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January 18, 2006

Racing Towards 2

It's going to be an exciting year. Not since the run up to Firefox 1.0 have I been so excited about the content of a release. Firefox 2 is going to be great.

I've updated the Firefox 2 Roadmap Page on mozilla.org with some more detail about how we're going to get there, based on Chris Beard's blog about Mozilla Product Strategy. I'll summarize briefly here, and call out some of the important work that's getting done right now.

Firstly, Firefox 2 is based off the same Gecko branch that shipped Firefox 1.5, so they should be compatible from a web developer's point of view. APIs might be added, but none should be changed.

From a development point of view, the idea of Firefox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become Firefox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed Firefox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).

So, without further ado, some of the most important features from the planning brainstorming page:

New Bookmarks and History

Improve the browser's Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.

Tabbed Browsing Enhancements

Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.

Improved Basic Content Type Handling

For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.

Web Search

Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within Firefox.

Bug Fixing

Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.

Some additional things we would like to look at in the Firefox 2 timeframe include:

Visual Uplift

A freshen of the visual design of Firefox while maintaining high levels of system integration.

Inline Spell Check

The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML's textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.

Exit Survey

We'd like to know why people leave Firefox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.

UI Consolidation and Simplification

Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.

There are many other ideas floating around, this is just a brief snapshot of some of the high priority items on our plates. If we get this done, we'll be satisfied!

Posted by ben at January 18, 2006 9:45 PM

Comments

The list of features sound good, I look forward to seeing the alpha versions soon. From the list, I like the improved RSS functionality and bookmarks/history. Will these be revolutionary changes or just small improvements? If the above gets completed and Firefox is still quick and lean, you will have done well.

Posted by: Leslie Franke at January 18, 2006 10:23 PM

How about fixing the memory leak? Also a variety of bugs cropped up with 1.5 for OSX (such as the search bar not working).

Posted by: Jon at January 18, 2006 10:50 PM

Fixing the memory leak would be really nice! Also, playing nicer with Mac OSX. Overall, I was dissappointed by 1.5 because it seemed like a big step backwards.

Posted by: Bart at January 18, 2006 10:51 PM

Great!! So long as a portable version is available. Will this be the case?

Posted by: Jordan W at January 18, 2006 11:05 PM

For me:

+ Provide me an option to subscribe using RSS reader software other than the defaul firefox reader.
+ real time search as of Inquisitor (http://www.inquisitorx.com/)
+ Ability to sync bookmarks without having to install extension.

Posted by: leduytien at January 18, 2006 11:44 PM

http://teethgrinder.co.uk/perm.php?id=9

here are some comments on the textarea that you may be interested in. There is a great link to Clay Shirky asking why the textarea is used by millions of people daily, but can't even save the text you type into it.

Question: If I have some comments on how CANVAS works in firefox, who would I talk to?

monk.e.boy

Posted by: monk.e.boy at January 19, 2006 12:23 AM

Putting Find-Bar under the Favorites Bar would serve usability more than the present location at the bottom of the screen.
At least a option would be useful.

>> Suggestions from former-MS-UI-Designer (read in PlanetMozilla sometime ago)

Posted by: Mark at January 19, 2006 1:56 AM

Hi Ben!
Well, the memory leak caused by flash plug-in must be the main bug to fix in the next version.

And could there be some kind of RSS/Atom reader within Firefox, like the "Web Clips" of Google Desktop.

Posted by: Moyzes at January 19, 2006 2:59 AM

Allow me to read RSS, Atom etc. feeds in full - as is currently done by the Feedreader extension. Since usability is the stated goal for Firefox 2.0, I doubt that ordinary users like being presented with a page of XML gibberish when sites use text-links for feeds instead of the header information that Firefox uses to offer live bookmarks

Posted by: David Russell at January 19, 2006 3:09 AM

Important before next release:
- Firefox takes up too much memory for pictures
- Improved handling of multimedia and streaming media
- Download manager improvements
- Send a page functionality, at least for Windows users for their common mail clients
- IE Tab-like integration for people that need to access Internet Explorer pages (I need it for example for the Intranet)

Integrate useful extensions like:
- Preloading (like FF Preloader)
- Stop or reload extension
- Tab preview

We need basically two things:

- Get rid of all annoying issues
- Improve memory handling
- Be innovative and beat IE on superbly useful features

Any more ideas?

Otherwise, FF RULEZ!!

;)
Cheski

Posted by: Cheski Frank at January 19, 2006 3:23 AM

scrollbaranywhere, the extension by Marc Boullet who does the allinone gestures also.
this is the most useful thing since sliced bread
should be easy to incorporate into the ui, replacing
that dreadful autoscrolling hack.

Posted by: chris at January 19, 2006 3:32 AM

While you're working on the uninstaller, how about adding an option to delete or not the profiles directory? Would save so many support requests.

Posted by: elfguy at January 19, 2006 5:27 AM

merely adding a spell checker to textarea to me is extremely under-ambitious. Spellbound already exists and for that matter so does Performancing. Your approach of sitting back and letting extension writers do the innovation only works if you are willing to implement what they innovate!

Isn't it time browsers grew task-oriented application-style features?

Someone wants to edit text in a web page, give them a genuine text editor!

Someone wants to read the news they aren't going to use NNTP anymore, give them a genuine RSS reader!

Someone wants to come back to a frequqntly used search website, give them a search mechanism for the site! Follow the security location box UI idea and change the Fx search box's background color whenever a site has a search facility that Fx can automatigically add to the Fx search box. Where a site doesn't have a search facility, add a site:blah.com custom search pointing to .

Posted by: pd at January 19, 2006 5:30 AM

The survey feature seems like a flawed idea to me. I think that users are more likely to just stop using it and leave it installed than they are to uninstall it.

In addition to doing it on uninstall, the survey should pop up if a person starts firefox and hasn't started firefox in 60 days (+/- on the number of days).

Posted by: Greg at January 19, 2006 8:24 AM

Let's not introduce new features, but concentrate on fixing known issues (UI, performance, etc) instead of developing new functionality.

Go through the list of open bugs, and most importantly go through the bugs fixed since the FF1.5/Gecko 1.8 release, and select which deserve to go into the 2.0/1.8.1 branch...

Select those bugs that improve UI (by fixing things, cleaning up, etc), and that improve performance (memory usage, code reduction, etc), but without any API changes and/or new functionalities.

Meanwhile keep the main development stream on the trunk, and just be selective on what to promote to the branch.

Posted by: Alfred Kayser at January 19, 2006 8:32 AM

I agree that we shouldn't rely on extension writers. We should actively get people involved not to only do the nerdy programming, but people that will think about innovations, usability bottlenecks, opportunities.

In short: let's think more marketing oriented. A feedback form sounds like: I don't have money to do some serious proactive research, so let's sit back and see if the user wants to say something.

I also believe that part of the mozilla community that does NOT program (and rather will be able to tell you more about usability, what they would like to do, out of the box thinking, etc.) IS NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

In open source this results in interfaces of the likes of Linux-KDE, the Calendar project, etc.

We don't need features, we need a better, safer, sexier user experience.

Posted by: Cheski Frank at January 19, 2006 8:33 AM

Let's not introduce new features, but concentrate on fixing known issues (UI, performance, etc) instead of developing new functionality.

Isn't that the purpose of the 1.5.0.x series? 1.5.0.1 is currently in testing (see the Mozilla QA blog) and they're anticipating releasing a new stability update every 6 weeks or so.

It basically breaks down as:

1.5.0.x: stability, security, and bug fixes
2.0: changes to the user interface
3.0: changes to the underlying code

Posted by: Kelson at January 19, 2006 10:10 AM

This probably isn't the best place for your exit survey, but hey, I'll take what I can get. While I feel Firefox is far and away the best browser on Windows, I have switched back to Safari on OS X. It's just a matter of better integration. iSync allows Safari bookmarks and keychain items to be synced across computers, which is extremely useful for me. Also, visually, Firefox (as well as Thunderbird) have always looked sub-par on OS X, and the theme options are extremely limited.

Posted by: mcj at January 19, 2006 10:17 AM

There is a lose of history data when the machine is reset/turned off with Firefox open. It may be a thing to see in 2.0......

Posted by: Fabiano G. Souza at January 19, 2006 11:42 AM

What I miss the most in current Firefox releases is the integration with KDE desktop for Linux. For example when you click on a link to PDF file it only offers GNOME apps to open the file with and none of the KDE apps like KPDF. The interface is also not very well integrated with KDE, which currently is the most popular Linux desktop. So I think you should do a lot more into this direction.

Posted by: Jure Repinc at January 19, 2006 12:26 PM

Exit surveys...of course! A brilliant idea. I wonder who thought it up!

Best,
Tsee

Posted by: Tsee at January 19, 2006 12:52 PM

Faster loading in Windows. I know that IE is integrated into the system, so it has an artifical loading time, but that doesn't change the fact that it loads faster.
Screw extra features, that is what extensions are for.
If people want to have a spell checker then they get the extension. I don't need one, so why should I have one if it just uses up space?
Simplicity is why I got Firefox, and I use extensions to do more complex stuff.
Ake ake kia kaha.

Posted by: Greg at January 19, 2006 3:35 PM

An Ultra-Liberal RSS Locator like Mark Pilgrim discussed would be a fantastic addition to Firefox 2.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/08/15/ultraliberal_rss_locator

Posted by: Ryan Parman at January 19, 2006 5:22 PM

How about fixing the memory leak issue that causes my system to slow down the longer Firefox is up and running? When my swap file goes from 500MB to 290MB when I close Firefox, I think there's a problem somewhere in the code that could use fixing. That would be more important than added more bloat to the ware which in turn would slow my system down even more.

But then again, with Google's interest in Firefox, I guess bloatware is going to become part of the game.

Posted by: Al at January 20, 2006 4:43 AM

I would very much hope that the memory leaks in Firefox 1.5 image render do get fixed, using Firefox for any extended period of time with images causes it to gobble up RAM its not as bad as 1.0.x was but the leaks are still there.

As for the bookmarks that great news cant wait to see those.

In regards the tabs well I saw the Windows Vista December CTP in action and I have to say the build of IE7 had a good idea I thought for tabs when you mouse over the corner of the tab the close button reveals itself, it was neat and didn't ruin the look of the tabs as its not always visable and with a similar system in Firefox a user pref could satisfy anyone who didn't want it their or always on etc keeping most folks happy.

The spell checker is a good idea I use the Google Toolbars one at the moment.

One more thing is their any chance on the native rendering of menus/toolbars under Windows making it in, I know some progress was made but it couldn't get into Firefox 1.5 but this would be great if it was finally brought into Firefox 2.0

Posted by: Jake at January 20, 2006 6:36 AM

Fix the leaking memory. Faster uptime. Add download page as side bar.

Posted by: Adedeji Olowe at January 20, 2006 10:33 AM

One thing I would find useful is that when you do a search in your bookmarks (via the Bookmarks Toolbar or in the "Manage Bookmarks" window) there would be a way to know where (in what bookmark folder) the page has been bookmarked.
Sometimes I've bookmarked the same page twice and in that case I'd like to know the folders it is bookmarked in so that I know which one of them to remove.

Posted by: firefoxfriend at January 21, 2006 3:48 AM

What firefoxfriend said (x2)

Posted by: Adam at January 21, 2006 8:30 AM

Folding extensions back into the core? There are a bunch of interesting and useful features that probably make sense in the core product. Typically, they fix usability issues or add functionality that only appears when needed so not bloating the UI.

For instance what happened to the feed viewer extension that was put into 1.5 then backed out at the last minute? Is that going to appear? What about Image Toolbar?

Posted by: Mike Hearn at January 21, 2006 12:56 PM

I want more speed on OS X. Safari and Camino have the speed, but they lack everything else, that's why I run Firefox in the first place.

Also, when will Firefox render exactly according to the w3c-specifications? It would be wonderful to go strict with a browser this widely used.

Good Luck!

Posted by: Sebastian Holmqvist at January 21, 2006 4:52 PM

Racing towards 2? *lol* Don't start to throw out the releases with those (bugs) unfinnished options. I hope you change your thoughts about that.

Posted by: Daniel at January 22, 2006 5:46 AM

Comment on tab browsing:
I use "Force links that open in new window to open in a new tab", but the problem comes with blogs. A lot of them have small windows for comments (most blogspot sites these days), and when links from those force into a new tab, there is a problem. There is no menu bar thing (address bar and the what not). Can this be fixed to open beside the parent tab?

Posted by: Greg S at January 23, 2006 1:50 PM

The problem I want to have fixed the most is the memory leak..

The one thing I don't like is the exit survey... they suck in college, and they are pointless in software... If I am uninstalling a program, there's a REALLY good reason... It sucked, or it had spyware. Usually, I'll just say "I got rid of it cause I hate your mom" or something to that extent.

Posted by: JPatch at January 23, 2006 7:53 PM

I have to agree with others on memory issue....

Posted by: Will at January 23, 2006 8:04 PM

When are we going to see CSS3?

Posted by: Michael at January 23, 2006 8:34 PM

Please fix the memory leak and disappearing bookmarks

Posted by: Shoehorn McGuff at January 23, 2006 8:36 PM

There seem to be rumors of different memory leaks so it's hard to know which one people are talking about. The one im interested in is the browser session history cache memory leak. Many of us believe that is the one which I think accounts for alot of peoples memory problems not the image handling and whatnot. Two things about it, page history seems to take up way too much space, and closed tabs do not seem to release all their memory.

Posted by: dharh at January 23, 2006 8:53 PM

Please fix the bug where downloads are marked as "Complete" when they are not actually finished.

There is a bug open for this already, and it still exists as an issue in FireFox 1.5, and is forcing a lot of people to use download managers.

This normally happens for larger files, often movies/clips, and is most annoying. It would be far better to at least get an error when it fails so that you know the file is not complete.

Posted by: David at January 23, 2006 8:54 PM

One thing I've been looking for in a browser for a long time: when I use the CTRL-T to open a new tab and I can begin typing directly to the address bar: I should be able to type in keywords and have it be a google search. That would save me so much time.

Posted by: Zach Atchinson at January 23, 2006 8:55 PM

Overall I wish that Firefox would play nicer on OS X. Making it look more Aqua-ish would be great, but mainly I wish FF had Keychain support. Built in would be nice, but even an extention would be wonderful.

Posted by: Todd at January 23, 2006 8:57 PM

This is super! And I can't wait for this new release to come out. I however grow weary of compiling and re-deploying Firefox over clients networks. How about we see some GPO snap-ins...that would be awesome!

Posted by: Mo at January 23, 2006 9:02 PM

How about what some guy did as a proof of concept: Make Firefox keep images compressed in RAM so that it takes less memory? It could be a feature that needs to be turned on if there are speed issues on older computers, or simply have the images in the tab in use uncompressed and those in tabs not in use compressed, or whatever is the best balance.

Posted by: MikeGR at January 23, 2006 9:10 PM

Passing the acid2 test?
That alone would be great.

Posted by: rolandog at January 23, 2006 9:18 PM

What about full ACID2 test compliance for Gecko? Did we forget that Safari beat Moz/Firefox to the punch on that one?

Posted by: R at January 23, 2006 9:19 PM

Awesome!

But please, i beg you: improve the performance. I like to keep some pages open (eg: gmail) and before i know it, firefox is taking 300mb ram and 10%cp ... this doesn't make any sense and is the ONLY thing that firefox-haters have to reproach! so lets give them a reason to switch too!

Posted by: marcello at January 23, 2006 10:02 PM

I'd really like to see a mature bookmark manager that allows me to export folders or selections of bookmarks instead of all my bookmarks.

Sometimes I want to share just my design bookmarks but not the rest. A bit like compass bookmark manager.

Posted by: Onno at January 23, 2006 10:19 PM

Please kill MORK

Thank you!

XML for bookmarks instead of HTML
XML for history

on the fly sharing of bookmarks with IE, preferable in both directions :-)

Posted by: John Bokma at January 23, 2006 10:28 PM

M-E-M-O-R-Y L-E-A-K

I get mem usages of over 230,000kb after an hour or so of a few tabs open.

PORTABLE FIREFOX

-Please assist this project. Its bad enough that In 2006 I still have to explain to friends & family what FF is, but worse is when I have to use IE on their machines. Portable Firefox is a great idea that should be assisted.

Posted by: grendel at January 23, 2006 10:34 PM

Sir,
Please fix the memory leak(s) before going for more features.

I can show you screenshots of FF with ONE tab and 500MB mem usage. It dosent seem to free memory after closing tabs.

Posted by: ashayh at January 23, 2006 10:38 PM

Definately fix more memory leaks. I can open up 10 tabs, browse a little and walk away for 24 hrs and end up with 400MB of memory usage per the Task Manager (win2k3 svr).

Thank goodness for session saver though - I can exit and restart FF and I'm back to where I was before without all that memory in use.

Posted by: Anthony at January 23, 2006 10:39 PM

Looking forward for the new FireFox. ^_^

Posted by: Kit at January 23, 2006 10:44 PM

Man, this is turning into a session of what people want to see...

Maybe a nice little place somewhere on the internet where people can suggest extensions and bugs? Because, there are people like me who have ideas (sometimes) but have no ability to do anything about it.

Please, just do what you want :-)

Kia kaha

Posted by: Greg S at January 23, 2006 10:59 PM

Is the Ctrl-F (search) in combination with textarea bug finally gonna be solved ??? It's amazing how long this bug has been "available".

Posted by: Nico de Vries at January 23, 2006 11:26 PM

I believe the collection of wonderful extensions is an important reason for firefox's success, besides many other remarkable features and designs. However, many new users do not know about the extensions, coz there is no counterpart in the IE world, (oh, those "XXXbars" do not count). Yes, we should let the users feel familiar and should avoid pushing them too many new features, but suggesting some wonderful new things to them is not a bad idea, and users will appreciate it when they benefit from listening to the suggestions. We may integrate an extension suggestion in various components. For example, after the installation and the first run, we may recommend some essential and mature extensions, with some concise explanation on how these extensions can largely improve productivity and make experience much more fun. Later, by starting the users browsing behavior, Firefox may give further suggestions. For example, after Firefox detects the user keeps on pressing the back button, it may suggest the user to install the mouse guesture. Anyway, it's more like an progressive education. We have to realize effecient and fun web surfing needs some knowledge.

Posted by: Eddie at January 23, 2006 11:37 PM

I'm using firefox on FreeBSD,
and does wish for lower memory abuse
and better extension/plugin support.

Posted by: Casper Andersen at January 23, 2006 11:59 PM

1. Bundle the most popular plugins (extentions and themes) with Firefox. Just the 10 most popular and the 10 top rated.
2. Add support for web based bookmarks - add interation of sites such as delicious etc. Moving around from PC to PC with my bookmarks is a big plus. Maybe the same is true for history etc.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

Posted by: Rani at January 24, 2006 12:04 AM

Fix the memory leak problem!

Posted by: Arthur at January 24, 2006 12:04 AM

The observed and aboved 'memory leak problem' is actually not a memory leak, but a over heavy memory usage problem. FF (or Gecko in general) uses a lot of memory for internal storage and caching of images (the full decoded images is stored as 3 or 4 bytes per pixel). So browsing a lot of pages with a lot of large images, and using lots of tabs and lots of 'fast-back' cache, will just use a lot of memory.

Work is being done to optimize the memory usage, but it is not easy to solve...

Posted by: Alfred Kayser at January 24, 2006 12:30 AM

You need to incorporate some of the plugins or extentions into Firefox. Extentions or plugins don't help me if I introduce a feature on a client app like an RSS feed and I have to tell my clients they need to download the pluging to make it work. It should be integrated by default.

And when are we going to see some new W3C standards? I know that's not your fault. :-)

Posted by: dcoffin at January 24, 2006 12:35 AM

I agree that the memory Leak is one of the main disappointments in the OS X version. I can't use Firefox more than 2 days in a row before memory use gets out of hand, and the browser become so inefficient that it's chewing up 20% of my CPU with just two static pages.

Using AppStop helps keep this beast under control.

Posted by: cprise at January 24, 2006 1:07 AM

do you plan to impliment multiple rows of tabs, because i use AVANT over FF because when i open loads of tabs, Avant adds, second and third etc rows of tabs where FF keeps them on the same line only they become unusably thin (width)

Posted by: mark rush at January 24, 2006 1:24 AM

Agree, Memory leak should be top priority.

or else, there will be a mass migration back to IE7 in the future.

Posted by: infonote at January 24, 2006 1:28 AM

Are there any plans to improve the password manager for release 2.0? I would love to be able to have it remember different sets of credentials for a single site and ask me which one to use. This would make it possible to have Firefox remember both the credentials of the restricted user account of a site as well as the administrator's credentials.

At the moment it seems to remeber both but doesn't offer me a choice between them. It appears to select the first one in the list.

Posted by: Danny Sanders at January 24, 2006 1:37 AM

Why did you leave Firefox?
Firefox uses too much memory.

Posted by: Joe at January 24, 2006 1:38 AM

Feature list sounds excellent, but one stumbling block I'm finding at the moment (and one that I think would impede Firefox's penetration into businesses, as I've been trying to do at my work) is the lack of easy ways to manage firefox through Microsoft Active Directory / Group Policy (including an MSI install file distributed from mozilla itself - rather than having to rely on 3rd party sources).

I think if Firefox could be easily distributed, customised, and manged through standard (well, Microsoft standard) Windows Server tools, Firefox usage would boom!

Keep up the good work!

Posted by: Richard Rosalion at January 24, 2006 2:06 AM

Zach, you can search from the location bar by changing the keyword.URL preference. See
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_Tips_:_Location_Bar_Search.

Posted by: Michael Ward at January 24, 2006 2:18 AM

I don't know what "make tabs work more like windows" actually mean, but please, try to remember, that

tabs != windows

when making these improvements... :)

Posted by: Henrik at January 24, 2006 2:33 AM

Full SVG support would be useful, rather than the current subset (Oracle SVG DB tools still require an SVG plugin, which is a shame).

Posted by: Rob at January 24, 2006 2:36 AM

Fix the memory leak(s)

Posted by: jmario at January 24, 2006 2:45 AM

My #1, #2, and #3 requests are all about improvement of memory consumption. I use it all day every day. 2-4 browser windows 2-16 tabs in each. That sucker takes up to 420k or more when it's going at a good clip. No other single application I use uses more. I can be running photoshop, openoffice2 and Itunes and put together they don't use that much RAM.

To me that entire list of features are merely niceties, compared to this.

Posted by: Daniel Talsky at January 24, 2006 3:02 AM

please fix the memory leaks first...

Posted by: felz at January 24, 2006 3:03 AM

I know that exit surveys are good for gathering info, but they piss off the person uninstalling most of the time. I recommend leaving that one out.

Posted by: J.T. Fox at January 24, 2006 3:42 AM

XMLHTTPRequest need the ability to load content from other domains than the one the script was started on. This could work with document.domain like with IFrames or with a confirmation dialog:
"A script from this webpage wants to open a connection to server bla.blub.com. Do you want to allow this?"
Yes, always / Yes, this session / No / Never

Posted by: Martin Scheffler at January 24, 2006 3:44 AM

great.

but please fix the memory problem. it is hogging memory as of now.

thank u and best wishes

Posted by: Mave at January 24, 2006 3:52 AM

Are we going to get Tabbed MDI à la Visual Studio with this version? I mean being able to drag a tab to a border and get a split view (horizontal or vertical) with separate tab sets.
Seems to me like it would be a great improvement. I really miss the ability to see two documents at the same time in the same window.

Posted by: Fabrice at January 24, 2006 4:01 AM

I think that an interesting way of imporving the bookmarks and history handling would be to mimic the behaviour of Safari/Camino. Opening a new tab with a space-generous listing of the information.

For download manager, it would be interesting to mimic Opera, opening a tab for a page listing the download information instead of having a small windows that is apart of the browser "per-si" and giving almost no information about the downloading files.

Posted by: WhispSil at January 24, 2006 4:13 AM

How about including a feature that pre-loads Adobe Acrobat in the background while Firefox is running? That way, when PDF files need to be opened, there doesn't need to be a five-second wait while Acrobat loads. It would significantly help integrate PDF documents into the web. As it is now, sometimes I choose not to open PDF pages because of the frustratingly slow loading process.

Posted by: AC at January 24, 2006 4:16 AM

From a development point this may not be of interest just yet but....Firefox2 will be rolling out right about when we're (supose) to be seing Vista entering the world. With a new graphics sub system that means big changes to software that infterfaces with the grapchics subsys. That being said firefox may not be working with that system "verry" much but, other apps are going to be getting re-writes in certain areas INCUDING Screen Access soft. At the moment Firefox works with the big two screen readers JAWS (Freedom Scientific) and Windows Eyes (GW Micro), but, after a re-write on their end that may not necisarily be the case. Plus, it may be worth while to check with them to see what the visually impaired community is thinking about Firefox. Unfortuanatly, I have no codeing ability to support the project with, so all I can do is make suggestions. Sorry.

Posted by: ALT/genetics at January 24, 2006 4:21 AM

Fix the damn memory leak first :(

Posted by: McCrap at January 24, 2006 4:41 AM

When are we going to see better DIV tag support? DIV is one of the key components of Ajax. But it's extremely difficult to code something that doesn't break in FireFox.

Posted by: Mitch Allen at January 24, 2006 4:42 AM

First of all Kudos to the Firefox team and all the Extension developers who collectively make Firefox the best browser IMHO.

Fixing the memory leak problem or at least enabling FireFox to reclaim memory faster should be top priority. I agree with others that features should take a back seat to stability. I already like FireFox as is and can extend it via Extensions.

When it comes to features I agree with a poster above that including an ability to split the screen ala Visual Studio would be nice. Perhaps giving the option to split it vertically in addition to horizontally would be even better. With the increasing use of widescreen resolution monitors nowadays there is more real estate available to users which go unused.

Posted by: jay at January 24, 2006 5:12 AM

Please fix the memory leaks! I was running using 1.5 last night for about 2 hours, and the VM usage grew to over 1Gb!

Posted by: Cant Remember at January 24, 2006 5:15 AM

AC, you can speed up Acrobat by removing all the unneeded plug-ins. Search on the web, you should find how-tos easily.
I don't think any work is required on Firefox for this. It's fast enough once you have fixed Acrobat.

Posted by: Fabrice at January 24, 2006 5:22 AM

Having a built-in spellcheck is a sign of bloating, in my eyes. Better to make it a core MozillaDev plug-in.

How many people are honestly going to use this feature? Firefox isn't a groupware application, spelling isn't important.

If you REALLY want to, have a Firefox Corporate/Groupware release with the Spellcheck plug-in packed with the browser.

Otherwise you are just adding more standard features to my right-click.

Posted by: John "Z-Bo" Zabroski at January 24, 2006 5:25 AM

An exit survey? Brilliant! I know there's certainly nothing more I want to do when I'm uninstalling a program than to fill out someone's exit survey...

Not.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

Here's an idea... How's about releasing a version sans the memory leaks, random crashes, graceless error handling, and other myriad issues, both minor and not, and then, and only then, start worrying about new features.

But even then, leave out the asinine exit survey...

Posted by: Myria at January 24, 2006 5:43 AM

everyone is saying "fix the memory leak" isn't that enough to put that as a huge priority for the dev. team?

please, make firefox less of a system hog.

but i also echo everyone else's sentiments: firefox is plain awesome.

Posted by: J Danz at January 24, 2006 5:45 AM

Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment*

I think that isn't such a good idea. Tabs should stay about as they are right now. Just add the ability to prevent opening new windows and open the pages in tabs instead. And small close buttons in each tab are also helpful.
Just don't turn them into 'windows'.

Posted by: Peterix at January 24, 2006 5:52 AM

Also, when installing ff, the user should be able to set the max_viewers variable - and add it to the options menu too.
That should help all the people who complaion about memory usage...

Posted by: Peterix at January 24, 2006 5:57 AM

How about the ability to easily move bookmarks around using drag and drop instead of having to switch to the bookmarks manager ?
Or ensuring that duplicate bookmarks are warned about before adding

Posted by: Mukund Seshadri at January 24, 2006 6:22 AM

Abandon folder-based bookmarks, and introduce a tags-based system that runs locally and can be easily exported/synched with an external service like delicious.

Using delicious (via the extension e.g.) is sub-optimal, because it doesn't allow privacy controls of bookmarks (I know there's furl, but still), and delicious seems to have scalability issues, I get timed out requests all the time.

Also, a browser-integrated, faster, more searchable solution would be nice. How about an iTunes-like interface for bookmarks? (playlists = tags, songs = bookmarks, search operates on all fields)

Posted by: AnotherBen at January 24, 2006 6:42 AM

How about fixing the memory leak? I can't think of any reason that Firefox should need 139Mb RAM & 149Mb of VRAM to display a total of 3 tabs. I chose Firefox (and recommended it to my customers) because it was smaller and faster than IE. Don't continue to make a liar out of me... please fix the memory leak.

Multiple rows of tabs would be a good thing too.

Also, how about a tighter integration (via an extension) with del.icio.us ? Perhaps enabling the bookmarks menu to aggregate a user's tagged sites?

Be nice if my regular bookmarks didn't strangely disappear too.

All in all, keep up the great work... I love FF & don't plan to switch anytime soon, but the memory leak is going to be the deciding factor in the long run. (And yes, I've done all the suggested config changes on the support site... I still shouldn't have to close my browser hourly to free up memory).

Posted by: Paul at January 24, 2006 7:17 AM

I hope the new version isn't so slow and resource intensive when downloading files. Every time I download, Firefox freezes for about 10-20 seconds, and uselessly pops up the downloads window, only to close it after download is complete. When I'm on a download spree, it's really slow and hopeless. I still want to surf other pages while things are downloading. Plus, I'm running on a 2.8GHz VAIO with 1 GB of ram! I want instant downloads with no effect on resources!

Posted by: Scottrageous Design at January 24, 2006 7:18 AM

I thought Firefox 2 was supposed to also have an MSI available. Originally, this was stated that it would be in 1.5, then it was stated 2.0 and now you haven't mentioned it at all. Please include an MSI for FF2.0 so it can be rolled out using Active Directory.

Posted by: jmb at January 24, 2006 7:32 AM

Please leave out the exit survey. Uninstall surveys are almost solely the realm of spyware, and annoy users (especially us admins!) to no end.

Posted by: Ben Claar at January 24, 2006 7:38 AM

FIX THE MEMORY LEAK

Posted by: Bob at January 24, 2006 7:51 AM

Roaming: It's about time, it was only created some what, 7 or 8 years ago and then summarily dropped from the codebase for whatever reason.

Posted by: belg4mit at January 24, 2006 8:02 AM

I agree with Ben Claar, leave out the uninstall survey. Or at least don't force users to fill it out, users think they are having to jump through hoops just to remove the software.

I think the inclusion of an inline spellchecker could be useful, if not too taxing on older machines. The feature should be able to be disabled on slower/older computers.

Posted by: Lawsy at January 24, 2006 8:27 AM

Chalk up another vote for stability. I was a diehard FF user until 1.5 forced me to switch back to Safari.

Posted by: Scott M. at January 24, 2006 8:31 AM

Fix the memory leak, Firefox is a huge memory hog even vanilla Mozilla handles memory better.

Posted by: Floyd at January 24, 2006 8:37 AM

how about a "clear" button instead of a "Go" button for the search bar?

It makes me use windows style copy paste on my linux box.....

Posted by: todd yarling at January 24, 2006 8:40 AM

~~~~~~ THE MEMORY LEAK IS FROM ADBLOCK ~~~~~~

And it's already fixed in the latest Adblock update.
Tools > Extensions, click Get Updates, then click the Update button next to Adblock.

(Rendered pages usually DO naturally occupy quite a lot of space, regardless of the download size of the page. If you're a web designer, think about all that data in the DOM viewer, for every element - the vast majority of it is automatically calculated, rather than coming from the CSS/HTML code. If you care about viewers on low-spec machines and handhelds, it's time to start considering your rendered-page-size, as well as the download size.)

Posted by: The Other Mac at January 24, 2006 8:57 AM

I'd like to be able to bind two buttons to use to move thru my open tabs. I'm always trying to hit alt-tab to move thru them from my IE using habits. It would be nice to be able to use say the left and right arrow keys to select different tabs.

Posted by: brian white at January 24, 2006 9:05 AM

The biggest FF gripe I have are the tons of quirks in printing and print preview. I print a lot, and run into them every day. There are hundreds of open bugs in that area. Actually, I'd do away with Print Preview and rather have two permanent "view modes": Web for traditional browsing and Page for browseable print view. Just a thought...

Posted by: Marek K. at January 24, 2006 9:24 AM

Instead of improving (and bloating) the textarea, what about making it possible plug an external aplication in, like Windows OLE, KParts, or whatever..

It would be great to have gVim embeded in the textarea! :)

Posted by: bart9h at January 24, 2006 9:24 AM

has anyone mentioned the memory leak?

because I think the memory leak is a HUGE problem that should be fixed before any new features

Posted by: jotaroh at January 24, 2006 9:26 AM

I would suggest fixing the memory leak (as anyone else in here) and also work on better integration of firefox into Linux & Gnome. For some reason, firefox is faster in windows than in linux for all systems that I use(d)...
you released 1.5 without fixing the memory leak. dont do the same with fx2.
And finally, loose that ping feature that every malicious content / code developer will drool over...

Posted by: towsonu2003 at January 24, 2006 10:15 AM

How about fixing the way Firefox uses memory in Windows? It's one of the main issues that keep me from switching completely to Firefox.

Posted by: Ruben at January 24, 2006 10:41 AM

Big fan of the inline spell check! My biggest concern would be complete support for css 2, hopefully css 3, and SVG!

Posted by: Wil Limoges at January 24, 2006 10:57 AM

Be able to access my book marks from any PC, anywhere.

Posted by: Jayaram Nulu at January 24, 2006 11:00 AM

fix the memory leak! fix the memory leak! that's all I want. everything else is gravy.

and don't wait for 2.0 - fix the memory leak now!

Posted by: malangali at January 24, 2006 11:17 AM

Release a production-quality build (pre 2.0) for Intel Macs. Please. I am using Safari for speed on my new iMac G5 but miss FF terribly.

Posted by: lovenotfear at January 24, 2006 11:32 AM

I want a login on any firefox on anyone's computer that has it, to access all my own bookmarks, interface adjustments etc. I know there's delicious etc, but this would be nicer!

keep up the good work....

Posted by: s at January 24, 2006 11:47 AM

This sounds good to me. What I would like to see with tab browsing, is that users would be able to show multiple tabs on one screen. After all, if I have only two tabs of different search results, I may want to see both in a split-screen mode, and compare them. Ultimately, if someone has 30 tabs open, this wouldn't work so well, but with up to, say 9 tabs, it would be really useful.

The other thing? FIX THE MEMORY LEAK. Firefox is taking 70MB of memory on my system. I don't think even Office 2003 takes this much.

Third, support new web standards, like others have pointed out, CSS3 and SVG would be nice, and I don't want you to commit heresy, but if you'd give some support for Microsoft's CSS implementation, everything would be cool. I know, Microsoft is at fault here, but IE is still the word's worst and most popular browser. Being a web developer, I am sick of writing two different javascript codes, for visual manipulation: one for IE, the other for FF.

Posted by: radonX at January 24, 2006 11:56 AM

I have problems with my address bar not being too flexible when I add icons to the menu bar. However, the search tool stays the default size and so it's bigger than my address bar.

If there was one thing I could wish for, it would be to make sure that my extensions don't interfere with overall performance. Maybe it's just fine, but if I add too many extensions, I wonder if the more popular ones shouldn't simply be integrated into the browser so that I don't increase my overhead. Which is better? (I don't know).

Posted by: Joseph Dowdy at January 24, 2006 12:12 PM

I'd like to be able to edit the typed-in URL list... to be able to delete entries without being required to delete *all* entries.

Posted by: Hose at January 24, 2006 12:23 PM

I would like to see FF eliminate the need to restart when installing an extension. Many times, I have multiple tabs open and retarting is a pain. It would also help content providers as users wouldn't have to leave their page after install.

Posted by: dan at January 24, 2006 12:28 PM

one word: DISTRIBUTION

What's keeping you from being the default browser on every Dell and Gateway system shipped around the world? Fix those things, and make that happen, or get steamrolled by Microsoft and IE. Again.

Posted by: JG at January 24, 2006 1:16 PM

AdBlock is not the cause of the huge use of memory. I don't have AdBlock installed and still FF takes up too much memory.

I do agree with the person that says that what we are missing is a portal where people can bring ideas for the next releases and where people can discuss how to improve FF. We could also voice what according to the user would be priorities for next releases. Aren't we a community after all?

I also agree with the person that said that Inline spell-check is the most boring and most remotely needed feature.

Let's team up, innovate and beat Internet Exploder!

Posted by: Cheski Frank at January 24, 2006 1:38 PM

no one leaves firefox.

Posted by: myke at January 24, 2006 2:13 PM

Good job! It's nice to see the hard work for our good navigation.
Have a nice day!

Posted by: Reca at January 24, 2006 2:18 PM

Memory ... memory .. memory .. performance .. and memory.

Plus the best plugins should be "merged"/implemented [like mouse gestures, focus last selected tab, directory searc, adblock[plus], sessionSaver .. etc

Plus memory and memory .. and performance :)

uber-lightweight mode/version maybe.. :P

Posted by: PAStheLoD at January 24, 2006 2:41 PM

For goodness sake.. please please please fix the memory problems.. PLEASE.. i do love firefox but the memory problems make me angry!

Posted by: Gordon Whims at January 24, 2006 4:58 PM

Why does this page render like a striped-ass ape in FF 1.5?

Posted by: jomama at January 24, 2006 5:12 PM

I agree with most of you...too much memory

Also, I'm with Mave, it would be great if I could see two tabs at once within the same window

Posted by: nelhella at January 24, 2006 5:16 PM

again, the memory leak: the only REAL issue with firefox! everything else is trivial (exit survey, nfc!) compared to this. reduce the memory imprint and users wont look back.

Posted by: ricko suave at January 24, 2006 5:26 PM

Here's a problem:

You're reading a lengthly passage on a web page... you get to the bottom of the current screen, hit the spacebar, and continue reading at the top of the browser window. You know where to start reading again because that's what the spacebar does!

Works great except on the last page, if that remaining text is shorter than a full browser window, then you have to scan down and reread until you find where you left off.

Here's an idea:

FIX THAT! Just put a marker in the scrollbar, or something, to show the bottom of the previous page!

Also do the same thing for the 'find' function, how often do you have to search a page peppered with highlighted text and colored text in images to find the particular highlighted text that 'find' highlights???

Yes, I am a genius, glad to help ;)

Fazookus

Posted by: Fazookus at January 24, 2006 6:49 PM

DO NOT

Put in an Exit Survey for crying out loud. That is as bad as weatherbug or any other spyware app out there. I absolutely hate that!!!

It's not that I will uninstall it, but if certain things come up and I need to remove it because of HDD space limitations or if the memory leak isn't fixed yet, I'll just use IE as a backup...

Just fix the memory leak problem and don't put in the exit survey... If I have to fill one of those out, I will never install it back on any of my machines again...

Posted by: SimonSez at January 24, 2006 7:32 PM

Is the Alpha due to be released in a couple of Weeks?

pcpro.co.uk/news/82216/firefox-20-alpha-due-next-month.html

Posted by: Search Engines Web at January 24, 2006 8:03 PM

Ok IE 7 takes the tab idea, which Firefox took from Opera. But damn MS didnt just ad tabs, but improved on it 10 fold.

Posted by: Jim at January 24, 2006 10:29 PM

The idea to "make tabs more like windows" scares me. Tabs are useful exactly because they are different from Windows; If I wanted windows, I always had them... One particular "improvement" that several people raised but I hope is never done is adding "X" (close) buttons on individual tags. On first listening it sounds great or like something the Mozilla people simply forgot to do. But in reality, this lack of close button for each tab is one of the best features of Mozilla's tabs! It means that you can't accidentally close a tab instead of the one you're now seeing and which is probably the one you want to close. Every user of Lotus Notes, which has tabs with X on each tab, is familiar with the following disaster: you view a mail, and after reading it want to close this tab. You need to look at the tab bar for the current tab (probably somewhere in the middle of the bar), and press the X on it. If your hands are shaky press the wrong X, you just killed some other tab, which contained who knows what!

Please don't make changes to the tabs without giving serious thoughts (and user studies) to the implications of these changes. Because people love the current tabs in Mozilla and Firefox, and hate tab implementations in some other software (like Lotus Notes).

P.S. How ironic is that that I couldn't enter a comment when using an old version of Mozilla and had to do it on a different computer, with a recent FireFox? If we talk the talk, we should walk the walk :(

Posted by: Nadav at January 25, 2006 1:02 AM

Please make a download resume feature, for crissakes :)
There never was one, since first netscapes. If the connection breaks, and user is left with an unfinished download, he then must begin all over again from the start, which is unbearably frustrating.

And maybe a tabs scroller so when there's more tabs than the main window allows one could reach those out-of range tabs.

Posted by: shoorah at January 25, 2006 1:56 AM

XForms and CSS3 support when?

Posted by: Matias at January 25, 2006 2:42 AM

just because Firefox is so great (and I do love it!) doesn't mean we, the users, have to put with its terrible memory usage?! after all, it was only a year ago when 512M of ram was considered decent, and I'd still like to think Firefox doesn't need 150M with only one tab open.

as a user, i'd like to see my browser just work. as a web developer i'd like to be able to rely on it. but in any case, i dont want it eating up all the ram i have :/

Posted by: g marinov at January 25, 2006 4:03 AM

Hello,
Sounds great, as a Firefox fan, I'm really really excited here. However, some things I would like to ask are consuming less memory and a in-built HTML Editor which comes when we click View Source.. Will help Webmasters like me for sure.

Expecting a rocker browser and rocker betas.

All the best Mozilla and may the force be with you.

~ CC

Posted by: Chrono Cr@cker at January 25, 2006 4:05 AM

Anyhope to see real fix for the memory issue. Opening few tabs firefox jumps into 70,80 MB of memory?

Posted by: Hassan at January 25, 2006 7:43 AM

I think the integration from the box with mouse gestures is something MUST HAVE in thenext features for FF 2.0

Once you use the gestures to navigate it's impossible to get back to IE, I simply can't use the IE right now.

The gestures increase the interaction with the browser and makes it more easy to use. The users doesn't need to known all the gestures but just 4 is enough to addict them.

Posted by: Antonio Carlos at January 25, 2006 8:15 AM

Pleasent surprises. I would like to note just one thing (that I think developers are not aware of).

The only intuitive way of opening tabs is that when I left click I open site in the same tab, and when I middle-clcik I open site in the new tab. Whenever I need to guess what webmaster thought is not intuitive (unless you count in a female intuition, so that you might know something that you can't know:). Also, this counts in respecting user rights - webmaster should not be able to influence anything outside site area, as it is my private proprierty. Finally, I can't see how webmaster helps user if he opens site in new window/tab (like that middle-clicking is harder than left-clicking).

The only case I would eventually allow is opening new windows from javascript that resizes window. Though this affects user's private area, I think that it is in the interest of most users, and one should be able to disable that.

Posted by: Ivan Icin at January 25, 2006 9:05 AM

i/ please fix the memory leak,
ii/ I should be able to resume the download,
iii/ make firefox start faster (it takes too long on window$)

Posted by: tahir at January 25, 2006 9:42 AM

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Some of the suggestions above sound good--like the ability to have 2 tabs open at once--but please don't try to add too many new features. IMHO, the genius of Firefox is having a very lean browser that people can add just what they want to to. If I wanted mouse gestures, I'd add the extension. I don't. When I look at the list of most popular extensions, many are things I don't happen to want--and many of the extensions I do find essential are not among the most popular or highest rated. Perhaps there could be a "Firefox Plus" download available for the less tech-savvy, but there's already the Firemonger project for that.

Posted by: chonhart at January 25, 2006 9:43 AM

Okay, for everyone talking about how the FF devs need to integrate all these "useful" extensions into the main app ... PLEASE remember what Firefox started as!!

The original intention was to provide all of the NECESSARY and BASIC functions in the main package and give users the option to CUSTOMIZE that browser THROUGH EXTENSIONS to do what THEY want!! Lots of the extensions listed as "must integrate" here don't even exist in my browser. Because I don't need them. If ANYTHING should be integrated, I'd say mouse gestures. It was what brought me from Opera to Pheonix back around 0.6 ... until I could gesture like Opera had, it was a step backwards. Of course, not everyone gestures, so why should my user prefs force it on someone else? Get the picture?

Keep FF SLIM and let people extend it to their liking. Firefox was made to NOT be bloated AND to be EXTENSIBLE!! Integrating all the extensions defeats the purpose of this browser!!

Focus on making the browser slim, rock solid, and secure. Let the extension folks worry about all the whiz-bang features everyone does or doesn't need. Otherwise we'll end up with another Mozilla suite or worse ... IE!!

Posted by: DigitaLink at January 25, 2006 10:14 AM

How about a simple one-click settings back-up button similar to the one-click clear private data. I've had to re-install windows twice and backing up bookmarks and other key settings like keyword search from the address bar are a pain to set up everytime.

Posted by: Eric at January 25, 2006 10:15 AM

Bugfixing! That's the most important. It's not funny that my browser eats all the memory. Guys, since 1.0, it's still the same (bad). FF is a wonderful browser, but always hangs (no, it's not an extension problem), so I *have to* use Opera sometimes. I want to use Firefox.

Posted by: Joe at January 25, 2006 12:52 PM

In the Advanced Menu for Java Script, add
add an exception menu.

I like to keep Java scripts turned off.

But there is a huge exception to this.
My web mail requires it to be turned
on.

If I had the option to keep Java Scripts
turned off with the exception of one or
two URLs, that would be great!!

Doug Roberts

Posted by: Doug Roberts at January 25, 2006 2:22 PM

I have this suggestion like classifying the extensions and themes according to the browser type we have.
For eg. we could somehow detect the version of ff and show the extensions and themes compatible with that version only.
Now if i have to use extensions...i have to go through all available one,install them before i get not compatible message.

Secondly,memory leak happens too often.FF should be lite on resources.

Posted by: SUJIT at January 26, 2006 1:16 AM

How come Firefox cannot be used like IE/Mozilla using SpaceBar and Home/End keys (from keyboard of course) to scroll a web page?

I hope it's not only me, because this happens on multiple machines I installed Firefox.

I hope this feature can be added.

Posted by: Chang-Ping at January 26, 2006 1:00 PM

Doug, check out http://www.noscript.net it should do what you need it to do.

Posted by: Al at January 26, 2006 1:41 PM

Can we have nice UI for RSS like FeedDemon?

Posted by: Test at January 26, 2006 2:29 PM

RSS handling is something I chipped in on in Bug #259444. However, I'm a Bugzilla n00b so whilst I can guess that bug looks somewhat abandoned (although definitely relevant to this), I don't know whether you'll have seen it Ben.

My comment (#8) covers everything I'd suggest as regards feed handling though. It's kinda simple and kinda nice, I think. Somewhat based off the features of the LiveLines extension.

It would allows for desktop feed readers and Web Service handling, too. I'd appreciate you taking a look if you've got a few minutes.

Regards,
Ben

Posted by: Ben Ward at January 26, 2006 3:39 PM

It would be great if you supported more of the css print standards, like headers, footers orphans widows and break suppression. This would make the UI along with SVG an XUL and incredible enterprise class tool. I would be interested in helping with this once I take a real job in March.

Posted by: David McCombs at January 26, 2006 4:14 PM

for me as an arab user i would require better support for my language
firefox was not able to display arabic perfictly until 1.5
and i think we wount get the spellcheck until 3.5

Posted by: ali mearaj at January 27, 2006 7:06 AM

Let's wait and see how it will turn out , shall we...

Posted by: Ivan Minic at January 27, 2006 8:30 AM

After seeing the bad press that Firefox has recently received over here :
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html

I was somewhat surprised by the less than stellar performance on the ACID2 test. Is W3S specs improvement something that's intended for FF2?

~Ian

Posted by: Ian Dorman at January 27, 2006 12:15 PM

And until a moz browser supports inline-block it will still be a piece of shit in comparison to IE. (not to say it won't still be a piece of shit after that fix) Anyone who does serious DHTML knows this.

Posted by: Maestrocity at January 27, 2006 4:24 PM

Fix the memory leaks. Note to those here who post comments to the effect that the memory leaks have been identified and fixed - No they haven't. Current version is much improved but still get unexplained Firefox crashes after several days of running with 4 or 5 browser instances with multiple tabs open in each ( on Windows XP with 1.5G of RAM).

After selecting a link for download the browser freezes for many seconds. This really sucks.

Improve the download manager into a real manager. Provide the capability of restarting an interrupted partial download.

There's no need to load down the core browser with everyones favorite little feature. Keep it lean and clean. That said I would really rather not sort through 100s of extensions to try and find something useful to me and then install them one by one.

Perhaps themed subsets of these extensions could be grouped into packs and installed as a pack.

Posted by: grepthis at January 27, 2006 11:32 PM

allow a quik button to make the browser dissappear from the top 5rg of my screen.allow instant rss feeds from any page even those with no rss feeds. hook to google reader of course.
allow me to open the browser twice without minimizing and then clikin the icon again...finally ,change the firefox symbol cause it looks like the aids virus puc from the bbs ...check flickr for firefox with aids pic I sent 3 days ago

Posted by: smarcus at January 27, 2006 11:48 PM

Whatever you do, don't put an uninstall survey in. I hate those things more than anything.

And I agree about the memory issues

Posted by: The White Fedora at January 28, 2006 4:38 PM

Make tabs behave like windows? Why? You already have the ability to use multiple windows. Sure, improve the tabs, but making them work like windows sounds like digging a hole only to fill it. You're back where you started, only with a whole lot of work for nothing.

Maybe if you could elaborate on the idea? Having tabs instead of windows is exactly what makes "tabbed browsing" attactive. We've always had "windowed browsing."

Posted by: Greg at January 28, 2006 4:48 PM

- Fix memory leaks

- Make standard download manager much faster - it is a desperate snail compared to Opera or IE.

- include mouse gestures to the default installation, but only after improving recognition algorithms (see Opera).

Posted by: pinus at January 28, 2006 9:12 PM

Lot of people said these, +1 vote for:

-fix memory leaks
-improve startup time
-mouse gestures to the default installation
-better download manager
-looking forward to the improved favourites / rss reader feature

And thanks for all your work!

Posted by: ervin novak at January 29, 2006 4:06 AM

Looking forward with great expectation to Firefox 2.0. I could never go back to IE.

Posted by: David Mackey at January 29, 2006 8:06 AM

offering to install extra plug-ins (from a list of featured ones) during the install time will be sweet :) (it's a shame some people will lose this just for not knowing.)

Posted by: a at January 29, 2006 12:02 PM

Will the new version be able to email browsed pages directly? A "send page" as opposed to the current "send link" function.

Posted by: decameron at January 30, 2006 10:30 AM

I'd love site specific preferences (especially minimum font size), and I'd heard that was scheduled for 2.0.

Pete

Posted by: Pete_L_P at January 30, 2006 10:34 AM

Fix Memory leaks! Memery usage is terrible, over 120-150MB with a tab or 2 open.

Firefox 1.5 final crashes on a daily basis and frezes my system and closes all windows. Even in safe mode. no extentions or themes.

Alot of people will jump off the firfox train unless this issue is fixed. IE is more stable for me right now. even though I love firefox.

Posted by: Nate at January 30, 2006 10:48 AM

One very nice thing to have would be a way to selectively delete saved-form information. There is a PC Mag utility that would do that for IE.

Posted by: Randolph Smoot at January 30, 2006 10:52 AM

Would love to see integration with the MAC's keychain for memorizing passwords, etc.

Posted by: Rob Alfieri at January 30, 2006 11:03 AM

Double click on a Tab to close it. Please. Love FF and don't know how I did research with IE!

Posted by: Dunn Miller at January 30, 2006 11:18 AM

Possible bug: on a PC in 1.5, new windows sometimes expand to just less than max size (I can still, barely, get resize arrows). This is new from previous versions. It's not typical, but not unusual -- maybe once or twice a week, no pattern identified so far.

On a wide screen, I like to keep web windows at @ 8"h x 10"w so my database can fit at the right and with working room above the web window for other things.

Posted by: John Linford at January 30, 2006 3:02 PM

I have noticed a problem with Firefox 1.5 for Mac. Sometimes I can't type anything. Not even in the Google Search Bar. This is a big pain. I hope they fix it soon!!

Posted by: Tallis at January 31, 2006 6:13 PM

First of all, I really appreciate the Firefox movement & offloading much of the functionality to extensions. I wouldn't want to see the core program become too bloated by including a bunch of them.

Memory, of course. It's a deal breaker, or will be. There's just no way I should be dealing with 200,000 + K memory loads with just 3-4 static windows/tabs open. No way. Maybe it's not a leak. Just memory retension with no letting go. Or minimal release.

A selective cookie saver. As someone else mentioned, the ability to send a page, not just the link. And finally (!), why can't I copy the formatted internet page to Word like I can with IE? There must be some blindingly obvious answer, but hey, I can take it ...

Thanks for all the effort!

I want the "X" close on each tab, not just to the far right. It's just not intuitive and I still make the mistake after all this time.

Posted by: Dave Johnson at January 31, 2006 11:14 PM

Greater customizability for the Toolbars – especially the Bookmarks Toolbar – would be nice.

Posted by: cipher at February 2, 2006 9:23 AM

FIX. THE. DAMNED. LEAKS.

I don't care how hard it is to do, but even with 1.5.0.1, which supposedly improves memory handling, I'm using 100 goddamn megs right now! I have 4 tabs open and the stumblebar. This is fucking horrible.

Not to mention, a lot of the userbase that don't use FF are people who buy a PC and keep it far too long without upgrading. Performance in firefox should be the primary concern if its EVER going to keep gaining marketshare over IE. If it doesn't run well on those older PC's, they aren't going to use it.

Posted by: Falken at February 4, 2006 7:05 AM

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