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The article mentions Firefox still lags behind on speed in comparison with other browsers. But iirc, the new JIT JavaScript engine isn't (entirely) integrated yet, that is due somewhere in August. Any comparisons till that time are useless imo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.242.79.99 ( talk) 10:57, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps the new interface for managing large quantities of tabs, Tab Candy, should be mentioned since it isn't going to be released as an addon, but rather as a core feature in Firefox 4. 84.55.92.22 ( talk) 22:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Could the screenshot be updated to beta 2? (I don't know Wiki's policies well enough to know if this is fair game) Regards, 24.10.181.254 ( talk) 03:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
I didn't read the article, but searched it for acceleration, and apparently it doesn't mention that Firefox got hardware acceleration.
[1]
[2] --
82.171.70.54 (
talk)
07:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Firefox has two kind of HW ACCel:
source
The rendering acceleration first introduced to Beta with Beta5, and compositing acceleration (layers) first introduced to Beta with Beta7.
This should be described within the article.
-- WonderCsabo ( talk) 12:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, Firefox Sync should be merged into this article. Opinions, ideas? -- Darth NormaN ( talk) 16:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
I can see this from both angles, but Chris is right. Sync, while introduced with Firefox 4, isn't exclusive to it. It is fine article on it's own. However, if we must merge it with something, Firefox would be a better place. Lucasoutloud ( talk) 05:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I can see your point, but it is still a plug in for previous versions, and people will continue to use those versions. It is not exclusive to Firefox 4, so the article should stand alone. Should it be seconded, I will remove the banner about merging. Lucasoutloud ( talk) 17:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
"Various sources continuously dispute performance results of the popular browsers with each firm supporting their own browser." => source? "Independent tests also differ with some claiming Firefox 4 is fastest; others say Opera, Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome." => source? "Firefox 4 is, however, undisputed to be better performing than its predecessors." => source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.44.196.146 ( talk) 12:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Minefield, the alpha release, isn't mentioned and is much different than the beta. Should we give it a mention, page, section, or something along those lines? Lucasoutloud ( talk) 03:27, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Firefox 4 is the only browser that can display Wikipedia properly without stuffing it up like other browsers. I think that should be mentioned in the article. 118.209.35.142 ( talk) 09:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
The timeline needs to get a nicer layout(table, timestream?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.78.101.136 ( talk) 17:07, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: consensus to move provided that other articles in the series are moved as well. No action at the moment; awaiting multiple move request. Kotniski ( talk) 13:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Mozilla Firefox 4 → Firefox 4 — I think this is an uncontroversial move, but the target - Firefox 4 was tagged as an Category:Unprintworthy redirects so at least one person disagrees. Firefox 4 is the official name of the browser, Mozilla is the name of the company responsible. There is no need to include the company name in the article title, the official websites just refer to it as Firefox 4. Already, a third of the traffic goes towards its redirect as opposed to its current page. - hahnch e n 23:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Other versons:
Miscellaneous:
Any I've missed?
My inclination is to move the other versions that currently say Mozilla... but leave the category and the other two miscellaneous articles alone, but perhaps that's not very logical. The best way to do this would probably be to relist this move request as a multiple move request, which will send a heads-up to the talk pages of the other versions.
We would then need to deal with the category etc. separately if desired.
Other thoughts? Andrewa ( talk) 07:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was move all per discussion above and below.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 23:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Mozilla Firefox → Firefox — See above. I'm a little reluctant to support a move of Mozilla Firefox/ History of Mozilla Firefox/ Features of Mozilla Firefox since it is a very common disambiguater. Marcus Qwertyus 01:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes "mozilla firefox" has fewer results than firefox -"mozilla firefox"… but look for the love of gebus at the results. <headdesks> ¦ Reisio ( talk) 01:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mozilla Firefox 4 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RM bot 20:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes Mr RM bot, the problem is the link you put gets me back here, is the discussion still in progress? Also Firefox 4 has been formally released today as seen here but as I add it has been release it says someone else is editing the article,here is where I saw the announcement <url> http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20045726-12.html?tag=cnetRiver/</url> 190.139.223.59 ( talk) 15:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I've tried installing it on Mac OS X Tiger, it isn't supported. Perhaps the article should clarify it. 112.210.194.61 ( talk) 23:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
What's with showing the Acid3 test results in the Performance section? Developers have stated that, by design, Firefox 4 won't score 100 on the test, since it's not relevent anymore. I suggest the score is deleted, since it's deceiving, provided it doesn't add any meaningful content to the Performance section. More info: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.58.71.204 ( talk) 14:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/firefox-4-review/
"Firefox 4's one drawback is that, like its competitors, it uses massive amounts of RAM." http://download.cnet.com/mozilla-firefox/?tag=mncol;txt
"For those who frequently keep many tabs open and want a way to tame them, it's clearly the best browser out there."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/366241/mozilla-firefox-4/2 "That leaves you with an enviable choice: Google Chrome if outright speed and performance are a priority, or Firefox 4 if a more fully featured browser is what’s called for."
StevePrutz ( talk) 19:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
User Jovianeye attempted to undo this new section, saying "please discuss this on the talk page as it is an internal issue and uses refs from mozilla's discussion forums"
Section was reinstate by me with message "Not internal - affects estimated 25m users; sources cited are public"
Note that on 3 March 2011, when Mike Beltzner heard this issue might be made public he confirmed the public nature of the discussion, saying by email:
The entire discussion is public[1]. We are not planning on making any more changes here for Firefox 4. I appreciate you giving me a heads-up.
cheers, mike
[1]: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/1796b7255f23067a#
The link was included in his message.
This is a significant issue because of the number of users who will be affected by data loss the first time they attempt to save their session after upgrading to Firefox 4. As stated in the article category, exact numbers are not known; a conservative estimate would be as follows:
A quarter of Firefox users sometimes exiting Firefox expecting it to save their tabs. 25% of 400,000,000 = 100,000,000.
A quarter of those having set their own home page. 25% of 100,000,000 = 25,000,000.
Of those 25m, a significant proportion are likely to have large sessions with important data. Finding out about this issue in the Firefox 4 article can prevent such data loss.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 10:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
This what you had written
By default, Firefox 4 does not prompt to save the session (tabs and windows) on exit, something it did throughout Firefox 3
[1]. Instead, it either exits with no prompt or informs the user they are about to close multiple tabs, depending on operating system and exit method. The user is not informed that their session has been saved at this point
[2]. On next start, those who have kept the Firefox home page get a button on it called ‘Restore Previous Session’; other users get no clear indication that their session has been saved or how to restore it
[3].
From January 2011, members of the Firefox community began alerting the developers to the danger of users losing sessions due to not being able to locate them before they were overwritten by another session [4]. It was also pointed out that the quit dialog, still present in the code though only available by changing a hidden preference, was fully compatible with the new on-demand session restore feature, and could easily be reinstated in order to avoid this data loss [5].
The Firefox developers admitted to having no idea what percentage of their 400 million users had customised their home page and so were susceptible to this issue [6]. However, feedback from Beta users on saving of tabs was overwhelmingly negative [7].
On 28 February, 2011, Firefox director Mike Beltzner, against the advice of members of his development team, made a decision not to address the issue of potential data loss prior to the shipping of Firefox 4.0 [8].
This needs to be edited because its extremely detailed and affects the neutrality of the article. Additionally, I did read a few of the sources you have mentioned. The sources seem like a nested loop, one thread going to the next and the next. Ref 7 which mentions about the feedback is IMO not reliable for claiming the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. This needs to be copyedited. Paragraph 1 has useful information for readers of the article but the rest, IMO, is not needed because it mentions corporate discussions (though it may be in the public domain) and might be irrelevant. -- Jovian Eye ( talk) 14:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Neutrality? In an article mainly written by Mozilla?! It goes some way to RESTORING the neutrality of the article. Refs 1 & 2 are the same; this is deliberate as the source for the two items being referenced is the same, and I'm not aware of a way to have two [45]s. Ref 7 has been updated to reflect the content at the time of the 'Retrieved' date. Note that the feedback buttons are on the betas and we're now beyond 4.0 release, so this explains the different feedback. Viewing any date range around the time of the Beta 10/11 releases will give similar feedback.
It is a complex subject. If you can think of a way of presenting it more clearly I'm open to suggestions and you can present them here. In the meantime I'm reinstating the section because I think this is information that a significant proportion of readers of this article will find useful.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 15:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Paragraphs
Right, so you've re-edited your message, questioning the need for paragraphs 2-4. Addressed below:
Paragraph 2 gives the time frame. If this had not been discovered until the day after final release it would not count as avoidable. It also discusses the actual danger: that the user's session will be overwritten before they can locate it. The part about how easily this could have been averted - by simply 'flicking a switch' - again is critical in understanding how easily this data loss could have been averted.
Paragraph 3 covers the numbers affected, again critical. If we were only talking about a few hundred users out of 400m this section wouldn't warrant adding. We are more likely talking 20 to 40 million users, but, without better data, I have omitted an actual figure. As I mentioned above, the feedback link has been updated - it now shows the feedback between Feb 27 and 28, the time it was originally accessed. Most of the comments talk of unexpectedly lost tabs.
Paragraph 4 is about the unilateral decision made by Mike Beltzner, three full weeks before final release, and against the advice of key members of his development team. Again, this speaks to the avoidable nature of what happened, as well as giving a time frame. I don't see how it can be fine to mention Beltzner in the History section but not here - I question the neutrality of that. This wasn't an accidental process; all those maybe tens of millions of users will have him to thank for their lost data. Beltzner himself is not secretive about his decision, as mentioned above.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 16:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
User InverseHypercube has marked this section with the 'Unbalanced' tag (27 March 2011). What viewpoints are neglected here? This section is careful to avoid quantifying the seriousness of the issue, or even estimate the numbers affected. It deals solely in facts, and can, in fact, be said to underplay the issue (deliberately so, in favour of encyclopaedic neutrality).
There is an opinion I'm aware of that this is not a major issue (though no explanation of on what grounds). But since the seriousness is not quantified in the article, I don't see how that can be relevant.
I don't think this section should be about opinions. Dealing in fact is at the heart of the Wikipedia philosophy, and the facts are as stated in the section currently. We know from beta user feedback that large numbers were losing sessions from Beta 10 - the time the 'Save & Quit' option was removed - due to failure to locate them. And we also know that the numbers affected will be large - because the user base is large.
There is a related issue, not currently touched on in the section: The reason for removing the 'Save & Quit' option was the addition of on-demand session restore. That feature is seriously flawed because only one session is saved at a time and doing such innocuous things as starting Firefox and closing it without doing anything at all will overwrite the saved session without warning. So simply knowing that saved sessions are available from the History menu is not sufficient to avert data loss. This affects ALL Firefox 4 users, not just those who have set their own home page, and should probably be added to the section with expedition.
If people want to look for bias in the Firefox 4 article they should look to the Reception section. 'Reception' is nothing to do with numbers downloaded in the first 24 hours. If your software has a sufficient user base and those users are urged to update immediately due to 'security and stability' issues you're going to see high numbers downloading on the first day.
So what is your point, InverseHypercube? If none are forthcoming on the Talk page within the next 7 days I will consider the 'unbiased' claim unverified.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 12:24, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Tag Notes
OK, so I've looked into the use of the 'Unbalanced' tag on articles like this one and, while I'm sure well-meaning, InverseHypercube has erred in a couple of respects: (a) This category of tag should be accompanied by an explanation on the Talk page, and (b) heavily monitored articles should include a Talk page discussion prior to adding the tag. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Cleanup#Best_practices_in_heavily_monitored_articles
In fact, this section has received edits from several users, and is hopefully approaching a point where it has some degree of consensus. So removing the tag.
You are encouraged to discuss issues here prior to adding similar tags.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 12:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Part of Reception Category?
User Mephiles602 moved this to the Reception category (29 March 2011). There is a tenuous link to Reception in the mention of Beta feedback, but really this is a separate issue - a design fault, the impact of which is only now starting to be widely felt. It's going to need expanding slightly due to the issues of on-demand session restore as mentioned above, and having it in Reception just muddies that section, I think. I doubt the peacocks gloating about download numbers will want it there anyway.
The Reception section should be improved to include some actual information on reception - download numbers of 4.0 are going to mainly depend on numbers of users being prompted to upgrade from 3.6, and do not reflect how the product is being received.
If some sort of verifiable information comes to light about user feedback/complaints on the data loss issue it could warrant inclusion in Reception, but currently I think it would just confuse things. Reverting.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 20:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Neutrality
User Steven Walling attempted to remove two paragraphs 3 & 4 from this section, citing neutrality. Well, if this is the Steven Walling featured on the Mozilla wiki - https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Steven_Walling - I'm not sure he's the best person to be arbiter for that. The reasons for the information in those paragraphs have already been explained - see 'Paragraphs' above.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 08:33, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
"The UX team would like to see this [removal of quit dialog with Save & Quit button] in beta8 if possible, so we can get some feedback on any potential 'OMG, my session is gone and I can't figure out how to get it back' issues, so we have time to adjust in beta9 if that's indeed a problem." - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592822#c5
"True, we can't just blame users for not dealing with our UI. I also share the concern that users may not remember whether their previous session was worth keeping when starting Firefox again." - Dão Gottwald.
"I actually think that among the population of people using session restore, the amount of people having configured their homepage to something different might be quite high, as I'd connect both to the type of customization made by advanced users. And we should care about those people as they are often peers in our marketing chain that try to spread the word about Firefox." - Robert Kaiser.
"I have concerns to.[sic]" - Asa Dotzler.
This whole section is quite obviously just the person who started a thread on dev.apps.firefox following through on his "threat" (in private email to Mike Beltzner) to "bring this issue to the press." This has obviously failed, because there are no citations for "data loss" on Google News in reference to Firefox 4.
I recommend this section be deleted (and have done so), as it has not been a notable issue in any way since Firefox 4 was released.
Full disclosure: I am a Mozilla employee.
HoserHead ( talk) 00:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
This is as per a suggestion on 29 March by DavidRF: "If someone wanted to write a well-balanced section giving an overview of the weird quirks present in this release and a broader summary of the migration issues users have encountered (and not just your one bug) then I would support that."
The section presents the information necessary to avoid data loss, without actually mentioning it as an issue, so this is hopefully less contentious. Information is verifiable simply by downloading Firefox and testing the procedures. However, citings are also given. It would be quite nice to add screen grabs of the Windows 7 interface above the Windows XP one to illustrate the difference.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 21:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Recommendations
This section should not include a miscellaneous assortment of things a Firefox 3 user might find useful but can reasonably be expected to be quickly discovered without issue. The issues represented in this section are of significance because they relate to a major change in user experience – as outlined in the Mashable link – are not easily discoverable and not well documented on the mozilla.com/org domains. Reasons for current inclusions are as follows:
Introductory paragraph: Provides the link to the primary research, as well as partly explaining the poor documentation. (It may also be relevant to mention lack of online help documentation, although this is problematic cite-wise, and may be unnecessary.) Note that the phrase “Users face some issues negotiating these changes” is not specifically cited, as this is felt unnecessary. However, sources such as beta feedback confirm this: http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/search?q=save+tabs&product=firefox&version=--&date_start=02%2F27%2F2011&date_end=02%2F28%2F2011
Session data: The two paragraphs deal with two separate data loss issues. The first paragraph is about losing the session due to not being aware that it’s been saved. The second paragraph relates to users who are familiar with on-demand session restore but not that they can lose their session simply, for instance, by opening and then closing the browser (or by another user doing so on their browser).
Firefox menu: This is a major change in feature interaction, but only presented by default to Windows 7/Vista users – a migration issue for IT managers with mixed platforms. It is not easily discoverable for users on other operating systems, as turning off the Menu bar is counter-intuitive.
Teachmeslc added 2 lines (1 April 2011) about the Import Wizard, but these didn’t inform the reader how to access it and included a direct external URL, which I believe is not permitted: http://www.howto-guidebook.com/how-to-import-bookmarks-into-firefox-4 If someone wants to validate this as a reliable source it could be added as a cite note for the revised text.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 11:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Recent Pages button
MattLavigne added the following on April 15, 2011:
On the Navigation Toolbar, The 'Recent Pages' button has been removed from the Back/Forward button group. In previous versions, this button would display a drop-down showing the recent history for the current tab. This list can still be easily accessed, however, by right-clicking on the Back/Forward button group.
This has been removed as, "This section should not include a miscellaneous assortment of things a Firefox 3 user might find useful but can reasonably be expected to be quickly discovered without issue." - see above. There are a number of such issues, and some a lot less discoverable than Recent Pages. For instance, the 'Subscribe to this page' button has been moved from the Address bar to the Bookmarks menu. Every new piece of software is going to involve changes. The reasons that those previously included are considered notable are detailed above.
Note also that the behaviour of right-clicking the Back button itself has existed in Firefox right back to Firefox 3.0.
If borderline notable, non-major features are to be added to this section, it would probably be better to add them to a sub-section called something like 'Other changes' beneath the other sub-sections.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 05:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I believe some mention should be made in the article about the striking similarities in appearance between FF4 and Opera 10.0 (and all versions after 10.0) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.58.85 ( talk) 09:17, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Is there any reason why this is nowhere mentioned in the article? I think it's very important to future users of the product who go to WP first to get informed about the browser. -andy 77.190.51.208 ( talk) 06:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article,
File:Firefox 4.png, has been nominated for deletion at
Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests May 2011
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Do we really need 3 of those? I think we should delete 2 and move 1 to the top of the section argionember~ master of all ( talk) 18:58, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Isn't the most stable release version 9.0.1? Ngmcs8203 ( talk) 21:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Never mind. This is the Firefox 4 wiki. Move on. Nothing to read here. Ngmcs8203 ( talk) 21:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
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This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
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Summaries of this article appear in Mozilla Firefox and History of Mozilla Firefox. |
The article mentions Firefox still lags behind on speed in comparison with other browsers. But iirc, the new JIT JavaScript engine isn't (entirely) integrated yet, that is due somewhere in August. Any comparisons till that time are useless imo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.242.79.99 ( talk) 10:57, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps the new interface for managing large quantities of tabs, Tab Candy, should be mentioned since it isn't going to be released as an addon, but rather as a core feature in Firefox 4. 84.55.92.22 ( talk) 22:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
Could the screenshot be updated to beta 2? (I don't know Wiki's policies well enough to know if this is fair game) Regards, 24.10.181.254 ( talk) 03:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
I didn't read the article, but searched it for acceleration, and apparently it doesn't mention that Firefox got hardware acceleration.
[1]
[2] --
82.171.70.54 (
talk)
07:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Firefox has two kind of HW ACCel:
source
The rendering acceleration first introduced to Beta with Beta5, and compositing acceleration (layers) first introduced to Beta with Beta7.
This should be described within the article.
-- WonderCsabo ( talk) 12:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, Firefox Sync should be merged into this article. Opinions, ideas? -- Darth NormaN ( talk) 16:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
I can see this from both angles, but Chris is right. Sync, while introduced with Firefox 4, isn't exclusive to it. It is fine article on it's own. However, if we must merge it with something, Firefox would be a better place. Lucasoutloud ( talk) 05:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I can see your point, but it is still a plug in for previous versions, and people will continue to use those versions. It is not exclusive to Firefox 4, so the article should stand alone. Should it be seconded, I will remove the banner about merging. Lucasoutloud ( talk) 17:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
"Various sources continuously dispute performance results of the popular browsers with each firm supporting their own browser." => source? "Independent tests also differ with some claiming Firefox 4 is fastest; others say Opera, Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome." => source? "Firefox 4 is, however, undisputed to be better performing than its predecessors." => source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.44.196.146 ( talk) 12:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Minefield, the alpha release, isn't mentioned and is much different than the beta. Should we give it a mention, page, section, or something along those lines? Lucasoutloud ( talk) 03:27, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Firefox 4 is the only browser that can display Wikipedia properly without stuffing it up like other browsers. I think that should be mentioned in the article. 118.209.35.142 ( talk) 09:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
The timeline needs to get a nicer layout(table, timestream?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.78.101.136 ( talk) 17:07, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: consensus to move provided that other articles in the series are moved as well. No action at the moment; awaiting multiple move request. Kotniski ( talk) 13:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Mozilla Firefox 4 → Firefox 4 — I think this is an uncontroversial move, but the target - Firefox 4 was tagged as an Category:Unprintworthy redirects so at least one person disagrees. Firefox 4 is the official name of the browser, Mozilla is the name of the company responsible. There is no need to include the company name in the article title, the official websites just refer to it as Firefox 4. Already, a third of the traffic goes towards its redirect as opposed to its current page. - hahnch e n 23:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Other versons:
Miscellaneous:
Any I've missed?
My inclination is to move the other versions that currently say Mozilla... but leave the category and the other two miscellaneous articles alone, but perhaps that's not very logical. The best way to do this would probably be to relist this move request as a multiple move request, which will send a heads-up to the talk pages of the other versions.
We would then need to deal with the category etc. separately if desired.
Other thoughts? Andrewa ( talk) 07:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was move all per discussion above and below.-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 23:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Mozilla Firefox → Firefox — See above. I'm a little reluctant to support a move of Mozilla Firefox/ History of Mozilla Firefox/ Features of Mozilla Firefox since it is a very common disambiguater. Marcus Qwertyus 01:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes "mozilla firefox" has fewer results than firefox -"mozilla firefox"… but look for the love of gebus at the results. <headdesks> ¦ Reisio ( talk) 01:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mozilla Firefox 4 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RM bot 20:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes Mr RM bot, the problem is the link you put gets me back here, is the discussion still in progress? Also Firefox 4 has been formally released today as seen here but as I add it has been release it says someone else is editing the article,here is where I saw the announcement <url> http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20045726-12.html?tag=cnetRiver/</url> 190.139.223.59 ( talk) 15:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I've tried installing it on Mac OS X Tiger, it isn't supported. Perhaps the article should clarify it. 112.210.194.61 ( talk) 23:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
What's with showing the Acid3 test results in the Performance section? Developers have stated that, by design, Firefox 4 won't score 100 on the test, since it's not relevent anymore. I suggest the score is deleted, since it's deceiving, provided it doesn't add any meaningful content to the Performance section. More info: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.58.71.204 ( talk) 14:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/firefox-4-review/
"Firefox 4's one drawback is that, like its competitors, it uses massive amounts of RAM." http://download.cnet.com/mozilla-firefox/?tag=mncol;txt
"For those who frequently keep many tabs open and want a way to tame them, it's clearly the best browser out there."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/366241/mozilla-firefox-4/2 "That leaves you with an enviable choice: Google Chrome if outright speed and performance are a priority, or Firefox 4 if a more fully featured browser is what’s called for."
StevePrutz ( talk) 19:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
User Jovianeye attempted to undo this new section, saying "please discuss this on the talk page as it is an internal issue and uses refs from mozilla's discussion forums"
Section was reinstate by me with message "Not internal - affects estimated 25m users; sources cited are public"
Note that on 3 March 2011, when Mike Beltzner heard this issue might be made public he confirmed the public nature of the discussion, saying by email:
The entire discussion is public[1]. We are not planning on making any more changes here for Firefox 4. I appreciate you giving me a heads-up.
cheers, mike
[1]: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_thread/thread/1796b7255f23067a#
The link was included in his message.
This is a significant issue because of the number of users who will be affected by data loss the first time they attempt to save their session after upgrading to Firefox 4. As stated in the article category, exact numbers are not known; a conservative estimate would be as follows:
A quarter of Firefox users sometimes exiting Firefox expecting it to save their tabs. 25% of 400,000,000 = 100,000,000.
A quarter of those having set their own home page. 25% of 100,000,000 = 25,000,000.
Of those 25m, a significant proportion are likely to have large sessions with important data. Finding out about this issue in the Firefox 4 article can prevent such data loss.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 10:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
This what you had written
By default, Firefox 4 does not prompt to save the session (tabs and windows) on exit, something it did throughout Firefox 3
[1]. Instead, it either exits with no prompt or informs the user they are about to close multiple tabs, depending on operating system and exit method. The user is not informed that their session has been saved at this point
[2]. On next start, those who have kept the Firefox home page get a button on it called ‘Restore Previous Session’; other users get no clear indication that their session has been saved or how to restore it
[3].
From January 2011, members of the Firefox community began alerting the developers to the danger of users losing sessions due to not being able to locate them before they were overwritten by another session [4]. It was also pointed out that the quit dialog, still present in the code though only available by changing a hidden preference, was fully compatible with the new on-demand session restore feature, and could easily be reinstated in order to avoid this data loss [5].
The Firefox developers admitted to having no idea what percentage of their 400 million users had customised their home page and so were susceptible to this issue [6]. However, feedback from Beta users on saving of tabs was overwhelmingly negative [7].
On 28 February, 2011, Firefox director Mike Beltzner, against the advice of members of his development team, made a decision not to address the issue of potential data loss prior to the shipping of Firefox 4.0 [8].
This needs to be edited because its extremely detailed and affects the neutrality of the article. Additionally, I did read a few of the sources you have mentioned. The sources seem like a nested loop, one thread going to the next and the next. Ref 7 which mentions about the feedback is IMO not reliable for claiming the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. This needs to be copyedited. Paragraph 1 has useful information for readers of the article but the rest, IMO, is not needed because it mentions corporate discussions (though it may be in the public domain) and might be irrelevant. -- Jovian Eye ( talk) 14:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Neutrality? In an article mainly written by Mozilla?! It goes some way to RESTORING the neutrality of the article. Refs 1 & 2 are the same; this is deliberate as the source for the two items being referenced is the same, and I'm not aware of a way to have two [45]s. Ref 7 has been updated to reflect the content at the time of the 'Retrieved' date. Note that the feedback buttons are on the betas and we're now beyond 4.0 release, so this explains the different feedback. Viewing any date range around the time of the Beta 10/11 releases will give similar feedback.
It is a complex subject. If you can think of a way of presenting it more clearly I'm open to suggestions and you can present them here. In the meantime I'm reinstating the section because I think this is information that a significant proportion of readers of this article will find useful.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 15:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Paragraphs
Right, so you've re-edited your message, questioning the need for paragraphs 2-4. Addressed below:
Paragraph 2 gives the time frame. If this had not been discovered until the day after final release it would not count as avoidable. It also discusses the actual danger: that the user's session will be overwritten before they can locate it. The part about how easily this could have been averted - by simply 'flicking a switch' - again is critical in understanding how easily this data loss could have been averted.
Paragraph 3 covers the numbers affected, again critical. If we were only talking about a few hundred users out of 400m this section wouldn't warrant adding. We are more likely talking 20 to 40 million users, but, without better data, I have omitted an actual figure. As I mentioned above, the feedback link has been updated - it now shows the feedback between Feb 27 and 28, the time it was originally accessed. Most of the comments talk of unexpectedly lost tabs.
Paragraph 4 is about the unilateral decision made by Mike Beltzner, three full weeks before final release, and against the advice of key members of his development team. Again, this speaks to the avoidable nature of what happened, as well as giving a time frame. I don't see how it can be fine to mention Beltzner in the History section but not here - I question the neutrality of that. This wasn't an accidental process; all those maybe tens of millions of users will have him to thank for their lost data. Beltzner himself is not secretive about his decision, as mentioned above.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 16:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
User InverseHypercube has marked this section with the 'Unbalanced' tag (27 March 2011). What viewpoints are neglected here? This section is careful to avoid quantifying the seriousness of the issue, or even estimate the numbers affected. It deals solely in facts, and can, in fact, be said to underplay the issue (deliberately so, in favour of encyclopaedic neutrality).
There is an opinion I'm aware of that this is not a major issue (though no explanation of on what grounds). But since the seriousness is not quantified in the article, I don't see how that can be relevant.
I don't think this section should be about opinions. Dealing in fact is at the heart of the Wikipedia philosophy, and the facts are as stated in the section currently. We know from beta user feedback that large numbers were losing sessions from Beta 10 - the time the 'Save & Quit' option was removed - due to failure to locate them. And we also know that the numbers affected will be large - because the user base is large.
There is a related issue, not currently touched on in the section: The reason for removing the 'Save & Quit' option was the addition of on-demand session restore. That feature is seriously flawed because only one session is saved at a time and doing such innocuous things as starting Firefox and closing it without doing anything at all will overwrite the saved session without warning. So simply knowing that saved sessions are available from the History menu is not sufficient to avert data loss. This affects ALL Firefox 4 users, not just those who have set their own home page, and should probably be added to the section with expedition.
If people want to look for bias in the Firefox 4 article they should look to the Reception section. 'Reception' is nothing to do with numbers downloaded in the first 24 hours. If your software has a sufficient user base and those users are urged to update immediately due to 'security and stability' issues you're going to see high numbers downloading on the first day.
So what is your point, InverseHypercube? If none are forthcoming on the Talk page within the next 7 days I will consider the 'unbiased' claim unverified.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 12:24, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Tag Notes
OK, so I've looked into the use of the 'Unbalanced' tag on articles like this one and, while I'm sure well-meaning, InverseHypercube has erred in a couple of respects: (a) This category of tag should be accompanied by an explanation on the Talk page, and (b) heavily monitored articles should include a Talk page discussion prior to adding the tag. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Cleanup#Best_practices_in_heavily_monitored_articles
In fact, this section has received edits from several users, and is hopefully approaching a point where it has some degree of consensus. So removing the tag.
You are encouraged to discuss issues here prior to adding similar tags.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 12:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Part of Reception Category?
User Mephiles602 moved this to the Reception category (29 March 2011). There is a tenuous link to Reception in the mention of Beta feedback, but really this is a separate issue - a design fault, the impact of which is only now starting to be widely felt. It's going to need expanding slightly due to the issues of on-demand session restore as mentioned above, and having it in Reception just muddies that section, I think. I doubt the peacocks gloating about download numbers will want it there anyway.
The Reception section should be improved to include some actual information on reception - download numbers of 4.0 are going to mainly depend on numbers of users being prompted to upgrade from 3.6, and do not reflect how the product is being received.
If some sort of verifiable information comes to light about user feedback/complaints on the data loss issue it could warrant inclusion in Reception, but currently I think it would just confuse things. Reverting.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 20:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Neutrality
User Steven Walling attempted to remove two paragraphs 3 & 4 from this section, citing neutrality. Well, if this is the Steven Walling featured on the Mozilla wiki - https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Steven_Walling - I'm not sure he's the best person to be arbiter for that. The reasons for the information in those paragraphs have already been explained - see 'Paragraphs' above.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 08:33, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
"The UX team would like to see this [removal of quit dialog with Save & Quit button] in beta8 if possible, so we can get some feedback on any potential 'OMG, my session is gone and I can't figure out how to get it back' issues, so we have time to adjust in beta9 if that's indeed a problem." - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592822#c5
"True, we can't just blame users for not dealing with our UI. I also share the concern that users may not remember whether their previous session was worth keeping when starting Firefox again." - Dão Gottwald.
"I actually think that among the population of people using session restore, the amount of people having configured their homepage to something different might be quite high, as I'd connect both to the type of customization made by advanced users. And we should care about those people as they are often peers in our marketing chain that try to spread the word about Firefox." - Robert Kaiser.
"I have concerns to.[sic]" - Asa Dotzler.
This whole section is quite obviously just the person who started a thread on dev.apps.firefox following through on his "threat" (in private email to Mike Beltzner) to "bring this issue to the press." This has obviously failed, because there are no citations for "data loss" on Google News in reference to Firefox 4.
I recommend this section be deleted (and have done so), as it has not been a notable issue in any way since Firefox 4 was released.
Full disclosure: I am a Mozilla employee.
HoserHead ( talk) 00:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
This is as per a suggestion on 29 March by DavidRF: "If someone wanted to write a well-balanced section giving an overview of the weird quirks present in this release and a broader summary of the migration issues users have encountered (and not just your one bug) then I would support that."
The section presents the information necessary to avoid data loss, without actually mentioning it as an issue, so this is hopefully less contentious. Information is verifiable simply by downloading Firefox and testing the procedures. However, citings are also given. It would be quite nice to add screen grabs of the Windows 7 interface above the Windows XP one to illustrate the difference.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 21:40, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Recommendations
This section should not include a miscellaneous assortment of things a Firefox 3 user might find useful but can reasonably be expected to be quickly discovered without issue. The issues represented in this section are of significance because they relate to a major change in user experience – as outlined in the Mashable link – are not easily discoverable and not well documented on the mozilla.com/org domains. Reasons for current inclusions are as follows:
Introductory paragraph: Provides the link to the primary research, as well as partly explaining the poor documentation. (It may also be relevant to mention lack of online help documentation, although this is problematic cite-wise, and may be unnecessary.) Note that the phrase “Users face some issues negotiating these changes” is not specifically cited, as this is felt unnecessary. However, sources such as beta feedback confirm this: http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/search?q=save+tabs&product=firefox&version=--&date_start=02%2F27%2F2011&date_end=02%2F28%2F2011
Session data: The two paragraphs deal with two separate data loss issues. The first paragraph is about losing the session due to not being aware that it’s been saved. The second paragraph relates to users who are familiar with on-demand session restore but not that they can lose their session simply, for instance, by opening and then closing the browser (or by another user doing so on their browser).
Firefox menu: This is a major change in feature interaction, but only presented by default to Windows 7/Vista users – a migration issue for IT managers with mixed platforms. It is not easily discoverable for users on other operating systems, as turning off the Menu bar is counter-intuitive.
Teachmeslc added 2 lines (1 April 2011) about the Import Wizard, but these didn’t inform the reader how to access it and included a direct external URL, which I believe is not permitted: http://www.howto-guidebook.com/how-to-import-bookmarks-into-firefox-4 If someone wants to validate this as a reliable source it could be added as a cite note for the revised text.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 11:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Recent Pages button
MattLavigne added the following on April 15, 2011:
On the Navigation Toolbar, The 'Recent Pages' button has been removed from the Back/Forward button group. In previous versions, this button would display a drop-down showing the recent history for the current tab. This list can still be easily accessed, however, by right-clicking on the Back/Forward button group.
This has been removed as, "This section should not include a miscellaneous assortment of things a Firefox 3 user might find useful but can reasonably be expected to be quickly discovered without issue." - see above. There are a number of such issues, and some a lot less discoverable than Recent Pages. For instance, the 'Subscribe to this page' button has been moved from the Address bar to the Bookmarks menu. Every new piece of software is going to involve changes. The reasons that those previously included are considered notable are detailed above.
Note also that the behaviour of right-clicking the Back button itself has existed in Firefox right back to Firefox 3.0.
If borderline notable, non-major features are to be added to this section, it would probably be better to add them to a sub-section called something like 'Other changes' beneath the other sub-sections.
RedactionalOne ( talk) 05:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I believe some mention should be made in the article about the striking similarities in appearance between FF4 and Opera 10.0 (and all versions after 10.0) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.58.85 ( talk) 09:17, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Is there any reason why this is nowhere mentioned in the article? I think it's very important to future users of the product who go to WP first to get informed about the browser. -andy 77.190.51.208 ( talk) 06:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article,
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Do we really need 3 of those? I think we should delete 2 and move 1 to the top of the section argionember~ master of all ( talk) 18:58, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Isn't the most stable release version 9.0.1? Ngmcs8203 ( talk) 21:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Never mind. This is the Firefox 4 wiki. Move on. Nothing to read here. Ngmcs8203 ( talk) 21:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
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