Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 29

firefox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 517 posts

Re: Firefox 29

#191

Post by newscracker »

dilap wrote: post #63

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pr…

Nitpicking on you - it's Firefox (née Phoenix) for the public, not Firefox (née Firebird). :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox

Edit: Fixed typo as pointed below. :D Thanks for nitpicking the nitpicking. :)

Re: Firefox 29

#192

Post by [deleted] »

cookiecaper wrote: post #114
conductor wrote: post #110

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 As a user, I want separate edit bars for separate functions. I don't want Google know everything I type (or mistype) in the address bar. When I type foobar in the address bar please give me anything that returned the web server at foo…

I encourage Chrome users to go check the search history attached to their Google account. It exposes a lot of data that you didn't realize you were sending to Google (including letter-by-letter entry of search terms/urls) and may give a newfound respect for Firefox's separation, whether you personally care enough to make the switch or not.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 29

#193

Post by nailer »

drewblay wrote: post #183
nailer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most users on the street aren't on the hacker news forum. I don't think anyone said they were. > then most users on the street aren't going to install a browser that didn't come with the OS. That's true. So it's even more important to retain them by having sensible defaults.

>That's true. So it's even more important to retain them by having sensible defaults. Not really. What is wrong with having a product that caters to a power user, or a niche group? Why does everything have to be dumbed-down for the "user on the street"? If you want dumbed-down then use the browser that came with your OS. If want something that isn't dumbed-down then you most likely have the know-how to customize your…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product for power users. Again, nobody in the thread said there was.

Firefox is a browser for everyone. It focuses on freedom and privacy. The browser that came with your OS most likely does not. There is no minimum level of technical expertise required. The UX is designed to be simple.

Re: Firefox 29

#194

Post by alxgbsn »

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...

I'm a web developer on mozilla.org, so can provide some information here.

The "mozUITour" API is specific to Firefox 29, and can only be used on mozilla.org, which is a white-listed domain that is hard-coded into the browser.

The API is also pretty basic, in that it can highlight a limited number of target icons, and open a limited choice of menu's. The purpose of the API is strictly for on-boarding flows, such as this. It also only works over https and requires a secure connection.

Re: Firefox 29

#195

Post by bushido »

cookiecaper wrote: post #114
conductor wrote: post #110

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 As a user, I want separate edit bars for separate functions. I don't want Google know everything I type (or mistype) in the address bar. When I type foobar in the address bar please give me anything that returned the web server at foo…

I encourage Chrome users to go check the search history attached to their Google account. It exposes a lot of data that you didn't realize you were sending to Google (including letter-by-letter entry of search terms/urls) and may give a newfound respect for Firefox's separation, whether you personally care enough to make the switch or not.

To my knowledge search history is opt-in (as opposed to opt-out).

Reconfirmed this for my Google accounts and in fact it is not storing search history. Ofcourse Google may be tracking it on their end, but I assume very few services don't track, so that's a non-issue (at least for me).

For anyone who wants to check, the url is:

https://history.google.com/history/

Re: Firefox 29

#196

Post by jmacd »

This is sad. Firefox has been reduced to playing catch-up on UI and struggling to get to parity with Chrome on features. The vision is dead.

Perhaps Mozilla needs to move on from web browsers? Perhaps their work is done, or the torch needs to be taken up by someone who can lead again.

I'm not sure what's in store for Mozilla, but if it's just a Chrome skin on a Mozilla rendering engine, then I don't think it's good.

Re: Firefox 29

#197

Post by nix1 »

Touche wrote: post #14
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #11

Oh hey, I up- MY EYES! This new UI!... it's certainly a change.

Just a note that you can restore the look if you prefer the square tabs: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

Why I do have to install an addon, which restores something, what IMO everyone on this thread and probably most people out there would love having as native? Namely not flat-design visually easy to parse tabs! Any occurence of flat-design stuff on software, which is used day by day, was and is awkward, because it causes displeasure and it is more time- and eye-consuming.

Re: Firefox 29

#198

Post by untilHellbanned »

Tenoke wrote: post #39

This is just one anecdote but on my (currently) somewhat slow computer at work, the new Firefox is noticeably faster. This is under Windows. Additionally, I am not sure about the new UI yet, but I probably wouldn't care about the changes after I get used to them.

I agree. Chrome won because it was faster. Now that Chrome is slow and Firefox is seemingly faster, I'm thinking of switching back. I'm on Mac OSX 10.7.5.

Re: Firefox 29

#199

Post by GyrosOfWar »

ghshephard wrote: post #117
dilap wrote: post #63

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pr…

"Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned" Chrome is almost unusable for me because I can no longer type the names of internal websites and have them come up. That single change in its behavior drives me back to Firefox.

You could try Fauxbar, which is a Chrome extension version of the Firefox Awesomebar. I really like it.

Re: Firefox 29

#200

Post by insertnickname »

CmdrKrool wrote: post #148
exodust wrote: post #13

What's this about the status bar / add-on bar gone? The main reason why I use Status-4-Evar is because when I hover over a link I don't want that link to pop-over the page content, which is what Chrome did first, then Firefox copied like sheep. It's distracting, like a tiny little pop-over in the corner of your eye. I like having URLs show in a status bar separate to the main web window. It's out of the way, and I ju…

The Customize mode seems fairly flexible, for shuffling things between the three fixed-position bars, ie. the menu, navigation and bookmarks bars (probably the tab bar as well though I don't use tabs myself). I wonder why you can't just add new blank bars, at either the top or bottom, to fill up to your heart's content with that same Customize mode. That would undo most of the need for things like Status-4-Evar. This…

Actually, they also removed the ability to disable the navigation bar, which is very annoying for me because I use Vimperator. It can be removed by installing an extension, but I don't understand why they would remove this functionality.
Post reply on HN