Web Browsers News and Reviews » Beta

Firefox 3.1 Delayed (Again)

Vygantas Lipskas — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:15 +0000

Mozilla has delayed Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 release again, stating new JavaScript engine bugs as the main reason.

There are still 18 bugs which need to be fixed before new beta.

New release date should be revealed within few days.

Download Google Chrome (Beta)

Vygantas Lipskas — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:31:33 +0000

Here you go, Google Chrome Beta is now released and you can download it here. Enjoy.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 Features Revealed

Vygantas Lipskas — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:00:14 +0000

Although the 2nd beta of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) will be released on August only, new Beta 2 features were revealed earlier today.

What’s new?

Frame Process Merging

Instead of running 2 processes every time you launch Internet Explorer 8, it will use 1 now = improved startup performance.

More tab processes

Adding more processes gives users much better isolation in the event of a failure. If each tab is in its own process, websites are completely isolated from each other.

Virtual tabs

Virtual tabs lets you navigate across Protected Mode in the same tab since we just switch the process under the tab to the correct integrity level

Automatic Crash Recovery

In the event of a crash, Automatic Crash Recovery is designed to get you back to browsing as quickly as possible. If IE8 crashes, now it will not only recover

Current URI
The travel log (your back/forward history)
Tab order
Which tab was active

But also:

Session cookies
Form data

And the last new feature:

Windows Error Reporting (aka Watson).

In the event of a crash or a hang, you may have received a choice to “send information to Microsoft”.

More detailed IE8 Beta 2 information.

Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta Released

Vygantas Lipskas — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:30:44 +0000

After a short delay, the 1st and long awaited Beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 was just released. So far, this release works with Windows Mobile only and Symbian support will be added in the upcoming (or final) build(s).
What’s new in it? Well, since Opera Mobile 9.5 is now using Presto rendering engine, it’s much faster, “more than 2.5 times faster than Internet Explorer Mobile” as they claim. Other changes include:

Pan and zoom — Just like Opera Mini, Opera Mobile 9.5 beta defaults to full Web page viewing and allows users to pan and zoom into their desired content easily.

Improved user interface — Opera has completely renovated its mobile UI. Cleaner and more intuitive, the new UI is designed for quick and easy navigation.

Opera Dragonfly — Use your Opera desktop browser to debug sites on your mobile phone through the Opera Mobile 9.5 debug menu.

Improved standards support — Opera Mobile 9.5 is the most standards compliant browser available, and the company remains steadfast in its commitment to make the Web accessible for all.

Save pages and/or images — With a click, simply save pages to your phone.

Known issues

ActiveX is disabled -> Flash plugins and embedded video streaming do not work.
Custom IME’s (like HTC’s IME) will be buggy at best, not working at worst.
Not multilingual build — Only English is supported. Problems with other languages (and input methods) is not unexpected.
Installation on memory cards may cause problems.
Text wraps in overview mode.
Fails on ACID2 test

Overall, new Opera Mobile looks great and I’m looking forward to try it.

Reviewer’s Guide to Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta
Opera Mobile 9.5 – the developer angle
Download Opera Mobile 9.5

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2

Vygantas Lipskas — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:59:30 +0000

It looks like Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 will be released within a couple of months, in the third quarter to be exact. As for now, Microsoft asks web site owners to make sure that their pages will be displayed correctly on IE 8. Check “Your Web site may not display correctly in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1” article for more details about web pages compatibility.

Opera 9.5 Beta 2 Soon to Come

Vygantas Lipskas — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:41:05 +0000

It looks like Opera 9.5 Beta 2 will be released very soon. I guess after yesterday’s one more weekly build from Opera Desktop Team with title “Beta 2 is Coming…” sums it up. I predict the release of Opera 9.5 Beta 2 on the next Wednesday. But don’t take my word for it.

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Opera Mini 5? Or Is It Opera Mini 4.5? On The Way

Vygantas Lipskas — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:57:29 +0000

It looks like we’re going to see a new Opera Mini Beta release soon. It’s not known yet, whether that will be Opera Mini 5, Opera Mini 4.5 or any other version (at least Opera Mini team is not telling that). It will be interesting to see what new features were added and what was improved.

Opera Mini home page.

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Firefox 3 Beta 3 Released

Vygantas Lipskas — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:30:27 +0000

Long awaited Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now released. With about 1300 changes (compared to the previous beta release), Firefox 3 Beta 3 is surely moving forward to bring users the ultimate web experience. The following release offers improved malware protection, download manager and greater performance as well.

For the complete list of changes, check “What’s New” page.
Please note that this build has some known issues, check them here before downloading.

Download Firefox 3 Beta 3.

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New Opera 9.5 Build Receives An Advanced Tabs Activation Feature

Vygantas Lipskas — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:06:36 +0000

Today’s Opera build introduced a well known feature, which can already be found on: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and probably few others, not so well known web browsers. This new feature allows Opera users to control tabs behavior when closing them. If you will open the following settings window: Preferences > Advanced > Tabs
It’s easy to notice the following options to choose from:

Activate the last active (default)
Activate the tab to the right
Active the first tab opened from closing tab

Please note, this is NOT a final release, make sure you check the changelog first:

Known Issues

Plug-ins crash Opera on UNIX/Linux.

Some plugins on Mac don’t work at all.

Format selector when saving pages is broken.

Opera will not fetch more than 50 new IMAP messages in one go – you’ll need to reset the account to get more.

Inline find stops working after entering one letter (using Ctrl/Cmd+F still works as expected).

Advanced tab activation currently does not work on Mac or UNIX/Linux.

Changelog

Added a new preference in Preferences > Advanced > Tabs which controls which tab to activate when closing a tab.

Fixed crash when composing mail with empty signature

Fixed crash when emptying history and VPS was disabled
css3 :target now works on targets identified using name attribute

New spatnav highlighting, similar to the one used in Opera Mini 4 and the Wii browser
iframes with content editable are now in the tabbing order (Another gmail 2 fix)

64-bit: Again possible to open (image) attachments in mail

Some more improvement to fast forward.

Opera Link now works better when using Work offline

Again possible to open links from widgets

UNIX: Drag and drop now works properly in the ION window manager

Download Opera 9.5 for Windows (Build 9789)
Download Opera 9.5 for Windows (Classic Installer) (Build 9789)
Download Opera 9.5 for Macintosh (Build 4648)
Download Opera 9.5 for UNIX (Build 1800)

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Firefox 3, February 1st Release

Vygantas Lipskas — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:02:10 +0000

Yet another Firefox nightly build (2008 02 01) was just released. This is not a final release, use it on your own risk.

Bugs fixed

#353962 [Core:JavaScript Engine] – Firefox 2.0 often hangs in Intel Mac OS X 10.4.7 [Mac]

#354135 [Core:JavaScript Engine] – jsxml.c does not check for too deep recursion [All]

#374040 [Core:Internationalization] – nsIScriptable DateFormat does not work as expected with dateFormatLong [Lin]

#395034 [Firefox:Password Manager] – Password notification bar needs icon [All]

#395813 [Firefox:Places] – Weird behavior with add bookmarks dialog (long dialogs with extra fields/delete and done buttons don’t work/title not filled out) [All]

#399606 [Firefox:Places] – Places counts auto-refreshes as page visits [All]

#402486 [Firefox:Places] – deleting lots of items from the history sidebar is slow, locks up browser until finished [All]

#405095 [Toolkit:XUL Widgets] – datetimepicker suppresses most keyboard shortcuts [All]

#410461 [Firefox:Download Manager] – List of “Other” applications has no accessible names [All]

#411088 [Firefox:Places] – when deleting a tagged bookmark from the places organizer, the tag remains [All]

#411249 [Other Applications: JavaScript Debugger] – Top crash [@ jsds_Script HookProc][@jsds ScriptHookProc (JSDContext*, JSDScript*, int, void*)] on shutdown with Firebug 1.1.0b10 installed [All]

#411725 [Firefox:OS Integration] – Modify theme for keyhole shaped back/forward buttons on Windows [Win]

#411847 [Firefox:General] – About box for customized distributions doesn’t show distribution name [All]

#413250 [Core:General] – chrome directory traversal (local disk access via “flat” addons) [All]

#413627 [Core:Security: PSM] – nsCertOverride Service can’t register observers (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED) [All]

#413806 [Firefox:OS Integration] – Land Windows icons for Beta 3 [Win]

#414018 [Firefox:Find Toolbar / FastFind] – crash when pressing shift-tab after using FAYT [All]

#414808 [Core:Security: PSM] – ASSERTION: Oops! You’re asking for a weak reference to an object that doesn’t support that.: ‘factoryPtr’ [All]

#414845 [Toolkit:XUL Widgets] – Urlbar history dropmarker pushed state [Lin]

#414930 [Firefox:Places] – Unable to drag and drop URLs to Bookmarks Toolbar [All]

#414931 [Firefox:RSS Discovery and Preview] – define TYPE_ MAYBE_FEED only where it’s used [All]

#414974 [Firefox:Places] – Regression: User should not be able to delete system(?) folders in Library left pane – Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu, Unfiled Bookmarks [All]

#414982 [Core:DOM] – Use gcZeal setting in nsJSE nvironment, as we once did with WAY_TOO_MUCH_GC [All]

#414997 [NSPR:NSPR] – PR_NewThread PrivateIndex contract is violated by PR CreateThread impls [Lin]

#415017 [Core:XPCOM] – “ASSERTION: Fault in cycle collector: script pointer traversal failed” [All]

#415101 [Firefox:Places] – wrong bookmark and tags edited from the star menu [All]

#415160 [Firefox:Places] – saved searches should be selected after being created [All]

#415170 [Toolkit:Breakpad Integration] – On Mac OS X, any comment is omitted by the Crash Reporter [Mac]

Partial Landings/WIPs/Incoming:

#405095 BACKOUT [Toolkit:XUL Widgets] – datetimepicker suppresses most keyboard shortcuts [All]

#414901 BACKOUT [Core:XPCOM] – Back out scriptable IO [All]

#342954 [Core:XBL] – [FIX]“ASSERTION: SetMayHaveFrame failed?” involving XBL [All]

#398627 [Firefox:File Handling] – make icons for “always ask” and “save file” actions in Applications prefpane [All]

#408797 [Firefox:Password Manager] – Implement Change Password as a notification bar [All]

Regressions/Annoying/Common bugs:

#337761 [Core:XPCOM] – Folder does not open anymore for dragged link [All]

#339804 [Firefox:General] – Multiple login requests for authentification proxies if sessionstore is enabled [Win]

#385245 [Firefox:Places] – history sidebar very slow (way slower than fx2) [All]

#386343 [Firefox:General] – Breakpad doesn’t work [Win]

#388209 [Firefox:Places] – bookmarks menu dnd indicator not visible if I want to drop an item before a separator [Win]

#400075 [Core:ImageLib] – long delays painting the app when it’s brought to the foreground. [Win]

#410330 [Core:Plug-ins] – Very high memory and CPU usage. Browser becomes unresponsive [Win]

Download Firefox 3 (2008 02 01) build now.

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