31–40 of 355 posts
So yeah, if you've been using FF3 for web-dev or to browse, you're about to get a major upgrade. If you're a Chrome user I don't know of anything that would make FF4 especially attractive.
On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running off of an 8-inch floppy to a Core 2 on an SSD.
The new "menu in the upper left" seems to be rather badly designed. It's missing the "View" menu entirely, which makes it impossible for me to view non-ASCII/Unicode websites. It took me about 5 minutes of searching and frantically right-clicking to re-enable the old menu, which of course still had the View menu. On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running…
UPDATE: This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this.
You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.
Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?
The Tab Candy ( http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/ ) feature is pretty cool. The big thing about Firefox is the Addons: FireBug, NoScript, Adblock Plus, and Pentadactyl (was known as Vimperator) all add up to a fantastic experience. With Firefox 4 I get the fantastic experience with something much closer to Chrome's speed and tab usability. I don't know if I would say Firefox 4 is quite there yet but it is muc…
For me it's one of the worst things about Chrome; this window currently has ten tabs open and that's at the _very_ low end for me. With Firefox I can see what I've got open no matter how many I've got because of the pop-down list and the scrolling bar, while Chrome just mashes the list into invisibility.
The new "menu in the upper left" seems to be rather badly designed. It's missing the "View" menu entirely, which makes it impossible for me to view non-ASCII/Unicode websites. It took me about 5 minutes of searching and frantically right-clicking to re-enable the old menu, which of course still had the View menu. On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running…
Character encoding options are now in the "Web Developer" sub-menu of the Firefox menu. (Weird, I know.) UPDATE: This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this. You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.
I was pleasently surprised. The browser's way faster; launching it doesn't take that much time; the UI is way more responsive; and all the add-ons I've been using in the past are compatible with 4.0 (Web Developer, Firebug, Colorzilla, etc.).
I'm currently using it as my primary browser again, and it looks like it will stay on that podest for awhile.
It's awesome to see a browser resurecting with that many improvements, despite the fact that some people have almost written it off due to some annoying issues in past versions, the most prominent one being performance.
I'd really recommend you to give it a try.
Disclaimer: I've been using Opera 11 as my primary browser before I decided to give FF 4.0 a try
Also, the IE-style reload button (at the right end of the address field) is too small and awkwardly positioned. I never realized how often it is actually used.