Aktuelles im Detail

New betas of Firefox and Seamonkey have been released. They include
a significant change in the way the Places and Cookies databases are
handled. Because there are compatibility issues with earlier versions
of these apps, please read this entire announcement.

* Firefox v4.0pre:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/incoming/mozilla/firefox-20110327.zip
or
e-vertise.com/warpzilla/firefox-20110327.zip
* Seamonkey v2.1b3pre:
ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/incoming/mozilla/seamonkey-20110327.zip
or
e-vertise.com/warpzilla/seamonkey-20110327.zip

New
---
Thanks to a major effort by Ruediger Ihle, OS/2-eCS's version of SQLite
now supports a feature that lets multiple threads access a database at
the same time ("WAL journalling"). The betas from 2011/02/10 lacked
this support, causing URL bar autocompletion to fail in both browsers
and sometimes caused Firefox to take several minutes to load a page.

This new feature is only used for the Cookies and Places (i.e. history)
databases and will be standard in Firefox 4.0 and Seamonkey 2.1. Its
use does have a major drawback: these databases will NOT be compatible
with earlier versions of FF or SM after you use these betas. HOWEVER,
each beta includes a REXX script, 'dbrestore.cmd', that will restore
compatibility. See 'Notes' (below) for details.

Fixes
-----
Clipboard: The apps no longer copy to the clipboard during shutdown.

Icons: The corruption in Seamonkey's icons has been fixed.

Print Dialog: A bug that could cause a crash when accessing a printer's
Properties dialog has been fixed.

Previous Enhancements
---------------------
Video: Dramatic reductions in CPU usage will be seen when viewing OGG
videos, and to a lesser extent, WebM videos. Overall video performance
should be noticeably improved for SNAP and GenGradd users running their
displays in full-color mode, thanks to the implementation of DIVE.

Printing Support: All native printer drivers will work if their output
resolution is set to 600 DPI or less. Mozilla's built-in Postscript
support is also available for use, as is its PDF support. Please read
PRINTING.txt in the exe's directory for details.

Memory Management: With a few trivial exceptions, the Mozilla apps no
longer use any shared memory beyond what is needed to load their dlls.
Problems that have been attributed to low or no shared memory should
not occur.

Font Selection: The apps should do a better job of selecting DBCS fonts
and fonts with less common font weights such as "Thin" or "Heavy".

Copy Link Location: A bug that caused characters to be deleted from
URLs when using the 'Copy Link Location' menu item has been fixed.

Exceptq Support: If the app crashes, Exceptq v7.1 will beep and then
create an exception report containing details of the crash. You can
send these reports to <crash@e-vertise.com>. If you would prefer not
to create these reports, add "SET NSPR_NO_EXCEPTQ=Y" to config.sys.

Bugs
----
Both apps will occasionally "smear" the video when scrolling. In most
cases, the easiest workaround is to resize the window slightly to force
its redisplay.

Notes
-----

Database Compatibility
----------------------
Before using these betas, open your Profile directory and make backups
of 'places.sqlite' and 'cookies.sqlite'. Also, copy 'dbrestore.cmd'
from the main directory to the Profile directory for later use.

To use earlier versions of FF or SM after using these betas, open your
Profile directory and run 'dbrestore.cmd'. It will report whether it
was successful; running it multiple times will not cause any harm.

If you forget to run the script before opening an earlier version of
FF or SM, the app will add ".corrupt" to the filenames, and then create
new empty versions of these files. To recover, delete or rename the
new files, remove the ".corrupt" extension from the original files,
then run the script.

Note: After using these betas, cookies.sqlite and places.sqlite will
probably be much larger than they used to be. The apps appear to add
a lot of empty space to avoid having to expand the files while in use.

Video
-----
DIVE lets an app bypass PM's graphics subsystem and write directly to
your video card's memory. This improves display speed but can cause
problems on some systems. Use the following to disable DIVE:

- uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available".
In Firefox, it's on the Options dialog's 'Advanced->General' tab.
In Seamonkey, this is in Preferences under 'Appearance->Content'.
- start the app in "safe mode" (use "/safe-mode" on the command line)
- add "SET MOZ_ACCELERATED=0" to config.sys.

If the mouse pointer disappears when starting the app, you can use
"SET MOZ_ACCELERATED=1" to override automatic detection of how your
video driver displays the pointer.

Support
-------
Community support for these betas and all Mozilla apps is available
through the newsgroups 'mozilla.dev.ports.os2' or 'comp.os.os2.apps'.
Messages posted to other forums may not be seen by the developers.

Rich Walsh <richATe-vertiseDOTcom>