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Firefox 4 is here

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Re: Firefox 4 is here

#181

Post by shrikant »

lordlarm wrote: post #37

Am I the only one that does not understand why Firefox still has a 'Google search' field at the left? Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them - at least give me the possibility to hide it. (And I am aware of the possibility so search in other sites than google, but I 'never' want to do that.)

Regurgitating my previous response to this [1]:

a) I can drop-down the list of available search engines and see what's available, without having to remember any key-words to do the searches.

b) (and this is the killer feature for me) If a particular search engine is selected (say, IMDB), I can right-click on any word on a page, and one of the context menu options is "Search IMDB for ..."

Also, horizontal real-estate is not much of a concern on a wide-screen monitor - how much of the URL would I really want to see..?

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2309115

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#182

Post by dstein »

cryptoz wrote: post #104
rufugee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. Run Chromium. It's fully open source. You can see for yourself that nothing scary is being sent to Google. The same can't be said for Chrome since the source is closed, but there's basically zero difference between the two. The icon is a bit less colorful I guess.

Has anyone actually done any research into exactly what data is sent to Google when you use Chrome?

Not that it really matters anymore, FF4 is faster than Chrome in my experiments so don't think I'll be using Chrome at all anymore.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#183

Post by woogley »

cryptoz wrote: post #104
rufugee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. Run Chromium. It's fully open source. You can see for yourself that nothing scary is being sent to Google. The same can't be said for Chrome since the source is closed, but there's basically zero difference between the two. The icon is a bit less colorful I guess.

> but there's basically zero difference between the two

Chrome sports integrated Flash, integrated PDF, and more codec support (though it recently dropped H264 entirely)

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#184

Post by orionlogic »

Still my Pareto principle usage of FF: Firebug + Web dev. Toolbar.

If only those extentions functions exactly the same with webkit browsers.If only...Does anybody hearing me?

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#185

Post by starwed »

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…

Sync used to give constant information about what it was doing, but this was explicitly removed as unnecessary noise. It does inform you if sync fails, which covers the only case when I'd want feedback.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#186

Post by gue5t »

shortlived wrote: post #160
gue5t wrote: post #146

Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI. There have been improvements in a couple extensions, as far as font colors using GTK themes go, but the menubar is still too tall and has the wrong font color (on basically every GTK theme and theme engine I can find) and keyboard shortcuts for several things (e.g. space to toggle menu items without closing the menu) are remove…

Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI Does that mean that other platforms do not use XUL for UI?

The XUL "backends" for Windows and Mac OS seems to work much better in my experience. For one thing these platforms often have less variance in system theming so things like fixed font colors (though as I mentioned these are fixed in some areas, but not all) are harder to detect and aren't really problematic in most usage.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#188

Post by starwed »

mbrubeck wrote: post #169
u48998 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of private data and encryption, do you know which FF file is responsible for History data? I know the Bookmarks json file but I'm looking to keep my history file as a backup too (which I believe FF doesn't backup like it does bookmarks). I hope it isn't places.sqlite file because it gets ridiculously huge even after you wipe your data clean. I wish to rely on my own backup system for both bookmarks and histo…

Yes, places.sqlite stores the history. The reason it grows by large increments (and does not shrink to very small sizes) is to prevent file fragmentation, which can have a big effect on the speed of the browser.

And, I'd assume that even if deleting history doesn't shrink places.squlite, someone who wants to create a backup will be compressing it. And a mostly empty but large file should compress to a tiny file, right?

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#189

Post by stevejohnson »

I've been a Chrome user (OS X) for a while, but switched to FF4RC to see if it used less memory than Chrome (not a difficult feat).

It was mostly great, except the UI would stop responding at random for minutes at a time. So I'm back on Chrome.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#190

Post by IChrisI »

kristiandupont wrote: post #176

To everybody asking what Firefox has that Chrome lacks: The Awesomebar. I haven't seen it mentioned here but it's by far the thing I miss the most from FF (along with FireBug and TreeStyle Tabs). It practically replaces bookmarks for me because because it searches through the history. In Chrome it feels like I have to re-google everything unless I remember the exact url.

Personally, I like Chrome's address bar better than Firefox 4's. In Chrome, I can type g-m- to go to Gmail. In Firefox, it's g-m--. It's a little thing, but it makes a difference to me.

Can't live without Tree Style Tabs though. Firefox is my "heavy lifting" browser.

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