Firefox 8 Coming/What’s New

As noted in yesterday’s Firefox Release Recap, Firefox 8 will be released on Tuesday, November 8th. There are several new features coming in this release and there are couple that really standout. These include additions to the add-ons installation and management process as well as only allowing tabs to load when selected upon restart.

Add-ons check first run

On your first run after you have updated to Firefox 8, you are going to see an add-ons screen similar to that below. This will let you know which add-ons are currently installed, if they are compatible (or can be updated) and who installed them. Further, you have an option to choose to keep the installed add-on or remove it (always good to do a little housekeeping by removing add-ons you are no longer using).

Third Party Add-ons Install Confirmation

In addition, it seems like every program now has a Firefox add-on. Most of them are decent enough to ask you if you want to install the add-on others such as Avast (WebRep), Microsoft (.NET Framework Assistant) and Oracle (Java Console, which you only need if you are Java developer) silently install add-ons into Firefox without your knowledge or consent. Sometimes though, you are in a hurry to get the program installed and miss that little check-box that is ticked to install the add-on. With Firefox 8, when 3rd party program attempts to install an add-on, Firefox will ask if you want to keep this add-on or remove it.


Don’t load tabs until selected

For those who either have several ‘home pages’ or use the Show my windows and tabs from last time, you will find this to be a really nice feature. From Tools (Edit on Mac/Linux)  Menu go to Options… on the General Tab, just below the start up preference is a new option Don’t load tabs ubtil selected. When this options in enabled (which it is not by default), all your tabs will show in the tab bar, but they will not be loaded until you click on them. This is handy if you have a couple tabs that have a lot of content to to load (or on a slow server) that can cause the browser to bog down and prevent the loading of other tabs.

Some other minor features coming in Firefox 8 include:

  • Twitter is now in the search engine drop-down box
  • Improved tab animations
  • Improved performance and memory handling when using HTML5

13 Comments on Firefox 8 Coming/What’s New

  1. Nice article, sending it to my roommate who’s still stuck on 3.6 who patiently waits 3 minutes until his 47 tabs load.

  2. No edit button…

    By the way, you’re using OpenDownload (fixed)? You do know there’s a working version, OpenDownload²., right?

  3. Problem I have with Firefox is if you download the newest version and have problems you can not go back to the old one.

  4. So I installed FF8 today and I told it to go ahead and leave one of my add-ons enabled.
    When FF restarted, it immediately crashed – again and again and again.

    Thankfully, I know exactly why it was crashing, the add-on I told it to leave enabled was making it crash. Even more thankfully, there was an upgrade to that add-on that I had not yet installed which fixed the issue.

    What if I had manually left more than one add-on enabled? What if there wasn’t a more recent version of the add-on available? What if the latest version was not already FF8 compatible? Would the only option have been to uninstall and reinstall FF?

    I’m kinda surprised there is no “FF crashed because of add-on failures. Click here to launch with add-ons disabled” option.

  5. My constant FF 8 crashes are also due to Add-ons. I only enabled
    the necessary Acrobat, MS Office, Flash and Shockwave back on.

    The problem now is that my homepage, my.yahoo.com, won’t load.
    finance.yahoo.com is fine, however. If I reload my homepage and
    look at the history dropdown list is lists my.yahoo.com as a “Switch
    to Tab”. Since I NEVER use tabs (I always open in a new window),
    I have no idea how I could have a Tab problem.

    Any clues?

    TIA

    Chemyst

5 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Removing Java Console Extension | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog
  2. OpenDownload² | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog
  3. Firefox 8.0 Released (Desktop and Android) | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog
  4. Disable Firefox 8 Add-on Controls | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog
  5. Changes to “Don’t Load Tabs” option | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog

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