Announcing Firefox Aurora 10 | Hacker News Reader

Announcing Firefox Aurora 10

hacks.mozilla.org

55 pointsmaratd27 comments

Just in case you didn't know it: Firefox release stages are: nightly, aurora, beta, final. Had to look this one up.

Lessons learned from this: always describe in release notes with at least one sentence what you are releasing.

The visibility APIs look useful. Why didn't anyone come up with that before?

Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that before, but right after I read that I started thinking of countless opportunities to put that to use.

You already can in Webkit-based browsers by listening for the 'webkitvisibilitychange' event.

Good to see they have finally integrated developer tools natively. However, they're all over the place. Each tool sits in its own separate window, they really need to bring them altogether and implement something more like FireBug.

Oh, the JavaScript scratch pad is a nice addition. A CSS version would also be nice.

>something more like FireBug. //

I'd have thought a first iteration would simply be firebug simplified, optimised and built in.

The CSS version is under development: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=583041

I'm looking at the page visibility API. On one hand, I can think of a dozen ways it could be useful. On the other hand, images in my head of interstitials pausing while they are in the background is enough to kill someone. (I prefer not to use adblock, oddly enough.)

The inspector is a needed improvement over previous versions. It's responsive, and shows tag, id and class info as you hover over any element.

They really need to get developer Inspect working such that simply hovering over the HTML highlights the relevant part of the page, not only clicking on it. Chrome is crushing them here with that feature.

If I understand what you mean, that's working in nightlies.

I am on the Nightly builds and I found that when Nightly was version 10.0 (now Nightly is 11.0), Twitter broke because LocalStorage did not work. Has it been fixed in v10?

> We fixed E4X syntax so that it is not accepted in ES5 strict mode.

I kinda like E4X even with it's warts. Why remove it from strict mode?

I downloaded and ran it. Here's a few observations:

1. Mozilla is stating that Aurora has focused on enhancements in HTML5, but aside from the new visibility API for tabs not being viewed, both Aurora and Firefox score 314 on http://html5test.com (behind Chrome).

2. Aurora loads (warm, not cold) at about 2.1 seconds for me, from run to display. In context, that's about half a second faster than Firefox opening (again, warm) on the same computer, as Firefox opens in about 2.6 seconds.

3. This release seems like the kind of thing very easy to glaze over because it doesn't have immediately apparent differences with Firefox - power users and coders will find it useful and appealing.

> Aurora loads (warm, not cold) at about 2.1 seconds for me, from run to display. In context, that's about half a second faster than Firefox opening (again, warm) on the same computer, as Firefox opens in about 2.6 seconds.

I really suggest getting a SSD if you can afford it. The amount of time it will save you everytime you boot your computer and/or start programs really adds up in the long run.

Once you go SSD, you can't go back.

Getting faster hardware to improve performance of slow bloatware is a tad silly.

But, it's about the only thing an end user can realistically do.

Spend a few hundred dollars on hardware - install once - things run faster. Go about your business.

Learn to program in a variety of languages. Join multiple projects. Grab code, start hacking. Lobby to get your patches accepted. Deal with months of political infighting on various projects. Consider forking projects because patches aren't accepted. Deal with your contributions being removed or broken in future commits. Contend with slower hardware during the months (or years) it takes for this process to occur for all the major programs you run (and forget about the dozens of smaller programs you use daily).

Hrm... yeah, I can see why getting faster hardware is a tad silly. Not sure what the OP was thinking.

Given that it takes 2.1 seconds, can we assume that at least some of that time is physical loading from the drive, and has nothing to do with the actual program itself? Faster hardware does indeed work. And I'm saying this as someone with SSD lust, and can't quite justify the expense of a 256g or 512g SSD. :/

Or you could just go get a cup of coffee instead of sperging about 2 second load times.

I mean, really?

Really?

Few second wait times are a real burden to me, because it's too long to go do anything else productive, but still slow me down.

And when this happens multiple times per day for multiple apps - how much coffee can you drink?

I'm not saying it isn't irritating, or that having a shiny SSD wouldn't be be awesome, or that Firefox is turning into bloated software - because those are all true statements. But when put in the context of:

A) wait 2 seconds

B) Buy a $200 hard drive

C) Fork Firefox yourself

waiting the 2 seconds seems like the sanest solution. Perhaps I've been working on budget hardware for so long that it doesn't bother me anymore, but the delay just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

I imagine checking your email or reading HN kills more time per day than waiting for programs to start.

Regarding that last bit, both Firefox and Aurora were both run from the same computer, within the same minutes, and I took averages. Just wanted it to be clear that, while hardware is a factor, I was stating implicitly admitting that when I said in context. But yes, I agree changing hardware is the easiest solution (but I would do the former just because it's technically cost-effective, and I know how to program :).

Why don't they automatically update yet like Chrome? Having to download something every couple of weeks is a huge annoyance.

But they do: my version of Aurora notifies me when there's a new update that's been downloaded, and if I don't click it then, it updates the next time I start firefox.

I suspect parent may have meant silent updates, where the browser updates without having to notify you. (Whereas now it still asks you each time)

I think that can't work until "compatible by default" is enabled for add-ons, which hopefully will come soon.

Take a look at Brian's blog post that goes through what is coming on this front: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/125/

Check Preferences -> Updates, you might well have disabled that option.

new will be anounsed yet. . . .

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