Continuing their new silly version numbering, Mozilla has released Firefox 7.0 (think of it as 4.3 in the real world), once again adding no real new features to the organization’s Web browser. Memory handling is supposedly “drastically improved” for certain use cases, Firefox Sync is faster, the http:// URL prefix is hidden by default in the address bar, MathML support has been enhanced, and there are a few other minor changes. Walk, don’t run, to download it. Also note that the just-released Firefox 7.0.1 fixes a rare bug that could hide add-ons after the 7.0 update was installed; if you’re not seeing the problem, it’s safely ignored for now.
(Free, 28.2 MB, release notes)
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Mac OS X Services in Snow Leopard
Mac OS X Services let one application supply its powers to another; for example, a Grab service helps TextEdit paste a screenshot into a document. Most users either don't know that Services exist, because they're in an obscure hierarchical menu (ApplicationName > Services), or they mostly don't use them because there are so many of them.
Snow Leopard makes it easier for the uninitiated to utilize this feature; only services appropriate to the current context appear. And in addition to the hierarchical menu, services are discoverable as custom contextual menu items - Control-click in a TextEdit document to access the Grab service, for instance.
In addition, the revamped Keyboard preference pane lets you manage services for the first time ever. You can enable and disable them, and even change their keyboard shortcuts.
Submitted by
Doug McLean
Firefox 7.0
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Hi Adam: Firefox has just been updated to 7.0.1. Check it out.
Yeah, it's a trivially tiny update... nothing wrong with getting it, but it doesn't deserve coverage.
When will they take the debugging code out? It fills up my console log with arcane messages.
Strange. I'm not seeing hardly any messages from Firefox.
Is (are) there any compelling reason to upgrade from version 5?
The only reason would be to get the security fixes. None of the "features" are really even noticeable.