Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 2

Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 2

If you run Mozilla Firefox on Linux, you’ve probably noticed, among other things, that:
* Its Open/Save dialogs are custom-designed so you can’t use your GTK+ 2.x bookmarks. (Firefox always requires GTK+ 2.x so please don’t remind me about KDE’s folder bookmarks.)
* It takes noticeably longer to render a page on Linux than it does on Windows.

Deer Park is the codename for the upcoming Firefox 1.1 release and both of those problems are fixed. I can vouch for this because I am posting this entry using Deer Park alpha 2.

It also has a few platform-independant improvements. The following are rather subjective since they’re based on my experiences and you may multitask more than I do (or have a slower system), but they should still be indicative of the improvements.
* If the Back and Forward buttons were any more responsive, they would be instant. (At least, as the human mind perceives it.)
* Loading a page is usually about as quick as clicking Back was on Firefox 1.0
* There’s a noticeable drop in text window latency (the delay between pressing a key and seeing the result)
* You can “Sanitize Deer Park” (Clear your tracks) with CTRL+SHIFT+DEL and you can also set it to do so automatically when you quit.
* My bookmarks still take a second or more to appear, but that’s because I have 500KB of bookmarks and no folders. (I’m in the process of moving them to del.icio.us where I can sort them using keyword intersection rather than hierarchical folders)
* There is no longer a comfortable user interface for picking exactly what you consider to be “Javascript Annoyances” (Unless you use about:config, it’s all or none.)

All in all, I consider it to be a great leap forward for usability (especially on Linux) and I do understand how the average user might feel intimidated by the old method of specifying what is a “Javascript annoyance”, but I wish they would provide some kind of advanced mode that is a middleground between novice and about:config.

I haven’t tested it enough to really give a verdict on it’s stability, but it hasn’t crashed yet. It has been my experience that when the Mozilla foundation says alpha, what they really mean is “Won’t crash any more than Internet Explorer would but may crash just as much”. If you are an ordinary user, I suggest waiting for the final Firefox 1.1 release. If you are geeky enough to know how to back up your Firefox settings (~/.mozilla on Linux) then I suggest you give it a try.

I recommend installing SessionSaver and Bookmark Backup no matter what version of Firefox you’re running. An ounce of prevention saves a pound of pain. (or something like that)

Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 2 by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.