SillyDog701

[beanboy89]

The Mozilla Foundation has made the first beta release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 available. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is the first Mozilla Firefox release since the Gecko 1.8 branch was created in mid-August.

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5 Beta 1:

* Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
* Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
* Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
* Improvements to popup blocking.
* Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
* Answers.com replaces Dictionary.com for dictionary lookup.
* Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and "Safe Mode" experience.
* Better accessibility support including DHTML accessibility.
* Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
* Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
* New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
* Many security enhancements.
* List of notable bug fixes since Deer Park Alpha 2

View the release notes.
Mozilla Firefox project page.

Downloads, listed alphabetically by platform.
Linux Installer
Linux tar.gz
Mac OS X Disk Image
Windows Installer

FTP Driectory Mirrors

It's worth noting Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1's internal version number is 1.4.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20050907 SeaMonkey/1.1a

[beanboy89]

It appears Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1's menus have somewhat changed. All menus now have a flat look to them. This is possibly due to the landing of bug 303806, which changes the appearance of meuns on Windows systems to better match Windows XP's default interface, Luna. Adversely, the menus on Windows 9x, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and the "classic" interface of Windows XP and 2003 now have a flat look to them.



Here is the Help menu in Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1 on Windows 98 SE.

Thankfully, the MozillaZine Knowledge Base has some useful information on restoring Mozilla Firefox's menus back to a pre-1.5 beta 1 state by applying a userChrome.css hack.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

[Antony]

It appears Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1's menus have somewhat changed. All menus now have a flat look to them. This is possibly due to the landing of bug 303806, which changes the appearance of meuns on Windows systems to better match Windows XP's default interface, Luna. Adversely, the menus on Windows 9x, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and the "classic" interface of Windows XP and 2003 now have a flat look to them.

Shouldn't they leave the interface for operating system to handle it rather than applying skin?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Alexa Toolbar)

[Andrew T.]

Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is fast...faster than Firefox 1.0.x was! Once loaded, everything seems instantaneous, even on a five-year-old PC.

About a year's worth of development separates this from Firefox 1.0.x.

There are a number of other user-interface differences between this release and Firefox 1.0.x, some of which should be obvious to anyone who's tried out the Deer Park alphas from a few months ago. For example, the Live Bookmark available-feed indicator has moved from the status bar to the location bar, and the Options dialog has been rearranged in a horizontal tab-like fashion.

I think the new custom-drawn windows look like a cross between those of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. I'm not crazy about how they flash when hovering the mouse cursor over them (like in Opera 8, come to think of it), but at least the menu items no longer have a redundant 3D border drawn around them. The Bookmarks menu is more widely spaced, so you may have to rearrange your bookmarks to avoid seeing those annoying scroll arrows.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

[Antony]

Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is fast...faster than Firefox 1.0.x was! Once loaded, everything seems instantaneous, even on a five-year-old PC.

It's good to know this. (I haven't installed Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 yet.)

Let's hope newer Netscape 8.xx would use this fast codebase.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Alexa Toolbar)

[Fulvio]

I read the release notes, and came out with little understanding, other than there is no way to select an alternate directory, and so this thing would go in the same directory as FF1.0.6. I could not see a way to keep a solid program like 1.0.6, and not replace it with a beta. So, I stopped my installation.
1.5, and, whatever they call it is based in 1.8b4, and I have been looking all along at the nightlies. I, also, don't see a way to use a zip file.
May be I am worrying for nothing, but I don't like what I see.
Have you kept 1.0.6?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050903 Firefox/1.0+

[Pu7o]

If you choose "Custom" while installing, you can choose an alternate directory.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

[Fulvio]

Thanks,
I wanted to keep 1.0.6 as well have 1.5 beta1, and, yes, selecting a custom installation allows to to select another directory.
After seeing the latest vulnerability, and, being utterly confused by the nomenclature (1.5beta1 being 1.4), I was having second thought.
The net effect is that 1.5beta1, alias 1.4, staid on my computer for less than thirty seconds. First it did not accept two extentions which were doing fine in a 1.8b4 based nightly, secondly, I had to create a new folder before beginning the installation. or it would create a new folder in the program files.
Also, it took over the shortcut for Firefox1.0.6. It did one thing right, i.e. did not uninstall my "Spacepossum", although I had to fish out another shortcut.
The poor thing did not stand a chance!
I will stick to the nightly, which is also vulnerable, but it is the unzippeed folder, easy come, easy go.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Spacepossum/1.0.6

[Andrew T.]

Here are some more noteworthy things about Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1 I noticed:

When viewing a single image, a thumbnail of the image is now visible on the location bar and tab bar where a site icon would otherwise be:


Also, the Windows 9x title bar and taskbar icon bug has been fixed! There is now no need to resort to user-improvised hacks just to get the Firefox icon to display in the corner.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

[J-M]

I just noticed that Unofficial Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Changelog is available :

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/r ... 1.5b1.html

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; fi-FI; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050717 Firefox/1.0.6

[beanboy89]

Here are some more noteworthy things about Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1 I noticed:

When viewing a single image, a thumbnail of the image is now visible on the location bar and tab bar where a site icon would otherwise be:


Also, the Windows 9x title bar and taskbar icon bug has been fixed! There is now no need to resort to user-improvised hacks just to get the Firefox icon to display in the corner.

If I remember correctly, both of those features/fixes were in the first Deer Park release, Deer Park Alpha 1, which was released in late May.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20050907 SeaMonkey/1.1a

[beanboy89]

Yesterday, when I had no internet connection, due to a minor router-related issue, I noticed Mozilla Firefox 1.4 Beta 1 now has new error messages for indicating when a website could not be found.



If desired, the old dialog-based error messages can be still obtained by setting the [tt]browser.xul.error_pages.enabled[/tt] pref in [tt]about:config[/tt] to [tt]false[/tt].

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908 Firefox/1.4

[Antony]

Cool! Firefox now has a better interface for error message...

Okay, I know you guys don't like me to compare it with Apple's products...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

[Ron Williams]

Are you doing damage control regarding your comments toward Jay? When was the last time I saw you have a picture with UFAQ link in it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

[Antony]

Are you doing damage control regarding your comments toward Jay? When was the last time I saw you have a picture with UFAQ link in it.

What are you talking about?

I was merely putting a screenshot for comparison.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5