Firefox 1.5

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Dr Lobster*
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Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

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well here we are, the latest offical release of Firefox is almost upon us... i'm using RC3 at the moment and can report that browsing and page rendering is significantly improved.

those of you who use adblock to remove adverts from webpages will note that the version of adblock downloadable from the mozilla.org extensions website doesn't work - you can download the latest version from here instead:

http://bene.sitesled.com/install.htm

the only disadvantage of this new version is that the plugin exposes a property called _AdblockFiltered which enables websites to prevent you from browsing if you're blocking adverts on their page.

the way around this though is to install the package from the above website, search for the adblock.jar and replace it with the one downloaded from here which i have modified myself:

http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upl ... dblock.jar
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Ebeneezer Scrooge
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Joined: Tue 23 Sep, 2003 13.53
Location: Scrooge Towers

and for those of us who love to get rid of IE icons from the desktop, there is a handy little extension that allows you to load pages using the IE engine.

IE Tab

It allows you to either load a new tab using IE, or switch the current frame to IE. You can also add a list of sites that should always use IE over Firefox - handy for banking websites!

It is available for earlier versions too, but you have to also install the IE plugin for that!
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Jamez
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Firefox is disgustingly RAM hungry. This is how much memory it uses for only three tabs!

Compare this to the fabulous Avant browser (which lets you disable ActiveX, Scripts etc at the click of a drop down menu), and you'll see that FF is an over-rated piece of junk!

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Dr Lobster*
Posts: 2104
Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

in fairness, ff 1.5 seems to have much more controlled usage - opening 3 tabs uses about 28mb on my machine.

the reason why firefox uses more memory is that it has an in memory cache to speed up browsing and offer the new instant back facility.

you can alter the amount of ram used for this cache by typing aboutconfig and changing the browser.cache.memory.capacity to something smaller - such as to 4096 or 1024 (for 4 or 1 mb of ram)

the thing i like about firefox it the plugins - the adblock one for instance makes browsing much more pleasurable.
DJGM
Posts: 528
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 15.39
Location: Manchester
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Although it's hasn't been officially announced yet, builds of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Final have been uploaded to
the Mozilla.org FTP servers. So, whenever you're ready, pop over to this location here to download it!


BUT, if you've installed Firefox 1.5 RC3, you needn't download 1.5 Final . . . they're both the same!

See this MozillaZine forum topic for more about that!
Neil Jones
Posts: 661
Joined: Thu 11 Sep, 2003 20.03
Location: West Midlands

Bit of work to do on the extension front it would seem now:

Image

Apart from that, the default skin is changed a bit from how it was in Firefox 1.0.x days.

The entire web browsing experience is faster, although I previously had three tabs open in 1.0.7 and it took up 32M of that alone, now I only have two tabs open in 1.5 and it's still taking up 32M.
James H
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Joined: Tue 20 Jul, 2004 14.49
Location: In your endo

Jamez wrote:Firefox is disgustingly RAM hungry. This is how much memory it uses for only three tabs!

Compare this to the fabulous Avant browser (which lets you disable ActiveX, Scripts etc at the click of a drop down menu), and you'll see that FF is an over-rated piece of junk!
The minute I open Avant it crashes on me.

Thanks James.
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Pete
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Location: Dundee

mozilla.com is much prettier than the usual dross they've churned out
"He has to be larger than bacon"
Jamez
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Location: Bristol

James H wrote:
Jamez wrote:Firefox is disgustingly RAM hungry. This is how much memory it uses for only three tabs!

Compare this to the fabulous Avant browser (which lets you disable ActiveX, Scripts etc at the click of a drop down menu), and you'll see that FF is an over-rated piece of junk!
The minute I open Avant it crashes on me.

Thanks James.
It works fine for me, and this machine is nearly 3 yrs old!
Jenny
Posts: 242
Joined: Wed 20 Aug, 2003 23.29

I really don't like the tabbed Options menus. Still, no doubt someone will come up with an extension to restore them to their former niceness.

Incidentally, gopher: support seems much improved in this version. Now there's a geeky observation.
DJGM
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 15.39
Location: Manchester
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Over 2 million people downloaded Firefox 1.5 within a day of it's official release . . .
cbeard wrote: There are now more than 2 million people enjoying a better web
experience with Firefox 1.5. Demand continues to be high, greatly
exceeding what we saw last year with the release of Firefox 1.0 ...
More here . . .
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