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Okay DVT’s (aka.) Dreamviews Techies, lets Tech Talk shall we? I tried out Firefox2.0 RC3 last week, :goodjob2: and here’s what I found.
FF2.0 will automatically run spell correct for you in the text boxes of web forms. On one hand, it’s a little annoying at first to see red underlines under stuff (I’m a good speller, so all my suggestions were for real words like “<strike>webspam</strike>”). On the other hand, it’s easy to right-click and adds a word to the dictionary, so if you have a single computer then in a few days most of your weird words will be added. On the third-hand, if you have multiple computers, I hate the idea of adding a word to my home computer’s dictionary, my laptop’s dictionary, and my work computer’s dictionary. Let’s hope that Google browser sync or some other extension gives you a way to sync dictionaries on different computers. Oh, and by the way: Google Browser Sync seems to work great with FF2.0. I haven’t had any problems keeping bookmarks in sync between 1.5 branch versions and the 2.0 version.
The first time a new window popped up (e.g. manage bookmarks or manage search engines), Firefox would hang for 3-4 seconds. It never paused after that first time though. Maybe it was just building some XUL as a one-time thing?
Firefox2.0 is better on memory leaks than the 1.5 branch, at least for the sites I visited. You’re still looking at 100MB or so if you open a bunch of tabs, but I didn’t see memory usage growing and growing.
I haven’t had any crashes yet. Again, I might be lucky, but I do intend to hit some scuzzball sites as a member of Google’s webspam team. :putemuppunk:
I think the 2.0 release candidate handles virtual private networks (VPNs) better? When I hop on my companies VPN session with 1.5.0.x, I normally need to use switch proxy and change a proxy to kick the browser a little bit. Not in 2.0, things just switched over seamlessly for me.
Here are some nice things that I missed but noticed in the release notes
- The History menu keeps a list of recently closed tabs, so you can undo a closed tab.
- If the browser crashes, Firefox will restore not only windows and tabs, but even words in a textarea box.
These two features are great, and pull in the best features of the Session Saver extension.
This version isn’t perfect though. There are two things I’d like to change (one new issue and one longstanding one):- They put a “close tab” button on each tab. I don’t mind that, but my muscle memory goes to the top-right to close a tab. Instead, it’s now some doohickey to show me a list of what’s in each tab. WTF? :wtf:, I don’t need that–I opened the tabs myself, so I don’t need some table of contents I hope they’ll provide an about:config flag to give me my “X” back in the top-right corner.
- Firefox does not store favicons for urls that redirect. I *hate* that. I hit some of my bookmarks in the Personal Toolbar Folder 30-40 times a day, but the favicon never shows up beside them? I think it’s for urls that redirect. WTF? Again :wtf: Give me a break, if my bookmark has url A and when I click on it I go to url B or C and there’s a favicon on the final destination url, go ahead and store it for url A. Or give me an about:config option for it. But those are minor nuisances.
Overall, version 2.0 of Firefox looks very stable to me. For those who just had been wondering before downloading RC3.
Now <span style="color:#3366FF">Kaniaz take a look at this. Have you ever heard of an svchost.exe error?
2 days ago I was a full day into a marathon session of trying to get my wife’s computer to work again the way it used to before Microsoft shoved a ton of security updates at her. System Restore, my old trusty friend, hasn't been able to help. That makes me think Microsoft has done some things to override how System Restore is supposed to work. If so, you suck, Microsoft -- you suck big time.
I installed IE7 on her laptop. I'm a dedicated Firefox user, so IE was more of a curiosity for me. I removed it because one particular site she wanted to access required IE6 -- and IE7 wouldn't work with it.
I put IE7 back on because of the mandatory upgrade that's supposed to happen sometime soon. I dislike the idea that Microsoft, among other things, hopes to shore up it search share by shoving IE7 at people. The search integration is tighter in IE7, and some assume this will generate more queries for Microsoft. Since it's coming, I need to look at IE7 more closely.
The system was working fine on monday, when she next used it. But when she shut down, A message displayed that updates were ready for install. Usually, I review and approve these. In this case, I couldn't get that option to work. I might be wrong, but it seemed as if I had no choice but to take these updates.
The computer flashed a message that it was installing update 1 of 15. Then it sat like that for the next 1/2 hour. I pondered leaving it to waste electricity all night long but concluded the update procedure must have had a problem. I shut it off.
So the following day, I booted up and soon received this message:
svchost.exe - Application Error : The instruction at "0x745f2780" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "read". I know what you’re thinking Kaniaz just as I was WTF? :wtf:
The system then hung. I rebooted, several times, and eventually the system let me work for about an hour or so before the message came up and froze things once again.
So at this point I’m like F*** it it’s time for System Restore. System Restore is awesome as I’m sure you know. It has saved me time and again in these situations. One thing’s for sure it largely restored my faith in Windows as an operating system.
This time, System Restore didn't help. I went back a day, a week, two weeks. No matter what, I kept getting the error. Further more, I noticed the Internet Explorer was reporting itself as if it was IE7 rather than IE6, if System Restore was working properly.
I can only conclude that either IE7 or the updates messed up the system. In either case, something made changes so permanent that it overrode the protection System Restore is supposed to provide. And that ticked me off immensely.
So I finally fix the issue but I’m still dumb founded why system restore didn’t fix the problem, just wanted to give my IE7 experience and see if you knew of anything that may have caused that error or if you’ve experienced anything similar.
