Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Yup, worked excellently!! Many thanks!!

Dex

link me

I got the update before my bloglines even noticed that you had posted this. Automatic updates are awesome.

I cant type apostrophes in a webform anymore!! I thought that bug was fixed in RC2? Is this a regression?

Dave: if you have RC2, then you should be able to use the updater rather than downloading manually, which is what Asa is suggesting. It's not hard to figure out the link anyway.

Would I be right in assuming that RC3 is the respin builds from 11/11?

Dave, you have to use the automatic update mechanism from a previous 1.5 beta or RC. Go to Help -> Check For Updates.

Updated like a dream. Thank you very much.

Update worked for me fine too. Let's hope that there won't be a need for another RC release.

Now the problem is gone and I can't repro. For a minute there, typing an apostrophe will filling out a textarea kept bringing up the Find bar.

Nope - not happening. Don't say only Americans can be cool; I wanna be cool, too, dammit!

Or: will updates for en-GB builds be turned on soon? Actually, will there be nightly updates for en-GB builds any time soon?

Greg, I think there will be no RC3 other than in en-US build. See http://groups.google.com/group/netscape.public.mozilla.l10n/browse_thread/thread/b24ea9a6af5d25f4/e46d61e3501336cf?hl=tr#e46d61e3501336cf

Updated once again pretty good.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
I like all those 1's hopefully this will become 1.5

Update ID 2005102519 (RC1)-> ID 2005111116 (RC3)! It works!

o yea:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 ID:2005111116

It works for me and. All of my extensions work as well.

Asa,

I think I found a way to duplicate the condition I described earlier (in rc3):

1. Set www.google.com as your home page.
2. Restart Firefox (it should have no tabs open yet).
2a. If you hit refresh now, google's home page will refresh as expected without problems, but don't do this step.
3. Open a new blank tab with Control-T.
4. Switch back to the "main" tab where www.google.com opened initially as a home page.
5. Now hit refresh, and the "Page Loading" icon is spinning indefinitely. Hitting escape key to abort loading does not stop the "Page Loading" icon from spinning.

This may not be a big deal, but I think it's a symptom of a more serious problem and it is the type of behavior that has a psychologically "flakey" feel to it, and not something that would be OK to have in a mainstream browser, IMO. I am assuming that everyone can reproduce this condition via the above steps, and if what I am saying is not true (as in, perhaps it's just my profile or just my computer?), then please ignore this.

Not being cool
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051107 Firefox/1.5 ID:2005110712

Nice. I was browsing away and then the update window appeared. The new update process is very, very nice. And fast too.

It's a pity you have left RC information. Now I don't know if I have RC2, RC3 or final. Updater service says "Firefox 1.5 available". Is it 1.5 final available or what? And the only place I can get it is from asa's blog! Think about other users who don't know about mozilla developers' blogs. And if you would have RC4 in a week, I would be prompted to update to "Firefox 1.5" again. It's confusing! Even About dialog doesn't help.

I can understand your motivation behind this decison, but for me it's more trouble than it's worth.

"For those wondering why this is called Firefox 1.5 and not Firefox 1.5 RC2, it's because this is a genuine release candidate. The build you have, if not problems are found, will be Firefox 1.5. If we called it RC2 in the actual client, it wouldn't be a real release candidate because we'd have to make changes to the name and then create new builds."

Same situation with this release no doubt. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out to most anyway; if it says there's an update they'll likely just accept it & won't question it any further.

@Leo: Repeated steps indicated several times. Never experienced the problem that you describe.

Toby, bug 258285, involving Find As You Type, is reported "fixed", but I have to wonder if it's a regression.

If you invoke the Find Toolbar with an apostrophe or slash, that would be bug 311376. They're still trying to figure out what OS and what versions are affected (all of them, I think), but right now it's marked for 1.5 Branch and all OS's. I can confirm it for Win XP with 1.5 RC1. It seems like 311376 has to be a duplicate of an earlier report, because the problem has been well known for a long time.

My hunch is that they are both the same bug, and this is a regression.

Dangit!
I was going to time how long it took to download but the download finished before I could open the timer.

Autoupdated succesfully, which is great. I really like the new update system - colour me impressed!

The only minor foible I've seen is the update history - I've autoupdated to from RC1 to RC2 and now to RC3, yet the update history still only lists one item - "Security Update 2005111116". Even if RC3 was counted a security update, there's no mention of my RC2 update.

Thanks again, Asa and Firefox crew!

adamw

@SamD: Doh. I uninstalled all my extensions (some of which were not up to date for 1.5, such as spell check), and now my own test case above is working fine for me.

Thomas, I have read Asa before on this. But while some release candidate *may* become final, having THREE different versions all named "Firefox 1.5" is just plain wrong, IMHO.

After all, updating strings only with current update service is just few KB anyway.

@SamD: I just re-installed greasemonkey 0.6.2 xpi and now I am getting the same issue. I am starting to think that it's a greasemonkey issue. I tried it without any user scripts and even disabled it for google, and I still get the same infinite "page loading" spinning icon symptom. No big deal. :)

@Leo: Yeah, no big deal. But intriguing. I downloaded greasemonkey 0.6.3 (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1818484#1818484) and still did not get the effects that you described. Try 0.6.3 and see what you get.

ok, the update process worked from RC2 to 3, first time seen this work, well done. obviously don't know if its stable yet.

still want to know what happens to limited user windows account when updates are detected. this is for benefit of people i've switched to firefox, and also made limited user accounts. please advise on (intended and actual) behaviour in that (should be normal) situation.

yay! but when do you think you will release the final FireFox 1.5 Version

Yay!!! almost there.

@SamD: downloaded greasemonkey 0.6.3 and the issue is gone. :) Thank you.

Though the update from beta 2 to RC1 was painful, auto-update from RC1 to RC2 and from RC2 to RC3 worked smoothly. It would be benefcial to include a note on key changes and the version number (not just 1.5!) in the update dialog box. I feel more and more enjoyable using FireFox. It is great!

How do you manually update?

I can't figure out where to get RC3

"I got the update before my bloglines even noticed that you had posted this. Automatic updates are awesome."

Same here.

Also: THE PARTIAL, AUTOMATIC UPDATE WORKED 100% ON PORTABLE FIREFOX, THE FIRST TIME EVER! ...at least in my experience. **Awesome!** :-D Finally, I didn't have to download the entire install file, just the update! w00t for you developers! Thanks!

never mind

I hope that stupid find bar bugs are gone, you know open up page source type in whatever and it srtays red, and cant find and thing hmm.s

Greetings:

Here, I am at...

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051117 Firefox/1.5 - Build ID: 2005111704

I *think* that's RC3 ... Got to love those updates :)

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

Well my RC2 updated automatically to RC3 (congrats)...but it only worked using RC2...so how are we going to get everyone to update with 1.0.7? That does not work. Once they are on 1.5 then 2.0 etc will be fine. But you need to really make the 1.5 upgrade easy. The problem is that for us technogeeks this is easy. But my mom could never handle this

steve

@smiff on limited user accounts & auto updates:

Users with limited accounts will not be able to install updates to Firefox unless you give them write access to the directory where Firefox is installed.

Firefox 1.5 RC3 (as well as RC2 and RC1) install okay on my XP machine, but fail to successfully startup. ZoneAlarm notices the update, but thereafter Firefox quits before any window is opened. No entry ever gets made in the Applications window of Task Manager. In each case I was able to uninstall v1.5, and go back to v1.07. But why won't v1.5 work?

It's working as expected in its portable variation.
http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/deer_park/

I am getting the following in the bottom 20% of my screen. It happened with RC2 as well and uninstalled, reinstalled, and never did get it to go away, so reverted back to 1.0.7

I'm running Windows XP//Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Weird, I just typed all that our and it didn't show up. Here it is again. It leads in with "open tag" and ends in "close tag" but when I add that (here and there), it disappears from the preview.

menuitem label="&gp.options.popup;" oncommand="GP_Options();"

Still no German (or any other international) build online... Too bad only Americans are allowed to be cool :(

Serious question: where is the problem to build everything at one?

Hi,
I've updated to RC3 (got the automated notification). Downloaded only 128 kb...

restarted, everything working smooth.
In the about screen, I get this: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5.

Shouldn't it show Gecko/20051117? as someone posted above?

thanks

@ Thiago:

Nope, automatic update to Gecko/20051111 is perfect, that's the rc3. Gecko/20051117 is yesterday's nightly, those guys might be on the nightly update channel instead of the beta one. Or they have installed it manually after downloading it from the nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/ folder instead of the releases/1.5rc3/ one.

Dex

Greetings:

Dex said:

"Nope, automatic update to Gecko/20051111 is perfect, that's the rc3. Gecko/20051117 is yesterday's nightly, those guys might be on the nightly update channel instead of the beta one. Or they have installed it manually after downloading it from the nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/ folder instead of the releases/1.5rc3/ one."

I think I am the "guy" that Thiago was referring to, re: Gecko/20051117 :)

I was in fact using Update Channel Selector and updating from the "nightly" update channel and NOT the "beta" one.

I repeated the update process again this morning (using "Nightly") and presently have the following:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051118 Firefox/1.5 - Build ID: 2005111803

I then tried the process using the "beta" channel, and was told there was no update.

So, out of confusion I would please ask:

- Am I using the latest update (RC3) ?

- Should I have Update Channel Selector set to use the "Nightly" channel or the "Beta" channel?

Comments: I think that when the final of FF 1.5 is released, there ought to be some notice somewhere that users of Update Channel Selector need to select the proper channel (I would think that the proper channel would be "release").

Additionally, after FF1.5 is released and the developers want to release "maintenance fixes", it should be made clear what channel a user should use in order to get those fixes.

Please note that as a "Regular User", I accept that I may be missing something here ... perhaps FF15 will be "smart" enough to ignore Update Channel Selector and simply know where to look for the latest release and/or fixes without the user telling it what to do? This would be, IMHO, the best system by far especially for the "Grandmothers" among us (that posters here have many times referred to).

Thank you Dex, for your comments. You got me thinking.

Sincerely,

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

Well yeah, that's cause all the cool kids are using auto incremental update :).

So how does this work for users running as non-admin (after installing as admin)?

Running RC2 I see that 'Check for Updates' is greyed out. Will the auto-update check give me a warning that I should shut down then run as admin in order to get the update?

I upgraded with no problems and everything seems to be working fine. I upgraded from 1.0.7 and not a previous RC.

Only extension of those I use that isn't working is SpoofStick. Not a big deal.

there is this annoying bug when middle clicking on a folder in bookmarks it doesn't open all bookmarks just 10 out of 20 it's annyoing time for rc-4

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=90744

Well, the Automatic Update is working perfect now.

So every news site that published my comment some days ago can change that... It's really annoying that they publish only my "negative" sentence...

Guys, keep the good work as always!

You have a "first line" fan here!

Here I'm still having problems with the arrow keys intermittently not working, and the ' and / keys pop up the find bar across the bottom of the browser. Also, the copy and paste functions sometimes don't work right. I've been through the fixes listed on Mozillazine from others with this problem, but it still keeps happening. I know I don't have NEW.net or other spyware, WinXP SP2 is clean! Restarting the browser fixes all the problems (for a while).

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Before you go complaining or
instigate some faulty feature
why not start a new profile
and test this feature out
because if it is just an
extension problem and the
new profile works don't go
submiting problems slowing
down firefox 1.5 releases..
unless it is an actualy bug
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Please don't release Firefox with this nerve-killer:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314893