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Firefox 29

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Re: Firefox 29

#211

Post by nullc »

renox wrote: post #146
espadrine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Omnibar" is how Chrome calls it. "Awesome bar" is the name Firefox had given its own, even before then. The main difference is that the Omnibar logs all your keystrokes to Google's servers. The Awesome bar searches through the data it already has locally (bookmarks, history, open tabs), and it makes a Google search if the data you entered isn't a URL. Not logging your keystrokes is a privacy feature. On the other ha…

Note that you can't remove reliably the suggestions from the Omnibar bar, used an "embarrassing" website in non-anonymous mode? Too bad for you, because your wife can see the suggestion..

Highlight the suggestion and hit delete. This works reliably for me. This was basically the only awesomebar behavior I didn't like, it became much more usable for me after that... not even embarrassing sites: I'd typo a URL and awesomebar would help me typo it forever more.

I wish the delete feature were more discoverable, however.

Re: Firefox 29

#212

Post by hbt »

If you want a highly customizable browser, Firefox is it. Chrome is in its infancy when it comes to customization and they often make decisions that prevent power users from taking advantage of their browsing experience.

For example, they've disabled custom stylesheets in recent releases despite a clear indication that people were sharing themes, they have very old bugs that don't get resolved (like the stupid white flashes on dark themes), major accessibility issues.

Generally they try to appeal and prioritize regular users (which is fine) but go out of their way to make decisions that ignore power users and not even provide alternatives intentionally.

Finally and the most frustrating part is they don't value feedback. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/ is a joke and a waste of time. The most starred issues are often closed to the public when it reaches a certain level and users are asked to submit a new bug again if the old one is not fixed. This means that if there is still a bug, you have to wait months before other users experience it, find the time to search for the bug and star it, reach enough stars to get attention and then get a response. Bugs are often miscategorized and the wrong team has it in its backlog. It's a mess.

There isn't a feature in Chromium or Google Chrome that Firefox doesn't deliver.

Take it from a serious chrome user and extension developer for several years, switch to Firefox if you want to tweak anything that bothers you easily without having to change the damn source code.

Re: Firefox 29

#213

Post by mccr8 »

ToastyMallows wrote: post #66
davexunit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of things that don't benefit the user, Chrome is proprietary software (dare I say spyware) that sends your keystrokes to Google. I think Firefox's frequent UI changes pale in comparison.

Your comment makes it sound like everything I type in Google Chrome is sent to Google. Is this what you meant? If so, do you have a source for this or are you just spreading FUD?

If you have search suggestions enabled, when you type things into the address bar it has to send what you are typing to Google in order to get suggestions. I don't recall if that's on by default.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95656?hl=en

Re: Firefox 29

#214

Post by thousande »

INTPenis wrote: post #37

Am I the only one who's not comfortable with the fact that the "whatsnew"[1] page can activate my browsers menu with Javascript? [1] https://www.mozilla.org/sv-SE/firefox/29.0/whatsnew/?oldvers...

Stuff like this has been available for add-on authors for a while,

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Code_snippets/In...

Remember, the browser chrome/front-end for Firefox and add-ons is implemented using Web technologies (XUL, JavaScript and CSS) with more or less privileges.

Edit: Fun tip: Choose the Hamburger menu -> DevTools (wrench icon) -> Browser Toolbox and inspect the chrome document like you inspect a web document.

Re: Firefox 29

#215

Post by sergiotapia »

Firefox team, thank you for another great release!

* I just tried and your developer tools don't cause the tab to freeze for 1 second every time I switched into the tab.

* Wanted to see the addons I had, clicked the menu > nice icon that said Add-ons - massive UX win.

I feel at home with this browser. You stand up for privacy and for that you deserve so much more praise than you get. I'm switching to Firefox and see how it goes. The only thing keeping me on Chrome are the Dev Tools, and I want to give Firefox another try.

Re: Firefox 29

#216

Post by mccr8 »

nailer wrote: post #91
danford wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Use the customizer. People complain when they change and complain when they don't > The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention o…

>> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing > Use the customizer. Most users-on-street don't want to customise either. Edit: The moderation on this is baffling. Does anyone genuinely believe users want to customise to achieve reasonable defaults? HN should ban new users from m…

> HN should ban new users from moderating for a year.

You actually need quite a bit of karma (maybe 500?) on Hacker News before you can downvote things, so anybody downvoting you can't be that new of a user.

Re: Firefox 29

#217

Post by nullc »

ajanuary wrote: post #51
davidcollantes wrote: post #36

I have not downloaded it, so forgive me if it is there and I don't see it. Still no omnibar? Why a separated dedicated search field?

With an omnibar everything you type in your url bar gets sent to the search provider. Lots of people don't like that (I'm personally okay with it, so I use Chrome).

Are you also okay with it giving it to every party the search provider gives it to? Business partners (?), employees snooping, government agencies (with or without lawful process), hackers who've compromised the provider's business?

Are the people who's sites you're using also okay with you passing URLs on their sites to your search provider? Do you ever accidentally paste confidential text in the wrong field?

Because there is no way to tell if the data is being logged (or, importantly, to prove that it isn't) it is prudent to assume it is, with an infinite retention— will your opinions about sharing todays data change if the search provider's behavior changes tomorrow? if some relevant government changes policy tomorrow? Does the fact that you can't ever take it back concern you?

These are some of the things I think of about it— and are why I wouldn't intentionally use such a feature regardless of how positive I feel about my search provider. And because of these thoughts— especially that I can't really make any binding commitment to future policy, or really guarantee that my policy is being followed (e.g. intelligence agency plants on staff) if I were a search provider I would not run such a service, unless I could figure out a way to build it such that I _couldn't_ turn evil, knowingly or unknowingly today or tomorrow.

Re: Firefox 29

#218

Post by abus »

maxerickson wrote: post #154
abus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. There is an addon to correct it though: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

If it is official, they should verify the author. (Or admit that the notification that the author is not verified is meaningless) edit: Also, on my install, the version there makes Firefox 29 lock up when I click on options. But my profile is pretty ancient.

My mistake, sorry, I thought it was official because it's linked to on the Mozilla support page and I thought the developer "Aris" related to "Australis".

Re: Firefox 29

#219

Post by gcommer »

NathanKP wrote: post #54

Overall I love the redesign, but I wish they would have compacted the top chrome a bit so it matches the height of other major browsers. Firefox has slightly taller chrome for no good reason, as seen in this picture: http://i.imgur.com/BlPRitn.png When I'm doing cross browser development I want my stuff to line up in all three browsers. At least Firefox no longer has the heaviest browser chrome. Safari wins that dubi…

If you want to shrink the top chrome, you can right click on it (getting the menu to choose toolbars), hit customize, then check "Use small icons". With this option, FF is thinner than chrome both fullscreen and floating.

Edit: Actually, just updated and it looks like they got rid of that...

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