Upgrading to Firefox. Protocol?

[WarLocke]

I've been using Mozilla Firebird since Deebye pointed it out in a thread awhile back. I figure, now it's time to 'upgrade' to the next version, Firefox. I have the 6mb installer sitting on my desktop (plus all my bookmarks in a handy-dandy HTML format), but what's the protocol for this?

Do I just run the installer, and Firefox overrwrites Firebird? Do I uninstall Firebird first, then run the Firefox installer? What?

Also, what (if any) Mozilla plugin thingies should I get? I haven't tried any yet.

And would getting rid of IE hurt me? I hate that piece of crap. :angry:

[Guest]

You can't get rid of IE, not really. Internet Explorer is also used to browse your PC. I would have the greatest sympathies for you if you somehow managed to delete it.

[yangman]

... since Firefox 0.9 is due to be released tomorrow, at least according to the Firefox team.

I would recommend you first remove all traces of Firebird from your computer before installing Firefox, especially what Firebird had used to store user profiles.

As for extensions, I would suggest, at the minimum, Tabbrowser Preferences which gives you slightly more control over tab behaviour without the bloat and instability of Tabbrowser Extension. Copy Image is another small yet useful extension to have: it allows copying of images to the clipboard. However, since I've not followed the release candidates, I'm not certain which extensions will still be useful after 0.9, and which ones will have their features built into Firefox.


As unrealshadow13 said, no, you can't get rid of Internet Explorer as long as you are running a relatively modern version of Windows. The IE rendering engine is shared by several key components of Windows, including Windows Explorer, the Windows filemanager, as well as the Help application. Also, Windowsupdate can only be done through IE.

[DeeBye]

... since Firefox 0.9 is due to be released tomorrow, at least according to the Firefox team.

Yes, wait. I've been using the 0.9 Release Candidate and it's pretty nice. The official 0.9 release is a great browser.

I would recommend you first remove all traces of Firebird from your computer before installing Firefox, especially what Firebird had used to store user profiles.

echoed x 100

As for extensions, I would suggest, at the minimum, Tabbrowser Preferences which gives you slightly more control over tab behaviour without the bloat and instability of Tabbrowser Extension.

I am using TBE with 0.9rc and it works beautifully for me. I've never experienced symptoms of the apparent bloat and instability problems. Frankly, I don't think I could ever browse the web without TBE.

Copy Image is another small yet useful extension to have: it allows copying of images to the clipboard.

That's a built-in feature with 0.9. No need to add another extension.

[Quark]

I would recommend you first remove all traces of Firebird from your computer before installing Firefox, especially what Firebird had used to store user profiles.

You don't need to erase your profile. There is now a profile migrator in Firefox and it will move everything from your /phoenix/ directory inside Documents and Settings (which stores profiles), and makes sure they follow the new profile rules. No need to lose a profile. It's slightly more complicated for nightly build users (like me), because there was two profile changes since 0.8, but you don't need to worry about that since the changes have been in since before the 0.9 RC were released.

It's possible a few things in your profile might cause problems, but it's unlikely. If that's the case, mention it here and I have a pretty good idea of which files can cause problems so that you only need to lose/clean one file instead of the whole profile.

As for the program itself, you should either completely erase it, or install the new version into a completely different folder. I find myself installing to C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\Firefox607 (if a nightly from 6/07) or \Firefox08M (if the 0.8 Milestone). This makes it easier to track bugs and run away from a nightly that's causing major problems for me :P


Re: Extensions
Extension Mirror has a good list of what is already 0.9 Compatible.

This topic also has a list of 0.9 compatible themes.

Any extensions already in your profile (pre-0.9 some installed in profile directory, some in program) will be disabled upon first loading Firefox, but you can re-enable them through hidden preferences if they don't have a 0.9 version. Again, ask something and I might have an answer ;)


Oh, yeah. As said before, wait for 0.9! If for nothing else, the new Extensions/Themes manager makes it worth it because anything written for 0.9 will already work in 1.0 -> no changes coming, just bugfixes. After 1.0, it will be easier to work with extensions b/c there's upgrade features built in to the new manager, and extensions have new information stored in them for what versions of Firefox they work with.

Edit: Forgot something. 0.9 is supposed to be released today. Bugfixes have slowed down to make sure they're all working, and we're down to two bugs that block 0.9's release. One of those bugs is just to make sure version information in the program is updated to 0.9. Unfortunately, the other one seems to be a PITA for the developers and they haven't fixed it yet. So any release will have to wait till that is fixed and tested (need at least a full day of using builds with the fix to make sure it didn't break anything else, probably).

[WarLocke]

Well, thanks for the replies and advice, but it looks like it's a moot point now. My computer died last night - I'm typing this from the local library.

I suspect it's my motherboard this time, since the power supply revs up just fine, but I don't even get the BIOS booting up. Ah well, I guess it is time I got myself a new system. I just hope my HD isn't trashed, it would be a ginormous pain to find all my art and music files and crap again... :angry:

[Munkay]

:unsure:

I wish you luck with the new system. Damn computers always break at interesting times.

My harddrive got wiped during finals week. I was running around with my head chopped off. :P

-Munk

[Artega]

How do hard drives spontaneously format themselves?

[degrak]

Well, you did say it was "not really" possible, but I feel like prattling a bit.

It is possible to remove it, and there are programs out there that make it easier. It can be helpful for those "slower" systems.

I experimented a few times by removing the HTML engine on an older PII. Gave an interesting feel.

You can do it manually, but I am "not really" going into that.

[Quark]

Not necessarily a format problem. If the heads get damaged or worn, it's done. If the MBR (master boot record) gets messed up, you could lose everything on the hard drive without the data even being touched. That's possible to recover from.

From all the laptop repairs I do at school, I can tell you that heat kills hard drives. That and just pure bad luck (I've seen the repair history of one person who had 5 dead hard drives over the 4 years and 2 laptops he was here). Personally I've never had a problem, and out of my friends only one had a hard drive that started failing, but was still functional (just unstable). That was at the end of the system's lease anyway. The sucky part is that you can't blame it on a specific vendor, because Dell gets its hard drives from everyone.

[Munkay]

How do hard drives spontaneously format themselves?

I never said anything about a spontaneous format of my harddrive. I said it got wiped.

I run two drives in my computer, one of which holds temp storage and my operating system, the other storage. Long story short my drive with my OS got knocked out after a trojan got onto my computer, and shortly after enough files required for windows were deleted/corrupted, causing my drive to be 'wiped.' Or rather non-operational, and in need of a format.

-Munk

[kandrathe]

Ah, that happened to me last year. I made up a linux boot CD with an NTFS mounting/reading utility and was able to salvage my important data.

[Munkay]

Ah, that happened to me last year.  I made up a linux boot CD with an NTFS mounting/reading utility and was able to salvage my important data.

Funny that you mention that, that's actually how my friend Lancing saved some of my document files. :)

[DeeBye]

Just as a heads up, Firefox 0.9 has been released this morning. Unfortunately the download site is getting hammered right now, so you might have to wait a bit to grab your copy.

My installation went as smoothly as it usually does.

[Fragbait]

Hi DeeBye,

Really? I downloaded it yesterday, but when I opened the file, it said that it was the 0.8 installer. The filename was something with 0.9, though... <_<
Any ideas? Maybe this is just a glitch and it really is the 0.9 installer.
I deleted the file afterwards, though, and now stick with Mozilla 1.6 until 1.7 isnt RC3 anymore but the official release.

Greetings, Fragbait

[DeeBye]

What you downloaded last night was the 0.9 Release Candidate. If you recheck "Help" > "About", it will say 0.8+ and not 0.8.

[Quark]

What you downloaded last night was the 0.9 Release Candidate.&nbsp; If you recheck "Help" > "About", it will say 0.8+ and not 0.8.

*Grumble Grumble* ... you wouldn't believe the complains mozillazine.org has had to deal with because people don't know what "Release Candidate" means :(

[Jeunemaitre]

Personally I've never had a problem, and out of my friends only one had a hard drive that started failing, but was still functional (just unstable).&nbsp; That was at the end of the system's lease anyway.

Reminds me of two things:
First, somebody I knew from college referred to his first job after school as "Keeper of the Magic Smoke." He used to get odd looks from people and would have to explain that it's the magic smoke inside computers that make them work, and when that smoke escapes, that’s when you know your computer is done in. This was an interesting guy. He was a very smart guy who ended up in R&D for a computer company in California.

Secondly, I'm reminded of the time that my wife’s laptop lost its magic smoke. Although, it smelled a lot more like melting plastic than I imagined magic smoke would. Bottom line, the HD survived, but the board and the PS were melted together. Touching really, the two of them will now go through life together.

[Fragbait]

Hi,

Upgraded to firefox just today. Everything seems alright and adequately fast so far, but there's one thing that's getting on my nerves:
Scrolling with my mouse wheel. I used to have the controls of Moz 1.6 set to 'scroll three lines at once' and am really used to it. It makes browsing the web much faster.
Now that firefox made the preferences look XP style, called them options and placed them elsewhere, this option where the user can increase the scroll rate is missing!
At least I'm unable to find it.
Just a quick nit - show me the way. Please.


Greetings, Fragbait

[yangman]

The scrolling rate in Firefox is tied directly to the settings of your system. In Windows, that would be whatever is specified in mouse properties.