Firefox 3 Arrives

With both a bang (from a gazillion people hitting reload and/or check for updates) and a whimper (from the Mozilla servers trying to survive the onslaught). Fun times. What most people did not understand is that if they were already running RC3, there was not going to be a real difference between that and 3.0. It would be OK to wait an hour or three before downloading the damn thing. I got tired of using check for updates, so after the first two hours I went to the download page. And there it was. Basically identical to RC3 as I expected it. (as I type this I realized that I forgot to upgrade it on Windows, duh!) I just checked CPU usage, less than 30%, not exactly terrible. The killer feature for me is the awesome bar: As you type into the address bar, it searches your history. I really love it because sometimes I have to hit three versions of the same URL while working on something (I may be looking at a project's production server, while looking at the maintenance and staging copies at the same time) and it is really sweet to type three arbitrary parts of the url and have the one you want scroll up to the top of the list. I have no idea about who came up with this concept but it is pure genius. Funny, I checked my Windows version again, it is showing as 3.0, not as a beta. I have no clue how and when it was updated since I haven't run the damned thing in days. I tried to use Foxmarks for centralized bookmarks, but it is a worse solution than Google Bookmarks (which requires the Google Toolbar to be of any real use). I actually managed to export my Google Bookmarks into Safari, then into Firefox and finally into Foxmarks. Firefox 3 choked bad simply by dragging more than a dozen bookmark folders. After an hour of fighting it, I deleted the extension, cleaned the bookmarks and resumed using Google Bookmarks and the Toolbar. As for performance, it is hard to gauge since this is a dual core CPU, but at least I can tell it isn't choking the machine or eating up all of the memory. With 5 tabs open it is hovering at 30% or less.

Mozilla CEO Says Apple’s Safari ‘Update’ Undermines Users’ Trust

Whether you want it or not, you may accidentally install Apple’s Safari web browser on your computer by doing a routine update to your iTunes. That sounds strange? It is, as it seems to be a rather pushy strategy from Apple to promote their new software.

After Joe Wilcox noted in his Microsoft Watch blog yesterday that an Apple Software Update window popped on his daughter’s computer offering a Safari download as “bonus” to the regular update, talks about Apples strategy began to emerge.

Mozilla CEO John Lily noted on his blog: “What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad – not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web.”

[From Mozilla CEO Says Apple’s Safari ‘Update’ Undermines Users’ Trust]

Jesus Christ, would you grow a pair of balls?

Is the Apple envy in the FOSS community so bad that everyone is going to get their panties in a bunch over a god damn installer? I saw the stupid installer, it had THREE things in it:

1. iTunes
2. Quicktime
3. Safari

There is NOTHING covert or unfair about it. It has a list of three things, clearly named, and each item has a check box. No surprises there.

And how the fuck is this a security issue? Vista was a complete flop, Firefox 3 is still not out of beta, yet big hats from both camps have the time to stop their hard work (whatever the hell is it they do) to bitch and moan about a pop up with an optional download/update?