What's new in Bon Echo Alpha 3
This page tries to list the large improvements in Bon Echo Alpha 3 over Firefox 1.5.0.x. (I did not make similar changelogs for Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.) Last updated May 27, 2006.
New browser features
- 335306 - Inline spellchecking for textareas.
- 334471 - Microsummaries.
- Anti-phishing.
- Extension manager changes
- 329045 - Firefox 2.0 Extension Manager user interface update.
- 271166 - Should be able to blacklist extensions centrally, in update.mozilla.org.
- Search improvements
- 317107 - New search service, extended search plugin format.
- 258672 - Add grey text to search box showing search engine name.
- 232272 - Search engine manager. This lets you rearrange and remove search engines shown in the search bar.
- 335441 - Change tiny drop-down in browser search box into a button/drop-down combo to the right of the search box.
- 336457 - Mark selected search engine in the drop-down list.
- 335443 - Support autodetection of search engines that can be added to the browser browser search box.
- 337178 - Add "search suggestions" feature (autocomplete to common searches, at least for Google and Yahoo, instead of user's search history).
- Feeds
- Display feeds nicely, with subscription options: subscribe with an external feed reader, a web site such as Netvibes, or Live Bookmarks.
- 333751 - Sniff for feeds that might have the wrong MIME type.
- Changes to tabbed browsing
- Close buttons on tabs, including background tabs (as long as browser.tabs.disableBackgroundClose is true and each tab is at least browser.tabs.tabClipWidth pixels wide).
- Make it easier to get back to the "parent tab" when you click a link that opens in a new window: if a link opens a new tab with focus, when that tab is closed, focus returns to its parent tab only if you have not manually switched to another tab.
- Simplify the preferences available for tabs.
- 172817 - Allow external source viewer/editor. (You can now set an exterenal source editor using about:config -- set view_source.editor.external to true and set view_source.editor.path to the path to your favorite text editor.)
- 264162 - Make CSS errors appear in JS console as warnings (not errors), and add a pref for hiding them completely (layout.css.report_errors).
- 219532 - Add pref to make search bar results always open in a new tab.
- 273980 - Add "cite" attribute to the Links tab in Page Info.
- 259031 - Add support for displaying certificate extensions.
- 111384 - Support OCSP requests through a proxy.
- 241774 - Change deletion of autocomplete entries from shift+del to just del button (on Windows and Linux).
- 193923 - [Windows] Use system beep on Windows for FAYT-not-found notification.
- 76111 - [Windows] Auto detect online/offline status.
- 326580 - [Windows] New installer, using NSIS.
- 229473 - [Mac] Emacs-like/readline-like ctrl+letter shortcuts should work on Mac OS X.
- 284379 - [Linux] Middle-clicking tabs should close them (make middlemouse.contentLoadURL not turn off the middle-click-to-close feature).
New web developer features
Note: Firefox 2 won't have many improvements for web developers. Firefox 3 will have tons.
New extension developer features
- 298497 - Extension Dependencies.
- 313414 - There is no way to do "sandboxed" http connections that don't modify the cookie list.
- 326107 - Send referrer to GlobalHistory even when it isn't being sent over the network. (This allows How'd I Get Here to work after clicking a link from an https page to an http page, for example.)
- 315826 - Scriptable XPCOM wrapper for SAX content handler.
- 316782 - Provide templatized array class, nsTArray [down with nsVoidArray!].
- 261861 - mozStorage APIs for using the SQLite database engine.
Notable bug fixes
- 202992 - "h" or "htt" cut off in address bar autocomplete (adds :// to domain names starting with "p" or "t").
- 111432 - Mouse wheel scrolling doesn't work in print preview on page margin or on frame page.
- 304290 - Treeview of 'Choose Folder' Option in Create Profile/Profile Manager should not point at 'my documents' by default.
- 236541 - "Do this automatically for files like this" doesn't work when Content-Disposition: attachment is used. (Fixed for the case where "Save" is the pre-selected action.)
- 283719 - "Add keyword for this Search..." can fail if a form uses a fieldset (example: bugzilla advanced query, "e.type is not defined").
- 245725 - Download manager does not calculate speed accurately/correctly. (Before this patch, Firefox showed the average rate over the entire download. Now, it shows an moving average, which gives more weight to recent speed measurements.)
- 257992 - Cannot install multiple themes using drag-and-drop to the EM window.
- 251123 - HTTPS lock icon does not explain mixed secure/non-encrypted icon when hovering.
- 189570 - Aborting a page load causes untransferred content that already exists to be doomed from the disk cache.
- 270558 - Password manager should not fill in username and password if the username field is pre-filled by the server to a different username.
- 235336 - Password manager doesn't prefill mailman admin passwords.
- 197263 - Unchecking "enable automatic image resizing" also disables click-to-resize.
- 187772 - Mouse wheel scrolling does not dismiss form auto complete history, results in floating autocomplete dropdown.
- 310737 - Users who upgraded from Firefox 1.0.x to Firefox 1.5.0.x have no way to re-enable software installation (message bar that appears when xpinstall.enabled is false points to removed UI).
- 327604 - Status bar message text persists when switching tabs while page is loading.
- 162361 - Unicode file i/o in XPCOM/IO (cannot open files whose names contain characters outside the current locale: e.g. Japanese/Chinese on French Windows).
- 278161 - Make file URLs always be in (escaped) UTF-8 regardless of the file system encoding (opening an link to a local non-ASCII file).
- 310826 - Attempting to load URL with non-resolving host does google search (using keyword.url) even when the URL was not typed by the user.
- 331522 - Suppress keyword search (e.g. Google "I feel lucky") on middleclick URL paste.
- 263213 - Don't use I'm Feeling Lucky search when protocol (such as http:// or https://) specified.
- 309550 - Clear inside fieldset doesn't work.
- 200119 - Crash when I shutdown (StopCRLUpdateTimer) [@ nsHashtable::Reset ].
- 308204 - Null description in helper version info leaves Download Actions blank.
- 67127 - Newline in tooltips (title attribute) converted to black bars. (Patch info)
- 268590 - Allow multiple messages in browsermessage (information bar).
- 133439 - [Windows] Copy to clipboard works inconsistently.
- 301758 - [Mac] Click-and-hold shouldn't be interpreted as right-click.
- Memory usage and memory leaks
- 315951 - Unknown content type dialog leaks domwindow.
- 296538 - Reduce memory cache size.
More information