Mozilla just posted Firefox 3 Alpha 4 (code name Gran Paradiso) for everyone to download. Before you go jumping around with excitement, I’ll be the first to say that this release doesn’t have anything that great in it:
- Inclusion of the FUEL Javascript library for extension developers. More details available on the FUEL Wiki
- Notification support using Growl libraries on Mac OS X
- New Page Info window
- Many Cocoa user interface improvements and bug fixes
- Basic Mac OS X crash reporting via Breakpad
- Improvements to offline application support. Enabled Listing of Offline Resources and implemented SQL device for the offline cache.
- Miscellaneous Gecko 1.9 bug fixes
To keep with the consistent pattern it looks like Mozilla has opted not to put Places back in this Alpha Release as MetaMan noticed just yesterday. Oh yeah, and if you haven’t noticed the pattern here is what it has looked like: announce that Places will be in next Alpha release, decide that the deadline can’t be met, push back to next Alpha release, and repeat. We first saw Places back in Firefox 2 (almost a year ago) and it was promised to change the way we manage our bookmarks. Thus far, it has been nothing but one disappointment after another.
I’m normally very positive when it comes to these Firefox releases, but still not having Places in sight makes me wonder if it is still going to be in Firefox 3? Here are what two commenters mentioned about Places on our last Firefox 3 article:
So, according to that schedule a milestone including a limited version of places should be released late April. Well, it’s April 24th and still no sign of places in the nightlies. Are they even going to be able to maintain this feature-limited schedule? You know, if there weren’t so many great extensions Firefox really wouldn’t be anywhere good.
Places is supposed to be the big feature of this version and they know it. If they cannot get it working in time I’m afraid they will postpone the final release until early 2008.
I strongly agree with both of them, and I have a sneaking suspicion that MetaMan will be right and the final release date of Firefox 3 will get pushed back into 2008. I guess we can’t look that far into the future, and we’ll have to see if Firefox 3 Alpha 5 introduces Places on May 31 when it is released.
Let us know in the comments whether you think Mozilla will be able to get Places integrated in time, or read more about Places.
Note: Below you will also find a portable version of Firefox 3 Alpha 4 that I have put together for those that want to give it a shot. I have tested it out and it appears to work just fine on my system.
Windows: Portable Firefox 3 Alpha 4
Windows: Gran Paradiso Setup Alpha 4.exe
Mac OS X: Gran Paradiso Alpha 4.dmg
Linux: granparadiso-alpha4.tar.bz2
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Firefox 3, Mozilla
Related Posts:
- Mozilla Drops ‘Places’ From The Firefox 2.0 Release
- So What’s Going On With Firefox 3.0 (Minefield)?
- Some Of The Features Planned For Firefox 3
- Mozilla Gets Places Back in Firefox 3, Prepares for Tagging
- Firefox 3 Alpha 8 – Bookmark Tagging, App Preferences, and More
Where do I go to find “Places” in FF 2.0.X?
Wow. Accurate page rendering is nice but on it’s own it just doesn’t cut it! We’ve got four alphas and ZERO new features! Where’s the spirit of innovation that made this browser a force to acknowledge for nearly all sites?
Since the last alpha, the release timeline has said Places backend will be included in this alpha release, not the functionality – that comes in the next alpha.
So, what’s important in a browser, better core functionality like web page rendering or new features just for the sake of features? If you want a product that’s packed full of features but renders web pages poorly I would suggest something by Microsoft, say IE 7. It has lots of new features but does a poor job of rendering web pages, incomplete CSS 2 support, and a JavaScript engine that’s incredibly slow.
I can name one new feature, [ffextensionguru.wordpress.com] in Fx 3.0a3[/url]
Then there is the “[ffextensionguru.wordpress.com]” (which still needs a ‘whitelist’). Not sure if this is really a feature but Fx 3 now supports APNG images.
Originally Places was supposed to be functional in the second Alpha release. So while they may have updated the timeline accordingly it has still been pushed back quite a bit.
It is definitely important to get the core functionality working great, but Mozilla has said that they also want to include a bunch of new features as well. By the Beta stage software is supposed to be feature complete and they are only supposed to be fixing some bugs at that point, so unless they decide to cut a lot of the features the release date will probably be getting pushed back into 2008.
I guess those are kind of features, but not really something that a lot of users will take notice at.
Ah but the redirect warning they might and for the wrong reasons.
True, but I think they were pretty clear their early timeline was highly tentative, and will most likely have to change. The current timeline is more definite (although still subject to change).
Actually if I remember correctly it is disabled on a fresh Firefox install, so most users will probably never enable it.