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Firefox 4 is here

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Re: Firefox 4 is here

#91

Post by recoiledsnake »

giu wrote: post #38

I started using Firefox again the day I heard about the 4.0 Release Candidate, and thought I could give it a another try after it failed to convince me the few times I tried to use it in the past. 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,…

>Disclaimer: I've been using Opera 11 as my primary browser before I decided to give FF 4.0 a try

The top menu left button in FF now looks exactly like Opera's menu button. Of course, now all browsers look basically the same with almost all UI chrome gone.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#92

Post by harph »

eapen wrote: post #75
icegreentea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.

Since I tend to have 20-30 tabs open at a time, the tabs are usually too small to read - so I ended up using the Panorama to hold "ReadItLater" tabs. But now that the TreeStyleTab add-on is compatible with FF4, I no longer use it. Btw.. if you have a widescreen monitor, check out TreeStyle tab.

TreeStyleTab changed the way I browse completely. I wouldn't be able to live without it now.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#93

Post by philikon »

trezor wrote: post #63
RossM wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different (Chrome-inspired) UI; faster (rendering speed) compared to previous versions and some techy-things like hardware acceleration. They also have synchronisation built-in now. I'm also a Chrome user but I'd quite like to switch back if they've sorted out the chronic lag issues I've always had. Update: In ff4 now, looks and feels great, if a little sluggish with page scrolling. I don't know, Chrome just feels sl…

Different (Chrome-inspired) UI I would say it is a carbon-copy of Opera, but that's just me: http://imgur.com/IzVxJ

If anything it's the other way around. Mozilla works out in the open and the designs of the new UI had been released long before Opera released its software, as Alex Limi points out: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-4/. That said, what's wrong with taking the good ideas from other products? It's a net win for the users and the web.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#94

Post by ootachi »

DarkShikari wrote: post #36
mbrubeck wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This may confuse the few hundred million users whose languages don't use Roman letters and weren't told about this move...

IIRC in those locales the Character Encoding menu is under the main Firefox menu.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#95

Post by philikon »

u48998 wrote: post #80

Two things: 1. Sync is totally not up to par. It doesn't inform what it does in the background and there is no place to check on the web what it uploads. I am not sure why FF even bothered to release this feature when it is not even ready (there are several people complaining about many things of Sync at the Add-on review). 2. The bookmark/history manager can use upgrade/better features. Ever since the Delicious fias…

The idea of Sync is that it Just Works(tm) in the background. Creating lots of UI noise as you browse the web (history, tabs, etc. are all synced!) doesn't seem very helpful nor useful.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#96

Post by holygoat »

eapen wrote: post #75
icegreentea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.

Since I tend to have 20-30 tabs open at a time, the tabs are usually too small to read - so I ended up using the Panorama to hold "ReadItLater" tabs. But now that the TreeStyleTab add-on is compatible with FF4, I no longer use it. Btw.. if you have a widescreen monitor, check out TreeStyle tab.

I find Vertical Tabs to be much faster; I didn't actually use the tree feature!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#97

Post by bretthoerner »

mbrubeck wrote: post #19
d0m wrote: post #2

Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?

* Faster startup, more responsive, faster JavaScript with the new Jaegermonkey JIT. * New, less cluttered UI. * Built-in sync of bookmarks/tabs/history/passwords, fully encrypted on the client (unlike Chrome's sync which encrypts passwords only). * Sync your bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and form data to Firefox for Android! See also this thread for answers from various members of the Firefox team: http://www.…

But aren't those all features of Chrome? Wouldn't a happy Chrome user want to know about something FF4 does that Chrome doesn't?

It's very clear that 4 > 3.6, the features you listed are awesome ... they just aren't very appealing to a current Chrome user.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#98

Post by holygoat »

darklajid wrote: post #60
eftpotrm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious; in what way do you prefer Chrome's tab handling? 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.

Also - Tree Style Tab [1] is a must have for me (on 3.x for now, just checking if I'll upgrade now or wait for some of my plugins to migrate first) 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Give Vertical Tabs a shot. It's faster, albeit no tree handling.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#99

Post by Iris »

eftpotrm wrote: post #65

I'm hopeful for the speed improvements; I was having issues with 3.6.x in that and so far 4 seems good but I've not really stressed it. Otherwise, confess first impressions are less happy. Moving the tab bar has left it stranded adjacent to neither the edge of the window nor the page which makes it less easy to quickly grab sight of for me, and I seem to have lost the shortcut for the search box which I actually _use…

Ctrl-K seems to work for selecting the search bar in the v.4.0.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#100

Post by holygoat »

rufugee wrote: post #73
famousactress wrote: post #31

I've been on the FF4 beta for some time (the web app we work on is currently only supported on firefox). My honest assessment? FF4 is a huge improvement over FF3, specifically in terms of performance. It's still not Chrome though. Firebug works great in it (better than it does in FF3). 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…

I don't know about you, but using Chrome has always given me this unsettling feeling that somewhere in Google's server farm, a machine is collecting everything I do and linking it to my other activity (gmail, gdocs, etc). It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. I just don't like giving a behemoth like Google access to my complete internet history, even though the most harmful t…

I'm pretty sure that's the case :D

Chrome's location bar provides everything you _type_ to Google, and using its sync feature gives them all of your bookmarks and history.

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