Introducing Deer Park
From FedoraNEWS.ORG
Written by Christopher Aillon on 2005-07-22
Ben Goodger (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Marketing_Workspace#Ben_Goodger), one of the lead developers of the Firefox web browser, was riding on the Long Island Railroad and saw the name "Deer Park" flash by on the way. "I thought it sounded nice," he recalled, and the codename for the next major release of the Firefox web browser was born.
This past week, Rawhide users were given their first look at Deer Park Alpha 2 (DPA2), a preview of what is to eventually become Firefox 1.5. While it is still at an "alpha" release level, there are a number of interesting features and bug fixes that should interest Fedora users. There were a few issues with the Rawhide DPA2 package crashing for users during the first few days it was available in the respository, but those are now fixed and users are encouraged to use Fedora's DPA2 package as their primary browser and report issues to Red Hat Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/).
Among the more interesting of the updates for Rawhide users is the fact that search plugins (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html) are now able to be installed. Previously in Firefox 1.0, search plugins would attempt to be installed by the program into its program directory, which lives underneath /usr/lib (or /usr/lib64) and thus was not writable by normal, non-priveleged user accounts. DPA2 now addresses that by installing search plugins directly into the user's profile directory.
Additionally, preference changes are now instantly applied, taking effect the instant users tweak a preference rather waiting for them to confirm the change. This change conforms to how other GNOME applications behave, following the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). There are still many items that need to be addressed regarding HIG compliance, but as the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Some of the other notable items for users include the ability to move tabs on the tab bar around by simply dragging them to their desired position. Another bug fix is visible when viewing a standalone image; the tab icon (favicon) that appears will be a scaled down version of the image. Finally, there is no more annoying dialog when a network error (such as a non-resolving host) occurs during page load. There is now an internal error page that displays in the browser describing the error. One can now open multiple tabs without fear of an error dialog blocking the network for the other tabs.
The web author will find some nifty items as well. There have been many improvements in the browser's standards support, with many additions to CSS support, as well as the brand-spanking-new ECMAScript for XML (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-357.htm) (E4X) specification. Additionally, there is some support for XForms and SVG (the latter of which was not enabled initially in rawhide, but is currently enabled in firefox-1.1-0.2.4.deerpark.alpha2 and later!). There is even support for a <canvas> tag (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#graphics) similar to Safari's version. A brief tutorial is available at http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Drawing_Graphics_with_Canvas, which explains a little bit on how to use the canvas, including a few working examples of code.
Among the improvements in the browser's CSS support is an experimental algorithm for CSS multi-column layout (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/). This allows web authors to display content in a format similar to how a newspaper presents news content. Additionally, web authors can expect to find better support for CSS cursors (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#cursor). Support for URI values as cursors means that web authors can create their own custom cursors for use on their pages. There are also more supported cursor names (such as context-menu, no-drop, not-allowed) that web authors can select for certain items. DPA2 also now supports the 'outline (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#outline1)' CSS property, which is exactly like 'border' with one important difference: it does not impact box model layout (borders affect the width and height of the element, outlines do not).
There are many other improvements and bug fixes that have gone into this release; too many in fact to list here. Those who are interested in learning more about what has made it into Firefox since the 1.0.x series of releases should view the release notes for DPA1 and DPA2, located respectively at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/deerpark/releases/alpha1.html and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/deerpark/releases/alpha2.html. With all the cool stuff added into Deer Park Alpha 2, it is something users definitely should be excited about. As Firefox developer Dan Mosedale says, "it's k-r4d-37337!!!!!!!"
