Lockergnome reports that the Mozilla Foundation has released the preview edition of Firefox 1.0. Personally, I’ve never really understood this notion of a preview edition, particularly in a globally-available, open source tool. It seems like they’re worried that it’s going to break horribly, and then they can hide behind the ‘preview’ term. If that’s the case, they should stick with 0.x numbers until it’s ready for primetime. They also need some marketing help, because when I visit their page it’s not immediately apparent what the new features are in 1.0. I eventually found that info here.
The zip file is, remarkably, only 5 MB. If you’re having difficulty downloading it from Mozilla.org, I found a bittorrent link. If you’re still using that old-and-busted Internet Explorer browser, this is a perfect opportunity to denounce the Dark side.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Well technically they have stuck to the 0.X numbering scheme. The Preview Release is version 0.10 officially. I really like the new find toolbar and while the Live Bookmark feature is neat (particularly how Thunderbird has a similar but different feature), I don’t see the advantage of using it over a different aggregator.
Software is never ready. The whole open source movement is saved from being ‘ready’; when you bitch about something to them, the oft response is “well, you didn’t pay anything for it”.
Actually, the response I see most often from Open Source to the REASONABLE requests is, “That’s in the feature list for our new addition. You can help, too!” Of course, nagging, bitching, and unreasonable requests deserve the “You didn’t pay for it” response.
It’s part of the evolution of open source. Once upon a time, the only people who used open source programs were those who coded open source programs or were capable of it. Now, with more users than coders, there’s going to be more whinging from clueless people who have no intention of donating anything to the effort. That’s fine, and that’s part of Open Source. But the ungrateful ingrates get what they deserve, quite often.
Firefox is an amazing program. I’m using 1.0RC right now and loving every minute of it. I’m sure Safari RSS’s RSS aggregator will be smoother, but I’m still not convinced of the usefulness of RSS feeds, anyway. I just click on the site to see if there’s anything new.
In the meantime, the new search feature layout is pretty cool. The default theme is nice enough. And all my bookmarks/cookies/etc. transferred over without a hitch.