Firefox 4 Beta 12 Build Released

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Get it while it’s hot. The 12th version of beta has been released and confirmed to be the last beta prior to the introduction of the release candidate. Now I seem to remember hearing the same rhetoric about the last beta release, but the bug count is now down to four that haven’t been patched. You better hurry and download the Beta quickly, the RC is right on its heels. :D



After this, we're in RC mode, constantly watching the nomination queues for incoming bugs from this last beta.
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"When hovering over-links, URL displays at the bottom instead of the address bar"

I really hope the implementation of this is not like it is in Chrome. I hated when the Firefox beta removed the status bar and put the links in the address bar, but I hate Chrome's method even worse.
 
currently, there is no status bottom bar in b13.
but when you hover over a link a micro status bar pops up with the address shown at the bottom left.
there is no hover link address information presented in the top address bar.

i also hated having to look all the way up and to the right to see what the hover link was.
so this current implementation is pretty convenient.
 
lol.

now that you mentioned it being annoying, now i can see how i can be... and it is.. lol
 
Minefield is for development use only, and while most of what you find in Minefield eventually does become part of the actual non-development "public" Firefox, it's not always the case. The b13 just means development continues on that specific branch of things, not necessarily that there will be a Firefox 4 beta 13 coming... they work along different development tracks.

As for the status thing popup in the lower left hand corner, Chrome has been doing that since it first appeared... but since Firefox hasn't done it in the past, people are now taking note of it and pointing it out since it's something new and different.

I just toss a Status Bar 4 Evar addon on there and don't think twice about it... ;)
 
Ryokurin said:
Then turn the add-on bar back on. It's in View Toolbars.
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I'd rather not waste the space.

What's wrong with putting it at the right-hand end of the address bar? That's how hovering over links worked in FF4 b11
 
great. now, I hope that firefox 5 doesn't stay in beta for a year and, hell, I hope mozilla doesn't wait until 2015 to start working on version 5. while I find that the chrome release cycle is ridiculously quick (but they do make a lot of changes to their browser so it's not like they fake anything with a high version number), firefox gives me the impression that its development status is years behind chrome. I recently tried chrome and I didn't like it so I hope mozilla gets stuff done a bit quicker or I will have to go back to my beloved IE6. j/k.
 
I like it showing the address at the bottom because I can never see the full address in my address bar. I wish they would get rid of the search on the side and just combine it with the address bar at the top like chrome. I like chrome and would use it if its book marks didn't blow.
 
Unknown-One said:
I'd rather not waste the space.

What's wrong with putting it at the right-hand end of the address bar? That's how hovering over links worked in FF4 b11
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Either way people are going to complain. They put it back since more people complained about the movement in the first place.

I can't wait until more people use it and find more things to complain about that's simply is just normal change.
 
I didn't like it at the top because after years of it being on the bottom my eyes were trained to view it peripherally without even thinking about it, all of a sudden it was at the top and all scrunched up. Surfing the web felt like drivin without a map key.

I'm sure someone will write an addon script to put it back up top for people that like it that way.
 
I downloaded it to see if I would switch back to it from Chrome - not happening yet. I tested Chrome with a few extensions and tabs open and compared it to Firefox with the same pages open and Firefox was at about 150mb memory usage and Chrome only at 80.

Looks like I'll be sticking with Chrome for a while.
 
Been using Minefield for several months now.

It's ridiculously faster than the old 3.6.x. I could never see myself using another browser.
 
.Gifs were stuttering like crazy on the last beta build. this one fixed that for me. Seems to be runnign a little smother too. Last build really had me wanting to roll back to 3.6.
 
good christ, as bad as the location bar implementation was for link URLs, BLINKING SHIT ON THE LOWER LEFT HAND CORNER IS WAY WORSE! What were they thinking!?
 
bradsh said:
good christ, as bad as the location bar implementation was for link URLs, BLINKING SHIT ON THE LOWER LEFT HAND CORNER IS WAY WORSE! What were they thinking!?
Click to expand...

I'd rather save the screen real estate... because you don't like it their decision was horrible? They were thinking it would save space perhaps?

You're a bit DRAMATIC. :rolleyes:
 
stop!theradio said:
I downloaded it to see if I would switch back to it from Chrome - not happening yet. I tested Chrome with a few extensions and tabs open and compared it to Firefox with the same pages open and Firefox was at about 150mb memory usage and Chrome only at 80.

Looks like I'll be sticking with Chrome for a while.
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For me - using same setup:

Chrome - 387 mb
Firefox - 355 mb
 
chinesepiratefood said:
For me - using same setup:

Chrome - 387 mb
Firefox - 355 mb
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That's to be expected, since Chrome puts each tab in a separate process.

That means each tab in Chrome has extra unavoidable overhead that Firefox doesn't have to deal with. After you get a number of tabs open, Firefox starts winning out.
 
...and today I switched back to Firefox. After about a year and a half of using Chrome. I rediscovered how much better the add on system is and also appearance customization.

I realized I shouldn't concern myself with web browser memory usage seeing as to how I have 8gb of RAM, which is more than enough for damned web browsing lol
 
Only issue I've noted with the past few betas (as my primary browser is still Firefox 3.6.13) is - for the first time ever in my experience - seriously fucked up RAM consumption. It could be just a situation for me and my configuration of my machine because in the past few years when almost everyone I talk with about Firefox makes their own complaints about Firefox and massively excessive RAM usage that spirals out of control, I myself finally can see it happen almost in real-time with Firefox 4 betas.

I did a clean install of Firefox 4 beta 12 Portable earlier today (it's the same browser, the "portable" version has no bearing on RAM usage, it just runs entirely from a single folder leaving nothing behind so it's portable), and loaded 12 of my most commonly used websites. When I first started the browser (with no addons, nothing except the Feedback one that comes with it by default), I did about:memory to see the first load RAM usage, it was about 65MB in mapped RAM and 58MB in usage.

After loading those 12 pages, and waiting about 5 minutes, where all I did was switch between the tabs, the RAM usage (using about:memory again in a 13th blank tab) showed 1.25GB, and it kept climbing at about 2MB per second.

I can duplicate that every time, with new installations of Firefox 4 beta 12 over and over, so I sure as hell hope they get that under control, and fast. :)

I've got 4GB of RAM so it's a non-issue, but just for comparison I have Firefox 3.6.13 with 23 addons I use almost daily. I start that up, do about: memory and I get 55MB for mapped and 49MB for usage, then I load the same exact 12 web pages (given that NoScript and AdBlock Plus are two of the plugins that modify content on a webpage and working in this particular browser), and wait about 5 minutes - after that about:memory shows 357MB mapped and 349MB used, soooo...

I will use Firefox 4 now that I've discovered how to get it looking and working almost exactly the same as my 3.6.13 install does, but unless they get that RAM usage under control - and again, I reiterate it could just be my configuration of OS/RAM, etc, I have no idea), then I'm not quite so certain of when that switch will take place.

Pretty amazing to be doing nothing at all and watch that RAM usage just keep going up and up... the damned Task Manager physical memory usage started to look like it wasn't ever going to come down. :D
 
It's scary how far chrome has come in the short time its been out, FF4 already feels outdated and its not even out yet.

Last years excuse for FF was to keep using it cause of the great addons and because it "just works"... this year since the webstore everybody is spewing chrome extensions like no tomorrow and with no FF equivalents while letting old FF addons rot without FF4 support weeks away from release.

I guess they want to cash in on ChromeOS? Last i checked FF still has a much bigger market share, but it wont be for long at this rate...
 
@joe average
betas have had some massive memory leaks, latest of which was adblock plus related, but all should be fixed now with beta12.

On paper and in my own experience (normal web usage) FF uses less memory then chrome... The only problem memory wise that still exist with FF is that it takes long to release memory, in other words if you wait a while memory should go down to normal or if you load page after page it will grow.
 
Chrysalis said:
@joe average
betas have had some massive memory leaks, latest of which was adblock plus related, but all should be fixed now with beta12.
Click to expand...

You did note that that excessive RAM usage I noted was with beta 12, right? :D

In all the years of other people complaining about Firefox RAM usage, I've never experienced it, ever, until the past few days with Firefox 4 beta 11 and beta 12, so as I said, I won't be making FF4 my primary browser anytime soon.

I do know the beta and even the RC builds may have some debug code left laying around, potentially, but what I can make happen in 5 minutes with a few web pages and Firefox 4 beta 12 is unacceptable for me at this point so I'm just keeping it around for some basic testing, and 3.6.13 will remain my browser probably for a long time to come.

But again, since I've never ever had issues with Firefox and RAM usage, it could just be my configuration, this particular laptop, it could be a whole host of variables this time out where I just happened upon the combination that really wrecks Firefox...
 
@joe
All i am saying is that you seem to be doing your testing in a manner thats not true to normal web usage, firefox takes a while to free up ram so it'll keep climbing for as long you are loading and flipping tabs till u stop to actually read a page.

The bottom line is that ff3 is a f*in dinosaur by todays standards, html5/webgl/webm/hardware acceleration/improved ui/tab groups/etc is nothing to shrug off about. Speed is light and day with hardware acceleration on and html5 is popping up on sites all over the web already.

You can wait till release to give them time to polish it a bit more, but when you decide to give it a try again i suggest you start with a clean profile and no addons, then work your way up and "test" from there.
 
Chrysalis said:
It's scary how far chrome has come in the short time its been out, FF4 already feels outdated and its not even out yet.

Last years excuse for FF was to keep using it cause of the great addons and because it "just works"... this year since the webstore everybody is spewing chrome extensions like no tomorrow and with no FF equivalents while letting old FF addons rot without FF4 support weeks away from release.

I guess they want to cash in on ChromeOS? Last i checked FF still has a much bigger market share, but it wont be for long at this rate...
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any examples of good Chrome extenstions that don't have a Firefox equivalent?

or popular Firefox extensions that aren't going to be supported in 4.x?
 
Anyone seeing a massive memory leak: Disable Adblock 1.3.3

A known bug is causing that add-on to leak like crazy, it should be fixed soon.
 
- random thought of the day
having to restart for addons in FF is a b*tch while you can install extensions and enable/disable them at will in chrome

... no, i don't work for google
 
@unknown-one
I already said that
also according to bugtracker and my own experience its fixed in b12
 
Chrysalis said:
@joe
All i am saying is that you seem to be doing your testing in a manner thats not true to normal web usage, firefox takes a while to free up ram so it'll keep climbing for as long you are loading and flipping tabs till u stop to actually read a page.

The bottom line is that ff3 is a f*in dinosaur by todays standards, html5/webgl/webm/hardware acceleration/improved ui/tab groups/etc is nothing to shrug off about. Speed is light and day with hardware acceleration on and html5 is popping up on sites all over the web already.

You can wait till release to give them time to polish it a bit more, but when you decide to give it a try again i suggest you start with a clean profile and no addons, then work your way up and "test" from there.
Click to expand...

Did you read my post(s) at all? It was a clean install since the portable versions can be "installed" in about 10 seconds, fresh, clean, untouched, as many times as I require. It had only one addon - the Feedback one that comes with the betas by default, and yes I even tested once with that removed - and the results are always the same.

When the 12 tabs are loaded and complete, switching between them has no discernible effect since they are done loading and static at that point; no network activity is taking place (I make sure the 12 pages I use for testing don't have active content on them requiring more data - the pages are static: once loaded, that's it).

Bleh... I test most every build of every browser out there, and I've only noted this massive RAM usage in Firefox 4 betas since beta 5, and I sincerely hope they wrangle it into shape, and fast.

As for HTML5, it offers nothing of any substance that matters for me at this point (doesn't really matter that much for most people, actually). Hardware acceleration is irrelevant in my case since I'm stuck with an older laptop and Intel GMA950 onboard video, not that it matters. Pages don't load any faster because of hardware acceleration in my testing on a machine that actually supports it - it's just faster in rendering content inside the browser pane which even 3.6.13 does just fine on this laptop.

The items you mentioned - tab groups, a supposedly improved UI, etc - are all basically optional aspects. I can and have made Firefox 4 look exactly like the way I have Firefox 3.6.13 set up; there's nothing "special" about the UI in 4 but I understand it's a personal thing for a lot of folks, I just happen to not care about form but place function above all other concerns. Pretty stuff that doesn't function is just pretty stuff...
 
Unknown-One said:
Anyone seeing a massive memory leak: Disable Adblock 1.3.3

A known bug is causing that add-on to leak like crazy, it should be fixed soon.
Click to expand...

Well there you have it... and the cause (apparently) of the issues that I myself am having. Disabled ABP 1.3.3 and redid my impromptu testing, results were vastly different with the browser settling at about 191MB mapped and 176MB in usage with that addon disabled.

I hit ABP's site, found the latest development build (1.3.5b.2837) and closed, then restarted the browser manually with the new version enabled, redid the test and got just about exactly the same as I did with the 1.3.3 disabled, so it's all good presently.

I doubled up on the tabs and loaded them again to have 24 open, watched it for a minute or two and it's about 260MB/247MB so, right where it actually should be.

Unknown-One, thanks for that tip... if it was posted earlier I didn't notice it, but that definitely seems to be the solution for the excessive RAM usage or leak I was experiencing previously...
 
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