Outside the Beltway

Firefox 0.9 Available

James Joyner
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Mozilla has released version 0.9 of their Firefox browser. According to the press release:

New features in Firefox 0.9 include:

  • Easy migration: Switching to Firefox has never been easier now that Firefox imports data like Favorites, history, settings, cookies and passwords from Internet Explorer. Firefox can also import settings from Mozilla 1.x, Netscape and Opera.
  • Smaller Download: Continuing efforts to make this the most efficient browser, the Windows version of Firefox is now only a 4.7 MB download, making downloading Firefox a breeze for dial-up and broadband users alike.
  • New Default Theme: A new default theme provides a bright new look for Windows and Linux users.
  • SmartUpdate: A new SmartUpdate feature notifies users of new versions of Firefox to ensure that the browser is always up to date.
  • Help: A new online help system makes this one powerful, friendly browser.
  • Extension/Theme Manager: New Extension and Theme Managers provide a convenient and secure way to manage and update the hundreds of add-ons that set Firefox apart from other browsers.

Mozilla Firefox also includes numerous bug fixes and incremental improvements, including faster page load speed.

I just downloaded and installed it without a hitch, other than the annoying fact that they disable all extensions and force you to re-download and re-install them. What a boneheaded idea!

Overall, I’ve grown used to Firefox and use it for most of my web browsing needs, mainly for the faster page rendering and convenience of tabbed browsing. It’s still not as fully featured as Internet Explorer and some sites–including a fair number of weblogs–don’t render properly in Firefox, requiring me to open them in IE.

Hat tip: Dean Esmay

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11 responses to “Firefox 0.9 Available”

  1. Dean Esmay Avatar
    Dean Esmay

    Hmm, interesting, which ones? It works fine for all the blogs I read, and I scan quite a few each week.

  2. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    For some reason, several blogs using CSS tend not to render well for me in Mozilla. Q and O and Lt. Smash come to mind because they do it regularly, although others do it from time to time.

  3. Skillzy Avatar
    Skillzy

    Wha?!? I thought you tried Firefox and didn’t like it a while back. Glad to see you’re a believer. Because Firefox (and Mozilla) are strictly standards based, and Internet Explorer is standards based, except where Microsoft feels like doing their own thing, pages can render a little differently. And since most people view/check their layouts in IE, sometimes Mozilla issues go unnoticed. It’s usually not a huge deal to fix, just an errant table tag or two somewhere will mess things up.

    The only place I use IE anymore is for custom app web pages, like we have here at work.

  4. Jim Henley Avatar
    Jim Henley

    James: I was having trouble with the rendering of several different Blogspot templates. Also, Drum’s site sometimes had way too much margin on the left. In each case I ended up having good results by clicking Reload. Citizen Smash actually loads fine for me, so I don’t know if this fix will solve your specific problems, but it’s worth a try.

  5. BigFire Avatar
    BigFire

    There has been a major change in how theme and extensions are being handled in 0.9. Older extension need to be either re-written or repackaged

  6. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    Jim: I’ve done the reload thing with mixed results. Matt Yglesias’ site does that to me as well sometimes.

    Skillzy: The tabbed thing grew on me and there are extensions that create workarounds for some of the problems I was having.

    BigFire: That makes sense. It’s a mild annoyance but I suppose better than doing the Microsoft thing and making things buggy forward in order to provide backward compatibility.

  7. Neil Parks Avatar
    Neil Parks

    I’ve been a big fan of Firefox (and its predecessors Phoenix and Firebird) for a long time. (Recently they decided to quit naming it after old Pontiacs.) 🙂

    I’m glad you like it too.

    For those annoying pages that are so poorly designed that only MSIE can view them, try the IE View extension. Just right click and you’ll get a menu option to view the page in IE.

  8. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Oooo… I’ll have to grab that extension. There’s some sites that I visit that use IE-specific scripts for logins and such.

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