Firefox Nightly Builds
I do not usually download every nightly build put out for Firefox. Normally, I just wait until the major releases are out. I have never had a need to get the absolute latest version of the application. One reason being that I did not want it to mess up my main production machine here at the office. Not that it would, but you never know. It is a PC, after all.
Last night, however, while reading through my favorite locales in the blogosphere, I ran across an item in the side notes at Jon Hicks site. It told of the lastest nightly build of Firefox for OS X allowing other applications to open URLs in tabs, rather than new windows.
I have loved my Powerbook since the day I got it. One of the first things I got for it was the GmailStatus, which sits in my menu bar and checks my Gmail account every 10 minutes or so. It can open my inbox for me, but has always opened it in a new browser window.
Last night I downloaded the latest nightly build for Firefox, which included the fix that Jon was pointing to. So now my Gmail inbox opens as another tab instead of another window. My RSS reader also opens pages in a new tab, rather than a new window.
As an added bonus, a bug in the Bookmark Manager that prevented it from importing bookmarks from a file. Therefore, I have not been able to properly import all my bookmarks from my PC.
So I guess the point of all this is that if you are running Firefox on OS X and have not been able to import your bookmarks from a file AND are tired of GmailStatus opening your inbox in a new window, get the latest nightly build.
October 21st, 2004
the first release candidate should be out in the next few days. the expected release date was oct 18. there’s also a gmail notifier extension on mozilla update.
October 21st, 2004
True that there is a gmail extension for firefox, but the app I am using, GmailStatus, checks the account without having my browser open.
Another annoyance I have with the extension is that if, for some reason, you open another browser window, that window will popup the “you have mail” message as well. Not a huge deal, but it can be mildly irritating.
October 23rd, 2004
You could’ve used the tabbrowser extensions to open new pages in tabs, rather than new windows. I’ve had the same problem, it’s solved now.
October 23rd, 2004
Actually, the ability to open new windows in tabs has been built into the windows version for some time now. I think there was a bug in that feature in the OS X version.
I will warn though that if you do get a nightly build, and I have done, you lose the ability to run the Developer toolbar because it only supports up to 1.0 PR, and the new nightly builds are being considered 1.0.
I would have to say that is one gripe I have with Firefox that I hope will go away with the 1.0 final release.
October 27th, 2004
The RC1 release for windows and linux is out now, so the mac release should be up soon. :)
October 27th, 2004
my bad… i guess this is it.