Firefox 4: recent changes in Firefox

I’ve been really busy these days, and I didn’t have a chance to keep you updated, and a lot happened:

Javascript
- Release of Jägermonkey, Firefox new Javascript engine
- Release of Kraken, a new browser benchmark
- SpiderMonkey JSON change: trailing commas no longer accepted
- New ES5 strict mode support, see the restrictions
Hardware acceleration, how to help:
mozRequestAnimationFrame updated:
- 60fps instead of 50fps
- Ability to pass a callback function to mozRequestAnimationFrame instead of using an event listener (if no function is passed, an event is fired instead)
Video implementation updated
- Fire timeupdate less frequently than once per frame
- Make media progress events be simple events
HTML5
- The spacer Element Is Gone
- HTML5 forms, complete enough to ship
CSS
- -moz-calc is available (we didn’t keep -moz-min() and -moz-max())
- we dropped the -moz- prefix for -moz-border-radius & -moz-box-shadow
File API:
- Export canvas to File
- url attribute of the File API had been dropped, in favor of window.createBlobURL(file) and window.revokeBlobURL(file)
Misc:
- To fix some important bugs in Firefox 4 Beta 5, we released a Beta 6: Firefox 4 Beta 6 renamed to Beta 7
- bilinear filtering of upscaled images for Linux
- enable WebGL by default (not in Linux-x64 yet)
- SVG images can be used in a img tag and as a CSS background

These changes should be available in the next beta.

Paul is a Firefox developer.

paulrouget.com

31 comments

Sadly sad

And who’s guilty for removing the RSS icon from the address bar? I want his/her name! I love all you Mozilla boys and girlz, really, but sometime I wonder why you do such a stupid things…

September 20th, 2010 at 05:24
1. Ditto
  
  I agree.. I’ve never been angry at anything Mozilla has done, but this one makes me mad. This has to be one of the most stupid things Mozilla has done.
  
  September 21st, 2010 at 03:01
2. cd
  
  You actually use it? I’ve never used it and I’m happy to see Mozilla take a stand and just remove it. Even power users rarely use it.
  
  September 21st, 2010 at 12:33
  1. Melvar
    
    I use it all the time, and have encountered sites that don’t seem to have any other links to their feeds. It’s definitely easiest to find.
    
    September 22nd, 2010 at 16:52
  2. zob
    
    i think its the fault of the interface study results
    we dont click often on the RSS button cause you only need to click once..
    
    but i REALLY like it’s presence:
    
    1 – you KNOW that RSS is supported when you see it
    2 – you FIND the RSS feeds directly (otherwise good luck finding it on the page if its even linked!)
    
    So I use it every time and I would really be annoyed if it was gone and having to find some html button on the page that may or may not be there
    
    But using it every time, means I used it like 10 times a year. It doesnt mean it should be removed, IMO.
    
    September 30th, 2010 at 07:54
3. WulfTheSaxon
  
  Eww, yeah. :<
  
  September 22nd, 2010 at 00:30
4. iPoesc
  
  Couldn’t they just even give the users the option to set the RSS icon to be shown in the preferences…
  PLEASE!!!
  
  November 6th, 2010 at 12:04
5. devmatt
  
  If you right-click on the toolbar and click the “Customize” option, there is a subscribe button with a RSS icon in it.
  Just drag it into your toolbar and hey-presto, RSS is back. I still wish it was included in the address bar though :(
  
  November 30th, 2010 at 04:36
  1. mkton
    
    ty devmatt !
    An opinion about RSS / ff4 :
    http://camendesign.com/blog/rss_is_dying
    
    January 6th, 2011 at 02:52
  2. yuvilio
    
    Ditto thanks devmatt! Right clicking on the rightmost part of the nav bar (where the star and triangle is) and hitting customize and dragging the rss icon did the trick. For sites that have an RSS feed, it’s bright colored and other sites without a feed, it’s grayed. Just as expected.
    
    February 24th, 2011 at 08:52
6. Bah…
  
  I agree… put the RSS button back in place. Also the close tab button on my tabs keeps disappearing and the Adsense website doesn’t display. This browser is quite a buggy mess to be RC already.
  
  March 21st, 2011 at 04:18
Dustin

If you’re dropping the -moz- prefixes, then the border radius, and box shadow attributes better be up to spec exactly. Don’t start forcing designers to make a stylesheet for every browser out there Mozilla. Don’t be IE…

September 21st, 2010 at 03:52
1. Seamus
  
  They documented the changes for border-radius and box-shadow.
  
  https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/-moz-border-radius
  https://developer.mozilla.org/En/CSS/Box-shadow
  
  September 22nd, 2010 at 07:42
voidmind

“SVG images can be used in a img tag and as a CSS background”

Woohoo!!! Finally!

September 21st, 2010 at 07:32
Kobold Avenger

So I’ll only need to keep the prefixes to border-radius and box-shadow, for about another 2 years till all versions of browsers that only understand the prefixed version of those css3 properties fade away (with traditional png backgrounds substitutes put in with Modernizr to deal with ie8-).

September 21st, 2010 at 09:15
FarmerBob

Yes, most definitely I think a lot of stupid things have been done or left out of the 4b series. I think all the new stuff is great, but it does no good when the application as a whole does not work and there is no way to make changes in the menu bars to fix what they have broken. And that bookmarks come and go as they please, no search engines carry over, when bookmark folders do appear, the folders won’t drop and much more. The last release b5 is so screwed up that it is impossible to use. It feels more like v1.0. Every time I fire it up the thought comes to mind, “Aren’t new versions suppose to be better?”

Unless there is are severe changes made this is no way any where near ready for any type of release. Even if all the blogs are touting a “new” FF on the way. I can see this going into double digits before it’s ready.

By chance did Microsoft get their hands on this somewhere long the line?

September 21st, 2010 at 12:58
alexander

Form validation API without input types like time,date, time, datetime-local is not really complete enough to ship.

September 21st, 2010 at 14:37
Matt

Thats one thing I dont like about firefox, is they add/remove things rather than give the user a choice to enable or disable a feature. They have made FF look mostly like opera now, I’m not sure why I dont just use opera ;(

September 23rd, 2010 at 07:17
abral

“enable WebGL by default (not in Linux-x64 yet)”. I’ve tried to see WebGL samples, but it seems to be disabled… How can I enable it? I’ve tried to change configurations in about:config, but it continues to be disabled…

September 29th, 2010 at 17:02
abral

When will you change the UI in Linux? I want more space for browsing, I want the Firefox menu, just like under Windows… Please support better Linux, otherwise the main distributions will change their default browser, you’re not any longer the unique simply usable browser for Linux!

September 29th, 2010 at 17:05
1. Jonathan Gutiérrez
  
  I back you! I use Windows & Linux (Ubuntu), and the space isn’t the same in both, I have more space in Windows, but when I need to make webpages in Linux and test them, I have to do it on WIndows… :(
  
  October 16th, 2010 at 22:45
radiok

I’m confounded that as a 3.6 user, there are no updates on the beta channel to get Firefox 4. I thought maybe, when I joined at Firefox 3.6.9, it was because my version was more recent then beta 5. But beta 6 came and went without any updates available on the beta channel. Very discouraging, I don’t feel like reinstalling Firefox just to get in the beta, not to be lazy, it’s more that I expect things to work the way they should.

September 30th, 2010 at 06:43
Jonathan Gutiérrez

I think FF will save space if the tabs go at the right side of the menu button, in maximized window., like the “O”ther navigator… jejeje.

October 16th, 2010 at 22:38
iPoesc

Can’t I just at least have the option of the RSS icon being shown in the address bar again? Just in the settings one little checkbox? Nothing?
And the new icon is not a replacements: I am using FF on a netbook, I need the space, but the new icon is always shown, even if the page does not have any feed, so I even have to mouseover it for seeing whether it has one!

October 28th, 2010 at 09:02
Robert Eisenbraun

I’m sure there will be dozens of add-ons for bringing the RSS icon back, if there is any demand. Any small concerns about UI can be fixed with one of the many add-ons. That’s by-far-and-away THE best feature of Firefox: customization and user base.

November 13th, 2010 at 07:43
1. Mladen
  
  Yeah, and what’s that?
  
  I just started using 4.0B8 and I’m trying to find damn button for 20 minutes. I’m reading RSS feeds from several sites every (and I mean that) day. Why it has been removed, I don’t know.
  
  Solution is simple, but stupid: left ALT + B, then ‘Subscribe to this page’.
  
  It’s stupid, they removed Menu bar by default, and to subscribe to feed you need to get it back.
  
  December 28th, 2010 at 17:00
Tyler Breisacher

Another user here who is super sad the RSS button went away. Of course I don’t use it much, because I only need it once per blog. I still find it incredibly helpful, and I think removing it was a bad decision. That said, I just found this:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/241029/

December 30th, 2010 at 20:09
Robert Eisenbraun

Hm. It also seems like the RSS feed button was in line with their philosophy behind FF4 including password entry in the browser GUI. I appreciate the in-line password management, and think the RSS is appropriate for the same reasons.

January 3rd, 2011 at 17:21
Ivelin

I want the rss icon back.

March 24th, 2011 at 13:43
David Esrati

Thank you Tyler- adding the RSS icon back into the address bar was critical to me- I evaluate websites for people all the time- and don’t want to have to search for a feed if it’s there.
I think the removal was dumb-
of course you only use it once per site.
And- it wasn’t taking up much space.
Like the orange better than the blue too.

March 24th, 2011 at 15:41
yuvilio

People are talking like the RSS icon is gone for good. A quick adjustment (see devmatt’s comment and my followup) brings it right back to it’s glorious place next to the nav bar. If most people don’t use it, why take up that real estate? Those who do use it (like myself) can make the adjustment. Maybe there are others concerned that its lack of default presence will hasten the demise of RSS. I disagree because RSS is still the defacto way to aggregate latest data from a site. The site developers are usually conscienscious to promote their rss links. But who know,

March 25th, 2011 at 11:14

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Firefox 4: recent changes in Firefox

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