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Mozilla issues Firefox 3.0 RC3 bug fix for Mac

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

June 11, 2008, 12:35 PM

This morning, Mozilla's FTP servers were updated once again with a new round of release candidates for its next Web browser, but curiously, we noted RC3 for Windows was identical to RC2 for Windows.

Download Firefox 3.0 RC3 for Mac OS X from FileForum now.

There's a reason for that, we've learned: Mozilla is preparing a public rebuild of its release candidate for Mac OS X, that addresses a bug uncovered by users. It cropped up as a result of the operating system update process. Specifically, when you set up a Mac with System 10.5.0, then use Apple's update system to upgrade directly to 10.5.3. When that happens, Firefox 3.0 RC2 can hang after it's been made the default browser, and when it's trying to load its plug-in database. Users who upgrade only to System 10.5.2 don't experience the problem.

Of course, tracking, finding, and eliminating serious bugs such as this is what the testing process is all about. Mozilla is now treating this bug as fixed.

This morning, BetaNews did test and install the Windows edition of RC3 in our virtual XP SP3 system, where it's currently running with no trouble. That's no surprise, given that we ran a binary comparison on the RC3 and RC2 installation files, and only noticed differences in bits toward the very end of the files. So essentially, RC3 for Windows and RC2 for Windows should be treated as identical.

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By DontDrinkTheKoolaid

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 1:32 PM

Still severe rendering problems on many websites. Americanexpress.com and martialartsmart.com all good examples. Seems like basic rendering issues would have been addressed prior to RC status.

Feels a bit rushed.

Given all that, I am still a Firefox fanboy.

Score: 0

By k12-IT

posted Jun 12, 2008 - 6:55 PM

I'm not seeing any rendering issues. I even loaded the sites you listed with no problems.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 3:16 PM

http://validator.w3.org/...type=Inline&group=0

The other url was taking too long, I didn't bother...

Score: 0

By bousozoku

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 2:37 PM

It seems to be working better on Windows than on Mac OS X. Content that requires the Adobe Shockwave plug-in is giving a lot of trouble on Mac OS X and a bit of trouble on Windows, also.

Mozilla wanted to complete it by June 2008, after rightly moving the date from November 2007, but it's mostly much nicer than 2.0.0.14, which is rather broken for me.

Apple's 10.5.3 isn't helping anyone, either. Someone needs fresh eyes to look as those problems.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

edited Jun 11, 2008 - 1:18 PM

It should be noted that this is not a Firefox bug, but a Mac OS X bug, which was determined in the link to the bug-report provided in the article above.

RC3 includes what amounts to a work-around since they have no idea when Apple plans to address the issue. They apparently got a hold of a copy of 10.5.4 (available to ADC members?) which had the same issue.

Mozilla is now treating this bug as fixed.

Not quite. They've dealt with it, to the point that it no longer affects the operation of Firefox. It's up to Apple to fix it. :)

Score: 0

By ElHombreLibre

edited Jun 11, 2008 - 3:03 PM

You mean Mac's are not perfect??? Go Figure. Mac vs. PC. They both have their flaws but I've had nothing but trouble from Vista. I guess it could be my hardware. I have only 1 gig of RAM. Still I am thinking of switching to Mac. Looks like the bug mentioned only occurs during an upgrade. So does that mean if I purchase a computer with 10.5.3 already installed before I install Firefox then Firefox would work? Anyone, already try this?

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 4:40 PM

You mean Mac's are not perfect???

Did I ever claim otherwise?

Mac vs. PC.

I provided information about the bug in question. I said *nothing* regarding Mac vs. PC. If you want to troll for an argument, don't be bashful about it, there are plenty of folks here who'd be more than happy to oblige.

I've had nothing but trouble from Vista. I guess it could be my hardware. I have only 1 gig of RAM.

Bingo! 2GB and a Dual-core are the bare minimums I would suggest for *anyone* to run Vista. I would recommend 4GB, dual-core, a discrete graphics card with 512MB of RAM, and Vista x64 if you really want to see Vista shine.

That said, the biggest upgrade to help Vista, even on a relatively low-endian system would be the discrete video card. Vista runs it's entire UI off of the GPU in Aero mode (which is why a lot of people see a visual "performance" boost when they disable Aero..and mistakenly blame Aero for being poorly designed).

Score: 0

By Hellcat_M

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 3:35 PM

One of your problems is the 1 gig of ram, you should have 2 gigs at least. It could be a driver problem, did you search for new drivers for all your hardware. It could be a hardware problem. Also if you did an upgrade maybe you had something on your XP system that Vista didn't like, or something happened with the install process.

Macs have problems, PC's have problems, Linux has problems, every OS has problems. Most of the people I know that use Vista have very few issues.

Score: 0

By preinterpost

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 3:07 PM

Sounds like you should switch.

Score: 0

By siryak

posted Jun 11, 2008 - 2:30 PM

You haft to be wrong PC...Apple doesn't have bugs! Maybe it was a strange shift in the universe causing the magnetism in the HDD to shift a 0 to a 1 thus causing a malfunction.