General software updates

[Rik]

Or here.

[Niall]

Strange. My mate is seeing the same thing too. I'm not sure if the font changed or the style of the font.

[Rik]

All sites, Niall?

[Ray]

I've gone back to V6 of FF Roboform Password Manager toolbar won't work with FF7 yet, this is the only problem with all these frequent updates to FF it keeps breaking existing Add-ons.

[Rik]

Plus it's exhausting keeping up across all machines.

[Ray]

Roboform update released yesterday evening so now back on FF 7, does seem to  load a lot faster than V 6 and memory usage is considerably less.

[Gary]

Roboform update released yesterday evening so now back on FF 7, does seem to  load a lot faster than V 6 and memory usage is considerably less.

The thing is these frequent updates are also security updates too, Ray. I would prefer my browser to be secure for a few days and wait for a toolbar. The people who produce these things have as much time to update as Firefox does to create each update, that should be ample you would think.

[Gary]

Strange. My mate is seeing the same thing too. I'm not sure if the font changed or the style of the font.

Nothing changed here, maybe a corrupt profile?

[Niall]

I can't remember how I had it set but I'm wondering if the size of the windows had reset rather than anything else. That may explain it.

[Gary]

I can't remember how I had it set but I'm wondering if the size of the windows had reset rather than anything else. That may explain it.

Have you checked, zoom ? View then zoom.

[Niall]

It's fine now. Looks nice just have no idea what I'd done previously to make it look different

Ah well, 2 more hours until home time. It's so hot

[Rik]

We're up to 28.6 here, Niall, three degrees over my melt point. 

[Technical Ben]

It runs as native 64bit on My Mac so it has access to more anyway, but it should make it more stable, this memshrink should help the browser out, I just checked and it is using less and if you actually close a tab....it drops its memory usage shock horror  Version 6 didn't  do that  bet its 7.0.2 in a few days though 

That was a feature not a bug. It did not close the tab, just hid it. So if you used the "back" or "undo" buttons, it's already cached so loads immediately. Not really needed though, so I understand why they dropped it.

I wonder if the memory shrinkage is just removing feature creep. 

Well, we are talking Windows.

Well, the memory allocation in Windows goes like this. "Start program, issue some memory", how much? "Infinity!" Then it realises you have a limited amount an cuts it back. Seems in the old days the best bet was to give a program all the memory, then politely ask for it back. Now they realise it's best to hold some back at times.

Strange. My mate is seeing the same thing too. I'm not sure if the font changed or the style of the font.

Fire Fox 4/5/6/7 (Darn these update cycles!!!) all messed up truetype settings. It's so bad I went back to firefox 3.5. Until I get a definite it's fixed I'm sticking to it. I think they changed it from software accelerated to hardware, but somewhere changed the size/smoothing settings too.

[Gary]

Firefox 7.0.1 released

[Gary]

That was a feature not a bug. It did not close the tab, just hid it. So if you used the "back" or "undo" buttons, it's already cached so loads immediately. Not really needed though, so I understand why they dropped it.

I wonder if the memory shrinkage is just removing feature creep. 

Well, the memory allocation in Windows goes like this. "Start program, issue some memory", how much? "Infinity!" Then it realises you have a limited amount an cuts it back. Seems in the old days the best bet was to give a program all the memory, then politely ask for it back. Now they realise it's best to hold some back at times.

Fire Fox 4/5/6/7 (Darn these update cycles!!!) all messed up truetype settings. It's so bad I went back to firefox 3.5. Until I get a definite it's fixed I'm sticking to it. I think they changed it from software accelerated to hardware, but somewhere changed the size/smoothing settings too.

If you are sticking to 3.5 you are missing out 7 is a great browser. Is 3.5 still supported? Ah well Mozilla will stop supporting it soon then you will get updated, or have a gaping security hole...

[zappaDPJ]

I've had quite a few stability issues with Firefox recently, I hope this update is a little more robust

[Gary]

I've had quite a few stability issues with Firefox recently, I hope this update is a little more robust

I have had no Firefox issues for ages Zap, could it be an add on or your Profile? I find it runs fine, no issues at all, since 3.6  4 was slow and a bit bogged down but 7 flies

[zappaDPJ]

I suspect it has a lot to do with the way I use it Gary. I do use quite an number of add-ons and a few heavy duty developer plug-ins such as Firefly. I also use it for up to 16 hours a day and it's not unusually for me to have three sessions running multiple tabs across three VDUs.

The main problem is it often becomes unresponsive, especially if there's media being streamed to one of the sessions. The video will hang while the audio continues, sometimes the audio will layer as if it's being played twice. It also hangs if I try to clear the cache or shut it down. I can't really complain as I'm asking a lot of it but these problems didn't occur a few versions ago. That said, I've used the current version for a few hours and not had a problem so I'm hopeful

[Gary]

Flash Player 11.0.1.152 released :    Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering — Deliver cutting edge 2D and 3D experiences on the desktop.
    Native 64-bit support — Support for 64-bit operating systems and browsers on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
    G.711 audio compression for telephony — Integrate real-time voice and telephony capabilities into business apps and integrate with existing phone systems using the G.711 codec.
    H.264/AVC SW Encoding — Create apps that encode higher quality video locally using the efficient H.264 video standard.
    Socket Progress Events — Improve management of data transfer, track progress, and provide responsive feedback in apps send large amounts of data.
    JPEG-XR support — Take advantage of support for the advanced JPEG-XR image compression format to deliver higher quality images with less bandwidth, and leverage lossy and lossless compression with alpha channel transparency.

[Gary]

I think Adobe really are trying to sell Flash as worth using, with all that spiel above 

[Rik]

Part of the fightback?

[Gary]

Part of the fightback?

Definately, with MS saying it wont be placed on their Windows 8 tablets, Adobe has to do something big now to stem the turn.

[Rik]

TBH, Gary, I think they may be too late already. Time will tell.

[Gary]

TBH, Gary, I think they may be too late already. Time will tell.

I think so, but how long would it take for all the small sites to start using HTML5 instead? I do hope Flash is a thing of the past soon though, it never does a good job on the floor in the kitchen...

[Rik]

Given the sites still code for IE6...