Release notes Firefox Alpha 3 - Known Issues

This list covers some of the known problems with Gran Paradiso Alpha 2. Please read this before reporting any new bugs, and watch for updates as new bugs are discovered.

All Systems

• The browser may consume excessive amounts of memory after prolonged browsing. In order to better handle memory issues, a new garbage collection system has been implemented. However, as the process of integrating Gecko into this system is still ongoing, there are some known leaks that result in large memory usage when the browser is used for a long period of time. A restart should resolve the problem, which will be fixed in Alpha 3.
• The Cairo graphics system has drastically changed the way all text and images are rendered from previous versions of Gecko, so occasional misrenderings of non-latin scripts and fonts may occur.
• The Phishing Protection notification bubble is hidden by the content area (see bug 341950.)

Windows

• Upscaling images can result in misrendering, causing the edges of the image to appear blurry.

Mac OS X

• The user's choice of a default font may not always be honored.
• Font decorations such as underline and strikethrough may be drawn incorrectly.
• Complex script (ex: Indic) may be misrendered.

Linux and Unix systems

• Loading any page with Chinese, Japanese or Korean text can hang the browser (see bug 357637).
• Performance on complex script (ex: Indic) may be slower than previous versions of Gecko.
• Compatibility issues have been reported when users are not running Xorg 7.0 or better.
• Users may experience problems when attempting to print complex pages.

Troubleshooting

• Poorly designed or incompatible Add-ons can cause problems with your browser, including make it crash, slow down page display, etc. If you encounter strange problems relating to parts of the browser no longer working, the browser not starting, windows with strange or distorted appearance, degraded performance, etc, you may be suffering from trouble with your Add-ons. Restart the browser in Safe Mode. On Windows, start using the "Safe Mode" shortcut created in your Start menu or by running firefox.exe -safe-mode. On Linux, start with ./firefox -safe-mode and on Mac OS X, run:

  cd /Applications/GranParadiso.app/Contents/MacOS/
./firefox-bin -safe-mode

  When running in Safe Mode, you can disable the add-ons that are causing trouble and then restart to try again.

If you uninstall an extension that is installed with your user profile (i.e. you installed it from a web page) and then wish to install it for all user profiles using the -install-global-extension command line flag, you must restart the browser once to cleanse the profile extensions datasource of traces of that extension before installing with the switch. If you do not do this you may end up with a jammed entry in the Extensions list and will be unable to install the extension globally.

If you encounter strange problems relating to bookmarks, downloads, window placement, toolbars, history, or other settings, it is recommended that you try creating a new profile and attempting to reproduce the problem before filing bugs. Create a new profile by running Firefox with the -P command line argument, choose the "Manage Profiles" button and then choose "Create Profile...". Migrate your settings files (Bookmarks, Saved Passwords, etc) over one by one, checking each time to see if the problems resurface. If you do find a particular profile data file is causing a problem, file a bug and attach the file.

Downloading Gran Paradiso Alpha 2

Downloading Gran Paradiso Alpha 2

Mozilla.org provides Gran Paradiso for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages.

• Windows: Gran Paradiso Setup Alpha 2.exe
• Mac OS X: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2.dmg
• Linux: granparadiso-alpha2.tar.gz

For builds for other systems and languages not provided by mozilla.org, see the Contributed Builds section at the end of this document.

Source: Mozilla.org

Release notes Firefox Alpha 3 - Changes in this Development Milestone

Changes in this Development Milestone

Gecko 1.9 Alpha 2 introduces several new features which can be tested by using Gran Paradiso Alpha 2:

• Core layout code affecting the calculation of widths in tables, floats, and absolutely positioned elements has been rewritten. The code for handling incremental layout of pages (as data arrives over the network, as images load, or as dynamic changes are made) has also been changed extensively. (See the Reflow-Refactoring wiki page for more information.
• Resolved remaining issues with ACID2 test compliance.
• Support for the Web Apps 1.0 API for changing stylesheets.
• The inline-block and inline-table values of CSS 2.1's display property are now implemented.
• XML documents can now be rendered as they're downloaded instead of only after the full document has been loaded.
• Greatly improved Mac widgets support since Alpha 1.
• Improvements in the Cairo graphics layer.

Some of the changes in Gecko 1.9 Alpha 2 will affect the web and platform compatibility of Gran Paradiso Alpha 2:

• Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME are not supported for Gecko 1.9.
• OS X 10.2 is no longer supported, and OS X 10.3.9 or better is required.
• The non-standard JavaScript Script object is no longer supported.
• Moving DOM nodes between documents now requires a call to importNode or adoptNode as per the DOM specification.

Gran Paradiso release notes

Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 is an early developer milestone for the next major version of Firefox that is being built on top of the next generation of Mozilla's layout engine, Gecko 1.9. Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox should not use Gran Paradiso Alpha 2.

These Release Notes cover what's new, download and installation instructions, known issues and frequently asked questions for the Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 release. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla.

Give us your feedback through this feedback form.

Run Firefox from removable media

This advanced tip makes it possible to run Firefox from removable media, such as a USB memory stick. This will allow you to run Firefox with your personal settings from any computer, even those that don't have Firefox installed. It has only been tested on Windows XP/2000. The basic instructions are as follows:

1. Copy the Firefox application folder and your profile folder to the removable medium. In this example we will use R:\Firefox for the application folder and R:\FFProfile as the profile folder, assuming the drive letter for the removable media is R:.
2. Create a simple batch file called R:\Firefox.bat with the following line:

   start \Firefox\firefox.exe -profile \FFProfile
   

3. Optionally, disable the disk cache to reduce the amounts of file writes to the removable storage by using about:config to set browser.cache.disk.enable to false.

The reason why a batch file is needed instead of a simple shortcut is that a shortcut uses absolute paths, and since the actual drive letter for the removable media may change depending on which computer it is plugged into, the relative path used in the batch file is guaranteed to work anywhere.