What’s new in Mozilla Firebird 0.7
If all goes well, Mozilla Firebird will be released early next week. Here's a list of changes since 0.6 that I consider important.
New features since 0.6.1:
- Advanced preferences panel
- Download/helper apps preferences panel
- Cookie whitelisting (through the new Cookie Exceptions window)
- New password manager
- Web panels (like Mozilla's sidebar panels)
- Alternate stylesheet support (through a status bar button)
- Close other tabs (tab context menu)
- Domain is shown for image blocking (image context menu)
- Send Page, Send Link, Send Image (various context menus)
- Autoscroll (trigger by middle-clicking on a web page)
Important bug fixes since 0.6.1:
- 206029: Flash plugin installer breaks firebird (really a bug in the Flash installer, but firebird works around it)
- 210910: Right-clicking a file within a bookmarks folder in the bookmarks menu or toolbar makes that folder inaccessible. (Fixed for the most common cases.)
- 210588: Cancelling download of .lnk file deletes target of .lnk file (Windows 2000 only)
- 212556: scroll wheel sometimes stops working after app switch
- 199819: setting browser.formfill.enable (save form information) to false doesn't disable form autocomplete (partly fixed)
- 205893#c31: Should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows. (Example GDI problem: when you open about 100 large images in 0.6, the browser stops redrawing content and even its user interface.)
- 212686: down arrow into autocomplete causes other autocomplete results to disappear
Important bug fixes between 0.6 and 0.6.1:
- 205989, 206026: Two JS/DOM bugs that broke bookmarklets
- 184202: Autocomplete crash
- 212487: Autocomplete is one character behind typed text (this fix caused 212686)
Regressions in 0.7:
- 214310: removing parent of focused elem breaks mouse wheel and textboxes (shacknews.com dthread mode).
- 218894: After closing history sidebar, search results remain (but search text does not).
- Several password manager bugs (218135, 218927, 220734, 217439).
Stuff you should know:
- The "Quick Launch" feature (-turbo) has been removed (217026).
- If you store multiple passwords for a site, Firebird will no longer show a dialog listing the usernames you have stored (216541). Instead, Firebird will fill in your password after you fill in your username. You can get the list of stored usernames by pressing the down arrow in the username textbox.
- Firebird does not refuse to use some old themes (217410). If you use one of these themes, your scrollbars and back/forward buttons will go missing.
October 10th, 2003 at 11:31 pm
Thanks very much for your summary. Your site has been invaluable for identifying which new builds to use, and I’ve managed to switch three people from IE to Firebird with help from The Burning Edge. Some of it was in selecting the build with some of the features that I wanted to show off, but staying stable. One person, though, was impressed by the visible trail of daily development. Again, thanks!
October 11th, 2003 at 10:39 am
Great list.
October 11th, 2003 at 11:46 am
Hi,
I have been waiting for someone to comment on 0.7’s cookie problem that I have encountered in the Firebird General Forum. This problem does not appear in 0.6.1 but with most of the versions I tested (both the nightly and the Athlon XP versions) up until the end of last week.
Not being able to work in sites because they require cookies is, I think, a major problem.
Do you have thoughts on this at all?
Thanks,
BLS
October 11th, 2003 at 1:31 pm
BLS: I haven’t heard of that problem with 0.7 branch builds. The following is general advice for when something doesn’t work for you but works for other people.
If you unzipped 0.7 into a directory that had an older build in it, try unzipping it into an empty directory. (Overwriting an old build without completely deleting the old build often causes problems.) If that doesn’t help, try using a new profile.
October 14th, 2003 at 7:57 am
Jesse, Autoscroll is introduced after 0.6.1.
No official release available with that feature for now.
October 14th, 2003 at 11:32 am
To my knowledge, bug 216170 remains unfixed, and limits the usefulness of the Send Link feature. Please don’t take this as me whining for a fix, I understand and appreciate that the developers have priorities and limited time. I’m just saying that perhaps we shouldn’t trumpet a feature until it’s properly implemented.
October 14th, 2003 at 12:02 pm
Thanks noririty. I had been testing the wrong 1.5a build, thinking it was the same as 0.6.1.
I moved autoscroll to “New features since 0.6.1” and removed the empty “New features between 0.6 and 0.6.1” section.
October 15th, 2003 at 5:32 pm
Thanks for the great overview — it helps to see it all together in one place than gathering the info from various conversations and forum topics!! :)
October 16th, 2003 at 7:46 am
Hm, web panels in 0.7 – where?
Happy birthday for Monday!
October 16th, 2003 at 1:20 pm
Thanks Jesse, I’m using this info in the release notes.
October 16th, 2003 at 4:21 pm
About “Web panels”: “Bookmarks can be opened in the sidebar” is a more accurate description than “like Mozilla’s sidebar panels”.
October 17th, 2003 at 3:22 am
Boo! I was looking forward to a sidebar like Adot previewed (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html)”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html).”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html)”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html).”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html)”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html).”>http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html)
weblogs.mozillazine.org always seems to be down, the google cache version is here: http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:16BCMs0HAyIJ:weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html+asa+mozilla+web+panels&hl=en&ie=UTF-8“>http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:16BCMs0HAyIJ:weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html+asa+mozilla+web+panels&hl=en&ie=UTF-8″>http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:16BCMs0HAyIJ:weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/003810.html+asa+mozilla+web+panels&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
October 17th, 2003 at 3:25 am
er, something went wrong there…
October 11th, 2003 at 2:55 am
Firebird 0.7
Jesse Ruderman, the maintainer of the Burning Edge Firebird builds blog, has released an excellent “what’s new” document on the upcoming Firebird 0.7 release. Find it here….
October 11th, 2003 at 7:40 am
Mozilla Firebird will be released early next week
Jesse Ruderman blogs: New features since 0.6.1: – Advanced preferences panel – Download/helper apps preferences panel – Cookie whitelisting (through…
October 11th, 2003 at 1:48 pm
Mozilla Firebird 0.7
Jesse has recently posted that Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is on its way. I installed Firebird 0.6 on my dad’s computer…
October 12th, 2003 at 9:36 am
Fall Cleaning…
Just like Asa has been having problems with spam comments on his blog, I have had the same exact problem. I finally tracked down all of the comments spam for Viagra among other things and deleted them. I am looking…
October 13th, 2003 at 9:10 am
What’s new in Mozilla Firebird 0.7
should be out tomorrowish