Jump to content

Firefox 4


Azrael Strife

Recommended Posts

Beta 1 is available, for those of you FF users who want to give it a test drive and submit your feedback (all sorts of feedback methods are on it, including on-browser button to submit "what makes you sad about FF4" and "what makes you happy about FF4", also there seem to be scripts running stats about how you use it (you can turn it off), so they can see which menues/options you use more, what shortcuts, etc, it's a good idea.

 

https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sadly, as always, I lost all my useful web developer addons. It's only ever a short while til they upgrade them though and I'm on holiday, so I can wait ;)

 

Holy poop - there's a little icon at the bottom-right of this text box that allows me to resize it! Nice idea :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pete, Chrome has had this for a long time and yes, it's very useful. ;)

 

I'll wait for the full version, it's still my default browser, though I use Chrome for some things, mostly flash games that can't fit on the screen otherwise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder if they've finally looked into the memory usage issues. Other day my laptop's Firefox install (3 point something) slowed to a crawl. I closed the window, and while I waited for the process to end I decided to do a check on what resources it had claimed. 1.5gb and an entire core it was using, and it did so for a few minutes before I finally gave up and killed the process manually.

 

(Still, hurray for dual-cores! On my old rig that behaviour would've crippled my entire system. I'm sure they'll eventually rig Firefox to use more then one at a time, though, hence allowing it to once again bloat its way across the entire processor).

 

I know they'll blame addons for this, but seriously, if they want to do that they should at least provide a way to see what addons are being "naughty" other then "disable them one by one until (hopefully) the problem stops".

 

It would also be nice if they fixed that annoying lag issue where the browser loses track of mouse-clicks. Upgrading my hardware has reduced that problem somewhat, but if the system's under any amount of load (or I'm browsing an un-cached area of my HDD or something), it still surfaces.

 

("Clicking a tab, letting go of the mouse button then moving your mouse" (select tab) may be interpreted as "clicking a tab, moving your mouse then letting go of the button" (transfer tab to new window). Likewise, clicking in a text box and typing may be interpreted as typing then clicking in a text box. That is to say, Firefox doesn't always handle events in the order they were triggered, and frequently mixes them up if the system is under load.)

 

I suppose if I want to complain then I'll have to try out this beta...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 7 months later...

Compared to my creaking 3.6 install with it's hundreds of bookmarks and addons, the new FF4 is about 10x faster. In fact, it's about as fast with all of my bookmarks (whiuch shouldn't slow it down anyway) and my updated addons (which should slow it down) as Chrome is out of the box.

 

On a side note, I tried IE9 at work as I've got to install it on all the PCs. Chrome wins for fastest install, FF4 isn't too bad, but IE9 has taken a step back since IE8 with a slow installer that then requires you to reboot and wait whilst it messes around before finally letting you back into Windows. Plus the interface is actually worse than IE8 with no discernable speed increase. What were they thinking?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Death of Firefox?

 

I see myself not able to return to FF. Chrome is just... faster; sandbox mode has proven to be very effective, tab management feels much more natural, and it came with data sync with your google account before FF had the Mozilla Sync come by default.

 

Sorry FF, you just did not bring anything new for me to go back, had FF3 not been so shitty I'd never had been tempted by Google's shiny lure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That guy yaks on about version numbers, but... what do they mean? To me, IE8 involved MS moving IE7's buttons about, and that was pretty much it. I'm suspecting IE9 will be more of the same but don't really care enough to check. It's IE, for crying out loud... Heck, odds are it's still packing the broken download manager system all the previous versions had!!

 

And apps... who cares? Yeah, businesses may have a use for them, but even there people tend to prefer the speed and stability of on-board software. No matter how nicely web developers polish these things, they have to rely on the client having a stable web connection, and that's not something they can guarantee. Things aren't so bad in intranet situations, but even there a distributed model is more reliable, and that sort of thing doesn't apply to the home market at all. It's an interesting point though, reckon OpenOffice will get integrated into FireFox or something like that?

 

The main reason IE will stick around is because MS will always work on it, same as how there'll always be Safari users for the simple reason that that's what ships on Macs. Chrome really is the main competitor for FireFox.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IE9 has a new interface making it more like Chrome and it runs in separate processes now. There's a few more additions as well, and it finally conforms quite well to web standards (95 on Acid 3). It's a good browser.

 

I am sticking with FF4, mostly because of Tab Mix Plus (and a few other add-ons). Its functionality is so integral to my web browsing, that switching to another browser feels like a step back. I just wish I could open Private browsing in a new window instead of it being in the same one. While memory consumption is a serious issue, I have plenty of RAM so it's not a problem to me, but I can see why others would hate that.

 

If it weren't for Tab Mix Plus, I would have already switched to Chrome. This way I'm using FF for my main browser and Chrome for Private Browsing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

It won't die as long as it remains the mos useful browser for web developers.

 

IE, Chrome and Safari just aren't that useful to devs.

 

Sure, it might drop to a 2% market share but it's not about market share with Firefox because the people who work on it are developers. The people who work on it don't get paid either so they have no monetary motivation. If anything this will lead them to work harder on it to turn the tide (a Firefox Lite perhaps?).

 

The other thing to remember is that there are dozens if not hundreds f web browsers out there, not just the big 4 or 5. Opera didn't even get a mention in that article and it's far from dead - its also faster than Firefox as well (or was when I last tried it).

 

Sensationalist headlines are silly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes - the only good positive thing about FF is that it has Firebug (yes you can enable FB lite on others but some debug code must be added and I hate it) and plugins which IE dosen't have. If those two things where on IE just like that I would dump FF.

 

Of course IE and Chrome have their own firebug like debugger but it ain't that good as the original.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes - the only good positive thing about FF is that it has Firebug (yes you can enable FB lite on others but some debug code must be added and I hate it) and plugins which IE dosen't have.

You seem to be stuck with IE6. IE has had plugins for a long time.

 

If those two things where on IE just like that I would dump FF.

 

Of course IE and Chrome have their own firebug like debugger but it ain't that good as the original.

Again, you seem to be behind the times. IE9 has had web debugging since a long time.

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie...7(v=vs.85).aspx

 

And it's built in, no extension required.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am still with Firefox 3.6.x myself, at least on my desktop. It's needed for somethings that aren't compatible with the new firefox out there. Personally, they could have just added the features without changing the basic interface of Firefox. Instead to have a status bar, I have to use an add in, to find the menu bar, I have to view it, etc. I don't do a whole lot of tabbed browsing, so that's another thing that annoys me where they places the tab bar. Then no address bar, and even that is all screwed up. Nope, not gonna change for a while.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I can't promise the new version of the site will work in FF 3.6 :argh: FF has always been pretty web-standards friendly but as newer things come out 3.6 will begin to prove slightly restrictive. You're probably good for a few years though on that front.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
  • Create New...