Mozilla Adds Do-Not-Track Feature To Firefox 4 Pre-Beta Builds 89
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla cranked out a new version of Firefox 4 (Beta 11-pre) that includes the proposed do-not-track feature. Both the nightly builds and latest trunk builds integrate the do-not-track feature. You could accuse Mozilla of wasting time with Firefox 4 beta-testing, but this feature certainly has surfaced fast."
Re:Do I have this right? (Score:3, Informative)
Correct. You can use the "opt-out" feature, but it only works if the advertiser also "opts-in". In other words, this is completely fucking useless. It's like having a car that is crash-proof, as long as nobody crashes into you. (Because this is slashdot and this post would be useless without a car analogy).
Re:Not convincing until they solved the memory lea (Score:5, Informative)
https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/configuration-mania-4420/ [mozilla.org]
Install this addon.
Click Edit for Mac/Linux or Tools for Windows, Configuration Mania, which should be under preferences.
Make sure Browser is highlighted on the top row, if not click it. Click Browser Cache on the Left Column. Press Disabled under Max Number of Pages Stored in Memory.
It keeps closed pages all in RAM, and decides based on your total RAM how much it will save. There are almost no leaks, just dumb decisions (developers) and judgments (users).
Re:Not convincing until they solved the memory lea (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually used Firefox 4 on a Mac? The usual excuses are simply invalid - you open FF4b10 with Google as home page with barely anything on screen - 230MB is now gone! Safari opening Apple's oh-so-blingy home page is only using 100MB. "Max Number of Pages Stored in Memory" simply doesn't apply.
This "this is not technically a memory leak" thing is irrelevant when user experience is concerned.
This next statement direct answer to both your statements.
Webkit (Chrome and Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) work very differently. Firefox has sane disk cache limits (the default is 75MB), but instead opts to store much more in memory for the sake of speed.
There is no setting for Chrome nor Safari to change the disk cache, and in Chrome only a command line setting will change it. I've seen it balloon to 1GB.
So you see, for the sake of speed, something has to give. Firefox chose the route of RAM, probably following the philosophy that Linux users have that unused RAM is wasted RAM (hence Linux OS having the RAM cache full of files and regular users freak out. Since you are on a Mac, try running free in the command line and see your cache usage). Webkit I'm not sure why they do what they do, but considering the disk is currently much faster than any non-LAN network, it opts to use the disk.
So you see, there's very good reasons why these behaviors occur, and both have obvious advantages and disadvantages, all in the name of speed.
I'm babbling, I should get back to work now.