVG should be handled like an image as default (vs as text), right?

The automatic update notify for RC1 came in today around CET 17:00 (EST 11:00 AM) on beta 2.
It is installed. All is fine on MacOS 10.3.9

One observation: this RC1 is seen as a 'security update' in the update history. No mentioning of the level (rc1).
A tiny flaw, the link in the update notification refered to beta1; I was expecting 'release notes' or something.

Cheers, Mel

I'm lovin' it!!

Be well.........

Mike
USA

The Official Win32 20051103 [Branch] seems to have fixed the endless update loop bug.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=336593&sid=2d494cc524771f3c1221f06eb0382a17

Hi Asa,

It worked sweet on Mac OSX running Beta 2. Windows 2000 machine though had the same problem others have described. It downloaded the update, said it installed it but I was still at Beta 2. Went to update again and it tried again, and still left me at Beta 2.

@Limulus, those SVGs are treated as XML because they don't have DOCTYPE! Simply add the DOCTYPE declaration like the following to the SVG file:

<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">

minghong: I note that the page renders in "Standards compliance mode"... if the same improperly coded SVGs were rendered in "Quirks mode", would it work without change?

Limulus and minghong, what that SVG document really needs is an xmlns saying that the nodes are SVG. Even if adding a doctype works, it's a compatibility hack.

The standards/quirks modes for HTML don't affect SVG because the SVG is in its own iframe.

Greetings:

I can report that I have had none of the above upgrade problems (had two upgrades today).

My present build is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051102 Firefox/1.5 - Build ID: 2005110203

(This morning it was 2005110103.)

Help/About Mozilla Firefox says "Firefox version 1.5"

So, may I presume that I have RC1 ?

I also used Update Channel Selector to cycle through the available channels of release, beta, nightly and default. Only nightly worked.

HTH,

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

I AM REALLY DISAPOINTED! and very annoyed.

None of the bugs are fixed, my history still gets f**king erased, even worse it doesn't just happen at first cold boot of windows it happends randomly on firefox, so bookmark backup no good! and chris you need to stop being such a mr know it all, freaking idiot talking about no regression from 1.0 gon' come back in 1.5.

yfan, the default behavior for that GUI changed recently; see bug 314721 and bug 313300. You can get the old behavior back via about:config.

I was on 2005110103. I never got an update notification. Downloaded, installed from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/. Restarted and ended up at 2005102519. updated over and over until I got to 2005110103. Right where I started. In "About Mozilla Firefox" it says "Version 1.5"....... rc1, I presume? I must admit, Firefox rc1 is much, MUCH slower than 1.5 Beta 2. Quite disappointing.

I couldn't find a dupe, so I filed bug 314884 on the cut-off/truncated Colors sheet that Pat Lee mentioned.

Viewing this image: http://indyskate.com/kickpopmike2.gif seems to cause RC1 to endlessly allocate RAM until it slows the system to a crawl (I killed it once it got to about 500 MB). I was able to duplicate this issue by opening the browser and trying to view the image again at that URL.

I don't recall this happening in beta 2.

Completely off topic, but I thought you might be tickled by this, Asa:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4402538.stm

Does that make a free Firefox a tree browser ? :-)

On a mac, using FX 1.5 Beta 2 running on OS X 10.4.

An update window pops up and proposes me with an update. I agree. I wait for a while, then I'm asked to restart Firefox, which I agree to. When done, I'm still in Beta 2.

24 hours later, the update pop-up is back. In between, an OS X update (10.4.3) is ready. I agree to install it. I also agree to install the new version of Firefox. Firefox wants to quit in order to finish its new version installation. I agree. My system gets to 100% CPU. After a while, I decide to agree with the system update that wants me to reboot.

After rebooting, Firefox is broken: no navigation button nor location bar, just an empty window is showing. I rename my profile so it starts with a blank profile. Same issue. I reinstall Firefox 1.5 RC2 from a fresh DMG file. My profile seems ok.

OS Win XP. The autoupdate of Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 de on Firefox 1.5 RC1 de (ID:2005100614 - > ID:2005102519) successfully ran. Thanks.

Crashed on the browser buster test: http://webtools.mozilla.org/buster/test_url_25.html

No extensions, default theme. Java disabled, no Flash installed, no other plugins used. Submitted Talkback.

Pat Lee: I reported and fixed the Mac bug you found here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314993

I have to concur with pj in comment 14 (-ish):

RC1 is definitely unstable. I've had it crash on me twice in the past couple of hours. TB11425070X and TB11426612Q.

The problem is that the crashes aren't reproducible. They appear to occur when Firefox is being stressed (my system is slow, 700MHz, so opening multiple Windows is not an INSTANT process). Running SuSE Linux 9.2 (KDE).

I should add that 1.0.x suffered from the same stability issues for me, on both my Linux boxes (both SuSE 9.2 with KDE), whereas I did not experience a single crash with beta2.

This would seem to indicate a regression of some sort, but reproducing is difficult. I did actually manage a test case that worked on my 700MHz system using the phpMyAdmin interface. Adding a good handful of rows to a table and then quickly moving through the fields reproducibly crashed firefox, but only if there was a "history" that firefox could drop down for the text input fields. The crash seems related to overall "stress", though, so it probably wouldn't be reproducible as easily on a faster system.

some really really wierd rendering bugs with my current profile doesn't happen on a fresh one. I was going to pull my ****ing hair out until I found out it my profile.

Hello,

using:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051008 Firefox/1.4.1
I can not update with "check for updates...". There's just the messeage "no new updates available".
My app.update.channel is set to "beta".
What's wrong?
On an other system it works with the german version under windows fine.
Bye

I think the history bug has bit me. It seemed to happen randomly, when I was browsing, at some point I was no longer able to use the back button, and the URL displayed at the top didn't match what the tabs were actually showing.

not stable for me, even with new profile and no extensions or themes etc. gone back to 1.5b2, which is stable. can't report any useful info sorry, crashes seem random and happen when i'm not doing anything. just wanted to say that something is badly wrong. crashes every hour or more. sometimes in java dll, sometimes no location reported. WindowsXP, Athlon.

the find bar is literally retarted, it can't find anything in text elements I tried it it display not found, pressing backspace makes the entire page go back, pressing "tab" makes the findbar popup, this is dumb, 1.5 RC-2 where are you?

1. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt it will work but if you close and try again it wont
2. mail.yahoo.com just try to login and press tab..
3. text box should be should be searched already.

Firefox 1.5 might well have a silly layout problem with 'Business process management' software called 'Liquid Office'. Especially silly as it's perhaps their code. I can't give an address for a Liquid Office site as the systems would be password protected but here's the address of the people who make the software:

http://www.verity.com/products/bpm/liquidoffice/index.html