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Firefox 4 RC now available

blog.mozilla.com

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Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#51
Firefox: Chrome

Emacs: Vim

I guess different browsers for different types of people. I still use Firefox on occasion but mostly as a runtime for Firebug. Otherwise, I switched to Chrome more than an year ago and haven't looked back.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very well may be, but my point was basically that it's not something I have to worry about in Chrome either.

You will, once the toolbar/adware/malware makers start targeting Chrome more. (Google can try to stop them, but it will be an arms race.)

It doesn't have bars really, only buttons that open floating views. Although I suppose you could inject a bar into the web page.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#53
post #3

Serious question here... I now use Chrome, my parents use Chrome, and almost everyone I know has converted. Most HN users seem to use it too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105954 . Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?

I'd used Chrome exclusively for almost two years before the Fx4 beta cycle, and now I'm back on Fx full-time. I don't have time to get into the details, but Fx 4 is really a large improvement over 3.6.x.

Ditto. And I stuck with Chrome until Xmarks started giving me grief. Upgraded to the FF beta about three months ago, and really liked the improvement over 3.6. Even when the Xmarks / Chrome thing sorted itself out, I found that wasn't reason enough to go back. I've also started using a privacy plug-in called Cocoon (also in beta) that I'm really pleased with. Currently, it's FF only.

One other thing. It's small, and non technical, but I find I really like the very compact implementation of the pin tab feature. The way FF adds subtle indicators when the content on a pinned page updates is especially nice.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#54
post #3

Serious question here... I now use Chrome, my parents use Chrome, and almost everyone I know has converted. Most HN users seem to use it too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105954 . Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?

(disclaimer: I work for Mozilla)

Extensions. Firefox has the greatest browser extension ecosystem bar-none. In the past, you had to choose between Chrome's performance, and Firefox 3's extensions.

Certainly Firefox was playing catch-up in performance, but we're there now. Chrome is still far far behind in terms of extensions, and showing no sign of catching up.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#55

I'm used to Firefox 3.6 on Win7. There are a few reasons why it's my go-to browser when I'm using Windows: 1) Plug-ins like Firebug, web dev toolbar, greasemonkey, and resizeable textarea 2) Tabs are well-placed and readable, and you can simply double-click next to tabs to open a new tab 3) A proper status bar that's always visible 4) A full menu bar 5) No Adobe Flash built-in I've installed Firefox 4 RC. The colors…

> If Mozilla wanted to copy Chrome/Safari's UI, they've succeeded They haven't succeeded because they still see the need for both a search box and an address box and the tabs don't close right under where the last close button was (my biggest gripes).

The nice thing about the separate search box is the corresponding list of available search engines.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#56
post #3

Serious question here... I now use Chrome, my parents use Chrome, and almost everyone I know has converted. Most HN users seem to use it too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105954 . Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?

Reasons I still use Firefox:

* Password manager with a master password.

* Different Awesome Bar behaviour (which some prefer to Chrome's)

* Delicious extension (the Firefox one blows away the Chrome one)... although that doesn't seem to work in 4.0 yet.

Until Chrome catches up to Firefox in features, I'm excited about a release of Firefox which catches up to Chrome in speed.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#57

One thing that FF3.x has had on chrome is total memory footprint. About a month ago, when I was testing FF4, I noticed that the memory usage for FF4 and Chrome were pretty close. I personally think Chrome consumes a bit too much memory for my liking, and I was disappointed to see FF4 following suit. Has anyone noticed if the new RC is more conservative with its memory consumption?

Part of the memory increase was caused by the new JIT. There has indeed been work done recently to bring memory back down. You can see a list of fixed and still-open bugs here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=59846...

For example, this bug significantly reduced memory usage, and was fixed less than a month ago:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631951

However, there are many memory vs. speed trade-offs in software, and as memory continues to get cheaper, you'll likely see all browsers choosing to use more memory in order to run faster.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#58
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about? Sure! Here are some things I personally find exciting about FF4. I'm not saying everyone should find them exciting, they are just my personal opinion: * FF4 is the only web browser to combine a tracing JIT with a method JIT for JavaScript. Some websites run amazingly fast with that. See the mozilla demos site for examples. * IE9 has great hardware acce…

Sorry- I'm curious- why do you think IE9's JS engine is inferior to FF4/Chrome?

In my time looking at them IE9 JS engine seems on par with FF4 and Chrome. It's IE9's HTML5/CSS3 support that is behind the other two.

Re: Firefox 4 RC now available

#59
post #19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever that bar is, it's not Mozilla official. Some other software on your computer put it there.

Some other software on your computer put it there. Why does Firefox allow this?

Even though you can't uninstall it, you can disable the extension on a per-user basis. Firefox looks in both per-user and system-wide locations to find installed addons. Only per-user addons can be removed by the user, in the addons dialog. System-wide extensions can be disabled per-user, but not uninstalled (disabling is almost the same thing). To uninstall a system-wide extension, hopfully the publisher has an unistall script, but worst-case, you can just delete the extension folder from the system-wide location. e.g. C:\Users\All Users\Mozilla\something on Windows.
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