404372 - create release notes for Firefox 3 Beta 1

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Content coming shortly.

Comment 1

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

Attachment: Title image for Firefox 3 beta release notes

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Content:

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<h2>Release Date: November 19, 2007</h2>

<p>Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for <b>testing purposes only</b>. </p>

<p>These beta releases are targeted to Web developers and our testing community to gain feedback before advancing to the next stage in the release process. The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users. Users of the <a href="http://www.getfirefox.com">latest released version of Firefox</a> should not expected their add-ons and plugins to work properly with this beta.</p>

<p>Much of the work leading up to this first beta has been around developing the infrastructure to support a bunch of exciting new features. With this first beta, you'll get a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3 but there's still more to come and much of what you'll see is still a bit rough around the edges.</p>

<p>Please see below for an extensive list of <a href="#whatsnew">features and enhancements</a> found in Firefox 3 Beta 1, as well as <a href="#issues>known issues</a> and <a href="#FAQ">frequently asked questions</a>.</p>

<p>As always, we appreciate your feedback either through this <a href="http://feedback.mozilla.org">feedback form</a> or by filing a bug in <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org">Bugzilla</a>.</p>

<h2 id="whatsnew">What's New in Firefox 3 Beta 1</h2>

<p>Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 millions lines of code changes, fixing about 15,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for <a href="#performance">performance</a>, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a <a href="#secure">more secure</a>, <a href="#easy">easier to use</a>, <a href="#personal">more personal</a> product with a lot <a href="#engine">under the hood</a> to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.</p>

<dl>
  <dt id="secure">More Security</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul class="spaced">
      <li>One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.</li>
      <li>Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can <a href="http://mozilla.com/firefox/its-an-attack.html">test it here</a>. (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated)</li>
      <li>New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/its-a-trap.html">test it here</a>.</li>
      <li>New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounter an <a href="https://amazon.com">invalid SSL certificate</a>.</li>
      <li>Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.</li>
      <li>Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that do not provide secure updates will be disabled.</li>
      <li>Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading email and executables.</li>
      <li>Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="easy">Easier to Use</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul class="spaced">
      <li>Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.</li>
      <li>Simplified addon installation: the addons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.</li>
      <li>New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files.</li>
      <li>Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.</li>
      <li>Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.</li>
      <li>Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.</li>
      <li>Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.<li>
      <li>Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.<li>
      <li>Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.</li>
      <li>Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph</li>
      <li>Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.</li>
      <li>Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.</li>
      <li>Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.</li>
      <li>Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="personal">More Personal</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.</li>
      <li>Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.</li>
      <li>Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.</li>
      <li>Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.</li>
      <li>Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.</li>
      <li>Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox.)</li>
      <li>Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="engine">Improved Platform for Developers</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.</li>
      <li>Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.</li>
      <li>Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.</li>
      <li>Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users)</li>
      <li>A more complete overview of <a href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_3_for_developers">Firefox 3 for developers</a> is available for website and add-on developers.</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="performance">Improved Performance</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.</li>
      <li>Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.</li>
      <li>Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new <a href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Interfacing_with_the_XPCOM_cycle_collector">XPCOM cycle collector</a> completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  </dt>
</dl>

<p>A more complete, yet "unofficial" list of <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html">Firefox 3 changes with their bug numbers</a> is available at the Burning Edge website.</p>
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<h2 id="issues">Known Issues</h2>

<p>This section contains some of the known problems with Firefox 3 Beta 1. Please read through this list before filing any new bugs.</p>

<dl>
  <dt id="allsystems">All Systems</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Privacy &gt; History &gt; Remember visited pages to "0" has no effect (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366075">bug 366075</a>).</li>
      <li>MathML does not render properly in Firefox 3 Beta 1 (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324857">bug 324857</a>)</li>
      <li>Google maps sometimes prints without turn-by-turn directions (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=399238">bug 399238</a> and <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397428">bug 397428</a>)</li>
      <li>Yahoo! Mail will not work; users must use Yahoo! Classic Mail (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398381">bug 398381</a>)</li>
      <li>Windows Live Mail will not work; users must use Hotmail Classic Mail (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392919">bug 392919<a/>)<li>
      <li>Add Bookmark dialog is inaccessible to screen access technologies (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=393398">bug 393398</a>)</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="windows">Microsoft Windows</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Non-administrator Vista users are unable to launch Firefox if Vista Parental controls are enabled (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=396509">bug 396509</a>)</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="osx">Mac OS X</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Some focus issues remain when running on OS X (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354768">bug 354768</a>)</li>
      <li>In OS X Leopard (10.5) an extra "File" menu appears to the right of the help menu (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385966">bug 385966</a>)</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt id="linux">Linux and Unix Systems</dt>
  <dd>
    <ul>
      <li>Breakpad crash reporting system doesn't work on Fedora 8 (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392919">bug 392919</a>)</li>
      <li>Some GTK themes fail to properly render the disabled state of checkboxes and radiobuttons (see <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388131">bug 388131</a>)</li>
    </ul>
  </dd>
</dl>
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Comment 3

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

The other text for the release notes page should be copied and pasted from the Firefox 2.0.0.9 release notes, with the appropriate s/Firefox 2/Firefox 3/ and changes to links.

Comment 4

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Regarding <li>Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads</li> - should we call that out in the features if there is an existing bug (Bug 396509) which basically prevents that functionality at the moment?

Comment 5

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

To Bug 393547 the relnote keyword was also added when this bug was blocked for
M10. So Bug 393547 is missing here or ?

Comment 6

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Two known issues to add to the "All Systems" section:

<li>Unfiled bookmarks don't show up anywhere in the Bookmarks and History
organizer (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=393547">bug
393547</a>)</li>
<li>The malware protection blacklist is not currently activated</li>

(In reply to comment #4)
> Regarding <li>Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system
> wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads</li> - should we
> call that out in the features if there is an existing bug (Bug 396509) which
> basically prevents that functionality at the moment?

Yes, I think so; the bug is limited to non-admin users, which basically makes it useless, but still ...

(In reply to comment #5)
> To Bug 393547 the relnote keyword was also added when this bug was blocked for
> M10. So Bug 393547 is missing here or ?

Addressed above.

Comment 7

[Paul Kim]

Caught a few typos:
> millions lines of code changes, fixing about 15,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes
/s/millions/million/

> <li>Simplified addon installation: the addons whitelist has been removed
/s/addon/add-on/
/s/addons/add-ons/

Comment 8

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

The Windows Live Mail known issue is listing the wrong bug:

<li>Windows Live Mail will not work; users must use Hotmail Classic Mail (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=396259">bug 396259<a/>)<li>

(In reply to comment #7)
> Caught a few typos:

Thanks, Paul.

Comment 9

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

Some more typos:

Users of the <a
href="http://www.getfirefox.com">latest released version of Firefox</a> should
not *expect* (expected) their add-ons and plugins to work properly with this beta.</p>

Comma structure odd:  With this first
beta, you'll get a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3 but there's still more
to come and much of what you'll see is still a bit rough around the edges.

The comma should probably be before "but" rather than "beta": With this first
beta you'll get a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3, but there's still more
to come and much of what you'll see is still a bit rough around the edges.

Comment 10

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

the "contributed builds" anchor link in the side menu does not work because it is now called #localizedbuilds. The menu should be updated in text and anchor link to reflect that.

I think the L10N teams link is obsolete, it should be now http://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Teams (need Axel's confirmation on this)

"Linux and Unix" since we don't support other Unices than Solaris, wouldn't it make sense to call it "Linux and Solaris"?

There is and empty <li></li> in the "known Issues/all systems" part, same in the "Easier to Use" section.

Comment 11

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

nit: s/are used when Firefox encounter an/are used when Firefox encounter*s*/

(oops)

Comment 12

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Done.

Comment 13

[Tony Chung [:tchung]]

Verified on live site.

Comment 14

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Using http://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Localization_Teams for the l10n teams is right, the list on L10n:Teams is an unpatrolled superset of that. Localization_Teams has those that are actually in our system.

But yes, we should whack the contributed builds part, that seems to be copied and pasted since I don't know when. Should I file a separate bug on that? It affects both 3.0 and 2.0.0.x.