Silver's Simple Site - Weblog - Tags - Firefox

So, I added --enable-svg and --enable-canvas to my Mozilla Firefox build config the other day. Apparently that forces me into building Cairo, which, um, doesn't build.

m:\source-HEAD\mozilla\gfx\cairo\cairo\src\cairo-win32-private.h(43) : warning C4005: 'WINVER' : macro redefinition
        command-line arguments :  see previous definition of 'WINVER'
../../../../../../source-HEAD\mozilla\gfx\cairo\cairo\src\cairo-win32.h(66) : fatal error C1189: #error :  Cairo was not compiled with support for the win32 backend

make[4]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/m/tree-firefox-debug/objdir/gfx/cairo/cairo/src'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/m/tree-firefox-debug/objdir/gfx/cairo'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/m/tree-firefox-debug/objdir/gfx'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/m/tree-firefox-debug/objdir'
make: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/m/tree-firefox-debug/objdir'

Update: It seems that, on way or another, I ended up with cairo-features.h in the srcdir without it being listed in CVS\Entries, so it never got removed. Thanks to vlad who suggested looking for that file in other locations. Let's hope it builds now.

So the RSS button is gone from the statusbar, and now appears inside the URLBar. Yes, you heard me (and saw, too). So we now have a less-discoverable, less accessible, less flexible solution (no popup menu with a list of feeds any more!). And to top it all off, they are viewed in a hacked-up badly-integrated version of the Feedview extension (note: I have no idea if the Feedview extension suffers from any of the same issues as Firefox does, and don't mean to imply such), meaning you get suck and more suck, including such gems as bug 302749.

We're actually getting some interesting data coming it from the instrumentation "startup ping".

In particular, you can see that people updated from Firefox 1.5 to 1.5.0.1 almost the moment it was released.

We can also estimate that there are approximately 1100 new or updated ChatZilla users a week (calculation: sum up new installs [the numbers on the pages linked, 40], divide by the number of days [25], multiply by 700 [1% and we want per-week]).

So I tried building Firefox with Places a couple of days ago. It ain't pretty. It's definitely good that it isn't being released for a while yet.

• Importing my history and bookmarks took 15 minutes and have no UI what so ever. I only didn't kill the Firefox process using 100% CPU because I saw some sqlite files in my profile being created and modified.
• The imported data is 74% bigger than the original. This seems like a rather big increase.
• My personal toolbar is now empty, and I can't add stuff to it. (The folder in Places for this has the right stuff on, though.)
• The URL bar does not update when changing tabs or if the page loads. This means it only ever displays what I last typed.
• The URL bar has no autocomplete, either as-you-type or using the drop-down button.
• All links appear unvisited, despite clearly being in history.
• None of the navigation toolbar works either, so no back/forward/reload/stop. Not even the shortcuts work.
• The browser no longer opens my homepage on start, even though it's still configured the same. It just loads about:blank, and if I click the Home button it loads the Google start page!
• Add Bookmark menu item does nothing.
• Selecting either the History or Subscriptions items in Places itself hangs Firefox for 5 - 10 seconds. I think this is the calendar, rather than the data, as searching the history only takes 1s second.
• There is no way to select all dates in the calendar, even though it is (apparently) the default when going to a view.
• Expanding or collapsing a folder in Places' top-left box takes 5 - 10 seconds if Subscriptions is selected.
• Switching folders keeps the search string, but doesn't search the newly selected folder.
• Searching "Current Collection Only" doesn't do anything.
• Adding a search filter then can't be removed.
• Filters only allow "starts with", "is" and "is on site" for location matching. Where's "contains"? Have to use "Containing the text" for that, which includes the title.
• No title search option! Have to search title and URL together.
• The icons for items are not fixed, so appear badly inconstant, as they show the favicon.
• Properties context-menu item does nothing, at all, anywhere in Places.
• Quitting Firefox closes all windows, then spends at least 15 seconds using 100% CPU (saving something I think).

Please don't bother pointing out that Places isn't finished yet - I know that, and it sure shows.

Ever wondered what download rate the top extensions on Mozilla Addons get? How much it varies by hour/day? Even which are rising and which are falling?

Well, now you can.

(Yes, I was bored. Very bored.)

So I thought I'd try it out, as it's supposedly worth using. Ha. It suffers from a few rather fundamental problems here:

• It waited three seconds before claiming the test page was actually a phishing page, even though it's set to use a locally stored list.
• It changed my browser's configuration just to display the warning - it turned on the navigation toolbar, which would have been fine if it then hid it again after, but it didn't.
• It positions its "disabled webpage" XUL code horribly, which causes the following extra statusbar row:

  

  To change into:

  

  In other words, it inserted itself between extensions and other code usually attached to the statusbar, and the statusbar itself, causing them to all end up at the top of the screen. If you don't see how silly this is, look what happens with the find toolbar:

  

• Finally, it completely fails to display the "disabled" webpage. I expect this is Canvas and Cairo being shit, but it none the less makes the entire feature rather sucky.

I'm sure browser plugins come with their own little Quantum Failure Generators or something. I've spent most of today trying to narrow down certain sizing issues with the Windows Media Player plugin across various OS versions and browsers. It was not (and still isn't) fun.

At one point, even Virtual PC 2007 itself crashed.

Then, starting openSUSE 10.2, it decided that it needed to fsck each and every partition just because it hadn't done it for a while. This would have been fine, except that it blocks the boot process for upwards of an hour with no indications on the graphical boot screen.

Now, I'm about to go install some beta software as part of a private beta test program; this can't possibly go wrong, can it?