Firefox 1.5.0.2 has NOT been released

The authors of the following webpages are incorrect:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/Mozilla-Firefox-Final.shtml
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/19-mozilla-firefox.html
http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_5_51_7277.html
http://www.addict3d.org/index.php?page=downloadfile&ID=1398
http://www.ddlboard.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=491
http://www.softportal.com/freesoftware/2538/mozilla-firefox

When Firefox 1.5.0.2 is released, it will say so on Mozilla.com.

If you see any websites jumping the gun on a Firefox release, please contact the authors of those websites.

How to upgrade Firefox 1.5

As I’ve been reading various discussion groups, it occurs to me that when a user reads that Firefox 1.5.0.1 is out, he/she rushes to the Mozilla website to download it. Sorta puts all that hard work on the update system to waste .

Yes, I know the majority of Firefox users probably don’t hang out in technical discussion groups; but still, wherever you see an announcement, let them know that 1.5 users can use Help -> Check for Updates.

SeaMonkey and Firefox/Thunderbird share more than I thought.

Some of you may be aware of my webpage that compares the differences between Mozilla Suite versus Firefox and Thunderbird. With the impending release of SeaMonkey 1.0, I decided to create an equivalent page comparing SeaMonkey against Firefox and Thunderbird. Because SeaMonkey uses the Mozilla 1.8 codebase, I figured the list of differences would shrink; but I was surprised by how much it shrank. This is specifically because one product may have a user interface for a feature, while the other doesn’t.

For instance:
Scam detection: In Thunderbird, you can go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Email Scams, and check mark the box. There’s no menu for it in SeaMonkey, but all you need to do is enter about:config in the browser location bar, and search for the pref mail.phishing.detection.enabled. Double-click on it, to toggle between on (true) and off (false).

Anti-Virus support: In Thunderbird, you can go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Anti-Virus, and check mark the box. Again, there’s no menu for it in SeaMonkey, but all you need to do is enter about:config in the browser location bar, and add the Boolean pref mailnews.downloadToTempFile. Setting the value to true enables the feature, while setting it to false disables it. (The default is false.)

Marking Junk as read: In SeaMonkey, go to Tools -> Junk Mail Controls, and for each account, you’ll see a check box for “Mark messages determined to be Junk as read”. The check box isn’t in Thunderbird, but the feature is there. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General, and click on “Config Editor” (finally, a user-friendly term for aboutconfig). Search for a pref called mail.server.default.markAsReadOnSpam. Copy the name of that pref, and clear the config search field. By looking at your other preference settings, you should be able to determine the server number of the account you want to set the preference for. Once you’ve done that, add an edited version of the Boolean preference you copied, replacing “default” with the server and number of the account you are editing. (eg. mail.server.server2.markAsReadOnSpam ) (Restarting Thunderbird is required)

Looking at FTP sites for Mozilla releases

Apparently there are a few websites reporting that Firefox 1.5 has been released, because it’s on the FTP server. These sites need to reel themselves back in.

To quote David Baron:

“It hasn’t shipped yet, it’s on the FTP site in preparation for being shipped. “

and Dave Miller:

“very few people (in the grand scheme of things) watch the FTP site 24 hours a day waiting for the next file to show up. Getting it on the FTP site is one of the FIRST steps of the process of actually shipping a release. It has to be on the FTP site for an hour or two (to give it time to propagate across our FTP mirror network) before any of the web pages are posted, otherwise there’ll be nothing to link to from the web pages. If the download page (http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/) doesn’t link to it yet, there’s no reason to expect any other web pages about it to exist yet either.”

Dave gave a link to the Mozilla Application Suite, because that’s what was being discussed. Those quotes apply to all Mozilla product releases. The people jumping the gun may end up regretting it. There is supposed to be a re-organization of Mozilla web content happening soon, making Mozilla.com the end-user site. Mozilla contributers have eluded to this happening during the release of Firefox 1.5.

Bookmarks in RSS

I’ve recently become fascinated with the idea of using RSS to maintain a list of items rather than a feed of news or a log. If used in that way, Mozilla Firefox‘s live bookmarks feature, all of a sudden, has a practical use. My website evolved from one links page, that has now become my ilias.ca main page. I originally created a links page to help users in two ways:
– users wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of maintaining a list of help sites for Mozilla or Netscape.
– users wouldn’t have to clog up their bookmarks with help sites. They could bookmark one site, and use that as a gateway.

It seems to me ‘maintaining a set of bookmarks for others’ is what Live Bookmarks is all about. You set up a Live Bookmark to ‘ilias.ca help sites’, and now all the sites appear in that Live Bookmark. Whenever I update a link, add a link, or remove a link, that change is reflected in your Live Bookmark.

And so, I’ve created an RSS formatted file for that purpose. Mozilla Firefox users will see the Live Bookmark icon, when visiting the ilias.ca main page, and can click on it to create the Live Bookmark.

I was thinking about the concept a little more and realized that if you store bookmarks in an RSS formatted file, you can use them on a customizable web portal, like Google’s Personalized Home. Supposedly, Internet Explorer 7 is supposed to have much greater RSS support. Maybe it would be possible to actually make Firefox and Internet Explorer use the same bookmarks RSS file. Oh the possibilities…