Firefox 1.5 Final Released

29 Nov, 2005 at 9:45pm ET Article published in Tech

Automated update to streamline product upgrades

Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance

Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs

Improvements to popup blocking

Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut

Answers.com is added to the search engine list

Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience

Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the i

Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox

Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer

New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6

Many security enhancements

Download: FireFox 1.5

Source: Mozillia

Comments

29 Nov 2005 ~ 11:23pm Kwitko I'm using 1.0.7 right now with a ton of extensions installed. Not sure how many of them will work with 1.5. I'll probably wait a bit before installing this release.
29 Nov 2005 ~ 11:28pm zero-counter The clear private data shortcuts are a blessing...
29 Nov 2005 ~ 11:51pm profdlp

Kwitko wrote:

I'm using 1.0.7 right now with a ton of extensions installed. Not sure how many of them will work with 1.5. I'll probably wait a bit before installing this release.

Same here. Even the last recent minor upgrade conked a few of my add-ons. I think I'll give the authors of those programs a chance to catch up to the latest release.
30 Nov 2005 ~ 1:09am entropy ARGH. Why didn't I wait?

I installed it, it seemed to work okay. A little jerky loading pages, I think. Then some extensions all the sudden freaked out. Then my bookmarks are unclickable. Then they're GONE (but I can see them if i do "manage"). Then they disappear from the toolbar (hiding/unhiding doesn't work). Now I have no forward/back/refresh/stop buttons (they're greyed out). My address bar doesn't update when I move around on pages. My loading circles don't show up anywhere (even when it's clearly loading). Something got messed up not only with the theme I was using, but the "underlying" theme - things are big and blocky now.

WHO LET THIS "FINAL" OUT THE DOOR?

The Tab Mix extension is the problem! It messes all the internals of Firefox up! I don't even know how much it's needed any more, but there's also something called Tab Mix Plus now, and that should work
30 Nov 2005 ~ 9:35am GrayFox The only problem I encountered is that my adblock broke.
30 Nov 2005 ~ 11:54am gibbonsl to get extensions working in 1.5 (untill they are updated) try here

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/firefox/make-extensions-work-in-firefox-15-136993.php

read warning

worked for Super Dragandgo
30 Nov 2005 ~ 12:16pm primesuspect it works great for me.
30 Nov 2005 ~ 12:27pm Gobbles Im using 1.5rc3 on my laptop and am about to update, with RC3 I have had no problems at all.
30 Nov 2005 ~ 7:07pm Rewired I'm running RC3. Has anyones RC3 updated itself? Mine hasn't, just wondering when it's coming.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 12:38am BLuKnight The main plugins I use, Roboform and Googlebar, work just fine with 1.5 now. So, I'm on it already.

Sorry to hear about your bookmarks getting messed up. I don't keep bookmarks any more. I have a static php page that's my home page. It contains all my favorite links. When I find a nice link, I put it on my todo list in Outlook and bookmark it for the time being. I'm pretty good about updating my page every couple of days or so.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 3:01am Jengo works great! thx
1 Dec 2005 ~ 3:43am Leonardo After installing 1.5 I couldn't even open the browser. Nothing, not a thing. I had to go to my system backup, retrieve the previous Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 folder, and write over the new 1.5 installation. I think I'll pass on 1.5 or wait for a bug-free update. Either I downloaded a corrupted installation file, or this release was not fully baked. Not plug-in conflicts in my case. I had no plug-ins installed.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 5:13am BlackHawk

Leonardo wrote:

After installing 1.5 I couldn't even open the browser. Nothing, not a thing. I had to go to my system backup, retrieve the previous Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 folder, and write over the new 1.5 installation. I think I'll pass on 1.5 or wait for a bug-free update. Either I downloaded a corrupted installation file, or this release was not fully baked. Not plug-in conflicts in my case. I had no plug-ins installed.

You needed to backup your profile and create a new one for 1.5 cause I don't think they're compatible.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 9:53am Leonardo Where is the profile for Firefox? C:\Documents and Settings\xyz?
1 Dec 2005 ~ 10:00am BLuKnight I went from 1.0.7 to 1.5 without a problem.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 12:07pm Leonardo Maybe I just need a fresh download. I'll try it again tonight when I get home from work.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 12:47pm BlackHawk

Leonardo wrote:

Where is the profile for Firefox? C:\Documents and Settings\xyz?

"C:\Documents and Settings\NAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Randomly named folder".

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

Could be that you have an extension that isn't compatible with 1.5. I would backup the profile, delete it, install the latest version and download the extensions again. You can write them down if you want cause they're pretty easy to find again unless the author hasn't updated them.

To update, backup your profile, delete it (with everything in the Firefox directory) and install 1.5. Launch 1.5 and set all your preferences. To get your bookmarks, copy bookmarks.html and if you've created a pref.js file, copy that too.

After this you shouldn't have much of a problem with later versions since Firefox tells you when an update is avaliable and will disable an extension if it isn't compatible (not sure why it didn't do it now).

If anyone has any problems, you could always search their Knowledge Base.
1 Dec 2005 ~ 9:28pm Leonardo I never installed any extensions, not that I can remember anyway. But good advice nonetheless. I'll try a fresh download and installation.

EDIT: Thanks, guys. No problems now. 1.5 is working very well. It is a little faster rendering pages. And yes, there were extensions installed. And yes, they seemed to be the impediment the first couple attemps at installing 1.5.