Firefox 4.0 Beta 7 - Super fluid, beats everyone on sunspider

Odd title though for this post, for where is the "everyone"? The link shows comparisons to previous versions of Firefox, not other browsers.

One thing I hope they fix before final release though is the constant CPU usage when you have many tabs open. I thought the Panorama feature was supposed to address this. It's currently idling at around 25% CPU for me, and no, unfortunately I can't blame it on Flash. :-\

* The stop/reload button has moved to the right end of the URL bar.

* The status bar is gone; URLs appear in ghosted text on the right side of the URL bar when you hover over a link.

* You can enable an "add-on bar", which appears to be a replacement status bar that add-ons can add icons to. None of the add-ons I have installed (about 20) are making use of it, so the transition from overlaying the status bar to overlaying the add-on bar must not be automatic.

* In the Add-ons Manager, an explicit "Remove" button has replaced the small "X" icon that used to be used for uninstalling an add-on.

* A more colorful throbber.

The basic problem is that the browser is still "trapped in a sandbox", ie they're trying to become the OS but they're still just an application running in a limited context. If all browsers looks the same and perform the same it's going to be real difficult to differentiate yourself from the competion.

It makes sense from big guys point of view. Apple, Microsoft and Google must be present in the browser space to be competitive, especially google whose strategive agenda involves moving application from the OS to the web. For Firefox and Opera things look a bit more bleak IMO.

I think browsers will be commoditized to the degree it will be very difficult to compete, it will all come down to brand awareness and surrounding features.

My hunch is that Firefox and Opera is dying a slow death and will be irrelevant within 3 years.

The app is still a bit of a bad citizen in that it doesn’t have any of the native text views allowing for system spell-check or any of the system services, and the app’s cpu usage still runs at 4% with no windows open (expected behavior is that windowless apps use 0)

And to be pedantic, there’s something still Java-y about the interface. Fonts are just a little bit bigger in places, and the main bar, despite being 7px smaller than safari’s (amazing feat, firefox dev’s) still feels chunkier.

Weird things in the interface vein: The feedback button’s dropdown hangs left automatically. Proper system behavior is to drop it down to the right, and then push it left based on the monitor’s viewport. The textfield resize grab changes the mouse cursor.

Weird stuff like that. Since it’s a beta I can understand the rough edges strapped to the oversized V12 engine. I still have nightmares about trying to run Firefox 2 on Tiger in 2005 or so.

Very nice set of improvements though. Not sure about firefox 4, but firefox 3 was a memory hog.