Firefox 5

Firefox released fifth version silently and without making much news about it. Still many firefox version 4 members are not yet upgraded to it. Many people found that browser is not auto-installing the new version. I'm one of from these people who never got their version auto upgraded. With this upgrade i guess things will be fixed. There are more than hundreads of things planned and released by mozzila. Version 5 seems to be the one released with complete HTML5 support and few other enhancements. One notable enhancement of firefox is that it is allowing users to specifically set browser to 'do not track' setting. By using this setting analytics, ads can't track your browser for their own purpose. This may sound problem for some ad networks who deceptively add cookies or filter ads dynamically. But those who are into behavioural ads system will find it much effective. There is no need for 'do not track' addon anymore. As for plugin update, there are many plugins which are likely to be broken in this new version. But many of my plugins are working without any issues at all. I found them working for me. I need to find few plugins which are compatible. By default xmarks, personas, ad blocker plus and sync works perfectly without any issues with new version. This is just case of my machine, not sure how it is working or not working for others. So far there seems to be fast response from firefox. On windows xp, there is no graphical enhancement seen. But thsoe who are using vista and windows 7 will find small tab bar at the top of window of firefox for tab management. I don't know how security wise important this release is. But if you want to upgrade your old firefox4 for this feature then you can do so. Personally there is nothing interesting update found by me. Maybe it is too early for any performance review.

Well I think that these types of updates made by Firefox are for advertising purpose because in these days opera upgraded their software too. Personally I will not upgrade the version until in a month because all the time I decide to upgrade I only get problems with the browser performance and the work of some addons. But we have to admit it Firefox is the best browser nowadays maybe the tab feature was the first which atracted to almost all the internet users to install firefox in their computers. In fact install the upgrade now maybe it´s a mistake because in all the times Mozilla upgrades the Firefox I get a lot of errors in my navigation. Maybe in security purposes there is no some great updates because in the version 4 the security was very good not like the version 3 where some guy from Pakistan came to my browser I don´t know why and was stealing all my cookies when I used my premium accounts to download from the file hosting services like rapidshare, megaupload and I was to be changing the password and logging out almost all the time to avoid losing my account. Once I started to use Firefox 4 the problem end. In visual effects well I am one of the unfortunate because I have windows xp and I can´t upgrade to Vista or windows 7 so this feature will not work in my computer. Well I have to congratulate to the mozilla team from here because they give us this browser totally free and without paying a penny or something. So if you want maybe can follow the advice of starscream and install the update maybe can work for you. Bye.

I agree that they're releasing a lot of stuff lately and most of the time they're either fixes or carry some advertising add-on to their system. You can also expect firefox 5.5 or 6 in few more months and before january 2012 they're going to bring firefox 7 or 8 i guess. Who knows ? So with last two update they're sharing google adsense revenue and that is why they added google search to the homepage. Also when you use google search in the search bar at the top, they get revenue share for the search done by the browser user. In fact any search done by the browser user gets credited to the mozzila unless it is done by the another persons site search or google revenue share code. This is what i noticed so far with their new revenue share module for search bar that supports -ebay, amazon, google etc etc. This could be the reason behind they have not added wolfram alpha and duckduckgo to their default search engine. Though these two are good additions but i guess they're not ready on the terms of revenue share with mozzila browser and hence they're not doing the revenue share with firefox. But you can manually add any other search engine like bing, yahoo, duckduckgo and wolfram alpha to the search bar using add-on. But otherwise there is no default settings for the firefox. As for windows upgrade, i think firefox will continue to support older version of windows for quite some time. I think they're supporting windows 2000 for some time now. I think they are slowly downgrading support and updates for old windows. But you can rest assured that windows XP will remain in support for atleast 2014. I think they're likely to remove windows XP when there is huge upgrade in windows .NET framework which don't support XP. Otherwise i dont think firefox will stop supporting windows at all. Still i didn't managed to get the security issues of firefox on windows machines. Only performance based issues are likely to be there for windows. I have seen many users having plugin_container.exe issue for performance. So if you're having that issue then try browsing the web using disabled plugins. This will surely improve the performance of the firefox. If not the i guess you need to start using firefox from safe mode. Also you need to disable the history and add-ons featuer while surfing. This may give some performance boost but it will take the joy of browsing out of firefox. I found some plugins helping me speedup using adblocking feature. But i guess if you are having performance issue then only option is to remove the plugins or disable them.

Still many firefox version 4 members are not yet upgraded to it.

Now, Firefox4 users receive a popup asking them to upgrade to Firefox 5.

That's weird. I'm one of those who never got pop-up or even window that says i need to upgrade. In fact many of my friends found out that for them it was auto updated but not for me. I guess it depends on internet connection. Firefox detects the speed or the settings with which we're using the computer and based on that they either create pop-up window or download and automatically install the software. Not sure why both these things don't apply to me here but i guess this is because of the settings in about:config perhaps ? not sure from my side. Few things i noticed about Firefox that few plugins like nofollow plugin, SEO quake and few others are not yet updated. So i take that we should better wait for these plugins and wait for updates in between. As for privacy based settings on need to only enable it in options. In order to make those settings you can follow these steps. 1. Go to Tools Menu and Click Options2. Click on Privacy tab.3. Check option - 'Tell websites that i do not want to be tracked'.4. Click on Permanent secure browsing mode.5. In permanent secure browsing mode, cookies are not stored and you have to login everytime you close the browser, so make selections carefully. 6. Click Ok and close the window.Once browser is restarted you can see the settings loaded default everytime you start firefox. From these settings you'll be in more secure browsing and with proxy or do not track type of search engines, you can get more privacy. So for those who are working in their office will find it much better to work with these settings. None of their cookies and logins are stored. Also websites can't collect geographic and other targeted data from the user of this firefox profile from now on. So that gives one a good privacy option inside firefox. Another improvement in firefox is that you can have tabs group. So if you want to browse favorite websites and work related websites then you can make a group of it and switch between the groups whenever needed. this maybe a good idea for those who work on browser whole day. I guess these features are going to make firefox consume more memory. So plugin_container.exe and other performance issues are going to be there for sure.

I just had my firefox 5 and my avast addon and a few addons disabled. I'm usually using google chrome for normal browsing. I just hope that firefox improve their speed and performance. The problem with upgrading with firefox is about half of its addons are no longer compatible with the update.

Some plugins will take some time to resolve the current issues with firefox. Skype had issues with firefox as well and i think that update will also come in few weeks. But still i can tell you that for sure it'll take some time for most of the known plugins to update. In fact in that time new update something like 5.1.x is likely to be there. So same cycle will repeat again. I know it's boring for those who are using the plugins for their work. I have seen these add-ons and compatibility issues are causing speed issues as well. So in comparison to chrome surely there is very low performance from firefox. Also chrome without incognito mode is not what i prefer to use. And with icongnito mode many add-ons on chrome simply don't work at all. So not sure if it's time to switch to chrome for normal browsing. Though chrome has new feature fast pages but still not sure if it's worth because most of the time they track your settings. But i think its better to use it if firefox is taking more time for simple webpages to load. If you have speed issues and want to use proxy to compress text and images then opera turbo is one good idea. You can consider surftan as well but it has limit of about 1GB per month per browser account. So i guess it's better to use opera if you're on low connection.

At least I am happy, firefox5 works with the Xisto forum, even the "rich text format" does not have the missing cursor bug, now it works fine.The look and feel is very similar to firefox4, so the things I did not like are still present.

Missing cursor bug ? Can you explain more ? Do you mean showing cursor while typing the replies or post ? If so, that seems to be present as i'm typing this. I do have issues with showing cursor while creating new post. In that case it doesn't let me type on the textbox, if that's the bug you're pointing at then yes it still exist on asta and i guess it is related to low speed connection from my side and IPB slow response. So i think this explains the bug for me. Not sure if this is the bug you used to face on firefox. I think most of such bugs except that plugin_container.exe process looks like solved to me. I want that bug to gone from firefox forever that day it'll be completely improved IMO. ;)I don't have vista running on this machine(on which i'm typing as of now). So i can't test that window tabs option. I think it looks very different on windows XP. Not sure how it looks on vista and windows 7. So can't comment on that improvement. So if these minor OS specific improvements aside, i don't think there is anything improved from the user interface side. All the things looks same to me. lol. I agree on that point. Maybe it's just us or is it related to windows XP users ?

I've installed Firefox4 some time ago, but didn't really use it, just open it to test if the site works with firefox, but with updating of firefox the annoying thing for me always was that message: "this addon is not compatible with this version of firefox"Google chrome versions are also quite frequent and it usually updates it self without even asking and usually the UI doesn't change and nobody sees it? I remember google chrome was Google chrome 5 or 7 now it's Google chrome 12

Google chrome is updated whenever there is fix or update in original chromium browser. So their updates are obvious and they're also made on request basis. But most of the time it is default download for most of the users. I have yet to see anyone waiting for the download of the chrome. I think only portable downloads are not supported for the automatic download. So i take that as issue with the portable updater and not from the google chrome update settings side. Okay i may turning off topic with this google chrome update issue, thread is about firefox 5. Firefox was also not quick updated these days but i guess they changed the things from version 4. I have found that the version 4 was immediately updated to 4.1. So maybe this could be the 'release early release often' type of thingy going on. I think this will work as long as there are more developers on their firm. Once they find less developers are bug reports then work of regular updates will be minimized. I wonder how many add-on developers got tired of frequent update from the firefox core. I think many even stopped the update for the current fix. I mean if there are less donation then less likely to have current updates. It's free work after all. So that is one reason behind less updates from the firefox addon developers.

Google chrome is updated whenever there is fix or update in original chromium browser. So their updates are obvious and they're also made on request basis. But most of the time it is default download for most of the users. I have yet to see anyone waiting for the download of the chrome. I think only portable downloads are not supported for the automatic download. So i take that as issue with the portable updater and not from the google chrome update settings side. Okay i may turning off topic with this google chrome update issue, thread is about firefox 5.

 

Firefox was also not quick updated these days but i guess they changed the things from version 4. I have found that the version 4 was immediately updated to 4.1. So maybe this could be the 'release early release often' type of thingy going on. I think this will work as long as there are more developers on their firm. Once they find less developers are bug reports then work of regular updates will be minimized. I wonder how many add-on developers got tired of frequent update from the firefox core. I think many even stopped the update for the current fix. I mean if there are less donation then less likely to have current updates. It's free work after all. So that is one reason behind less updates from the firefox addon developers.

It's true and I dont' understing why Mozilla is pusing a minor release as a major release even Google surprses me that they managed to get from v5 to v12 in only a year or so.

The problem however with Firefox is that a major release causes addons to fail, only because they've changed a 4 into a 5, they should have looked at Microsoft better. When they release Windows 7, they did not change the version number of the kernel from 6 to 7, instead they kept it at 6 because many applications were doing incorrect compatibility checks (like, if kernel.version != 6 then fail());

 

Anyway, I'm staying with Opera, at least a major release is a major release (same goes for Internet Explorer btw).

Opera is slow and steady is browser development. But atleast they're making less bugs than google chrome and firefox. For example, chrome has spell checker bug which crashes entire browser and starts with new session without saving the previous. This bug is still not cleared for me even with their new version. The chrome was in beta for more than year. I don't know why most of the services from google remain in beta for that long time even after the update of the browser. So i take that this is issue from google side and not from the chromium side. Atleast they don't have issues which are operating system specific. Opera also works much better in turbo mode if the connection is slow. So for me it is one good alternative for firefox. I have found that opera has much better releases in comparison to firefox. Only issue they have as of now is lack of add-ons. I mean there are some add-ons which are firefox specific. Even chrome lacks those add-ons and same is the case with the opera. So i guess it'll take some time to get opera those add-ons or even get attention of the developers on their side. So i don't wish to use them as of now and for my add-on usage i prefer to use firefox instead. Internet explorer has it's own web standards and for which i prefer not to update my site. Also there are many security updates for internet explorer. So in my opinion IE is not worth the switch. In fact i prefer buggy chrome or firefox over internet explorer any time.

The rapid release update cycles have generated quite a bit of controversy, particularly for business/enterprise users of the software products where significant internal testing for compatibility is needed for upgrading browsers, operating systems, etc.

Mozilla drafts Firefox vision statement
Rapid-release Firefox meets corporate backlash

The most notable lack of change between Firefox 4 and 5 is the user interface. JavaScript performance (and apparently memory usage) improvements are much needed. Also the Do-Not-Track HTTP header setting is more prominently displayed (not sure if anyone will notice), and of course some security issues have been fixed.

I still prefer Chrome as my default browser, but I am comfortable with using Firefox and Internet Explorer (version 9). I haven't installed Safari on Windows in a long time, but I do use Safari on iOS. As for Opera...wouldn't even consider it (for now and possible a long time).

I don't know what you find wrong with opear. But opera is doesn't crash like chrome and has much stability than chrome and firefox. there are also some addons present for opera which makes it easy to use things. Besides that opera has do not track setting and also blocks cookies or adds which are hard to do with chrome. Though there are addons in chrome to do that but overall it is not so easy to do that. It could be just my observation but i have noticed this, you may or may not notice the same. Don't get me wrong i like firefox and large part of it is done using it. I prefer not to stick with one browser these days for obvious reasons. Another thing is that firefox release issues makes it hard for add-on maintainer to update the addon. I mean they updated version from 3 to 4 and now 5 ? i think this is too quick and there are hardly any benefits which are notiable on windows. I don't know if there are operating system tweaks or performance improvements. I have gone through the links about early release but there isn't much in favor of firefox. I mean not in terms of normal users. Many users found it hard to update firefox because of this release cycle. I'm one of from them. I also think that plugin_container.exe issue is not solved at all in this browser. So my opinion is to stick with mix of browsers instead keeping all the add-ons(eggs) or work in one basket. I'm going to use browser in swap way and use it to get better performance.