Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#31

Post by digitaltothem » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 11:52 AM UTC

bvi wrote: post #29

brianwillis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried switching back this morning. I wanted to like it, I really did. But compared to Chrome, Firefox still feels heavy, cluttered, and it doesn't quite mesh with how I feel a browser should work. I realise that these are amorphous and inarticulate reasons for choosing one browser over another, but it's all I've got.

The only thing preventing me from leaving FF to move to Chrome is TabMixPlus (especially multi-layered tabs), considering I regularly have 20-30+ tabs open simultaneously. Scrolling through tabs on Chrome is a very painful experience, and as such, my Chrome experience is limited to occasional moments when FF feels too clunky and needs to be restarted. If there is a Chrome extension that allows this, please let me kno…

I don`t know if this will help, but I am using extension Too Many Tabs for Chrome. Not that it is as awesome as TabMixPlus for FF, but it helps. And there are other similar extensions. I haven`t tried all of them, but here is the link: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?q=Tab+mix+Plus

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#32

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 11:58 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#33

Post by tobylane » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:32 PM UTC

skippybosco wrote: post #16

I am surprised to see that a restart of the browser is still required to enable / disable extensions and themes in the new FireFox 4. Is this the case with Chrome as well?

Not in anything I've seen, about 50 different extensions including context menus, blockers, all sorts I'd call major.

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#34

Post by tobylane » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

It's still the slowest.. Proper tests here http://uk.gizmodo.com/5784454/browser-speed-tests-firefox-4-...

From what I saw in the arstech article, the graphics are somewhere between bulkly ie8, and super clean Opera. Has any FF user used another browser properly and gone back for something other than extensions? It really does seem to suck from what I see. And now Opera and Safari have a lot of good extensions, FF should be dying out, but it probably won't.

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#35

Post by speleding » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:01 PM UTC

Hmm, "New window" (or option N) doesn't work if the current focus is on a window on my second monitor. Very annoying since that's my browsing screen.

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#36

Post by jfager » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:30 PM UTC

speleding wrote: post #35

Hmm, "New window" (or option N) doesn't work if the current focus is on a window on my second monitor. Very annoying since that's my browsing screen.

That sounds similar to my pet bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=632749

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#37

Post by ihumanable » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:39 PM UTC

This update is really very nice. I prefer Chrome over Firefox, but I can't live without Firebug. I know Chrome developer tools are nice and workable but Firebug just seems better to me somehow, may just be familiarity.

I've stuck it out with Firefox for a long time so I could continue using my beloved Firebug, but with this new version instead of feeling tethered to an unwieldy behemoth I feel happy in my browser.

Congrats to the Firefox team.

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#38

Post by jokermatt999 » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:40 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #30

I had to wait until the end of the article to see that FF4 is still one monolithic process. Everything else aside, that means I still have to restart it occasionally to get memory back. And the tab-of-death problem remains.

They do have Flash isolated, which has solved my main "tab of death" issue. However, I'm probably not a good example here, because I haven't had FF crash in months, at least. I honestly can't remember when it did last crash, except that the only ones I can think of involved Flash.

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#39

Post by robin_reala » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:50 PM UTC

speleding wrote: post #35

Hmm, "New window" (or option N) doesn't work if the current focus is on a window on my second monitor. Very annoying since that's my browsing screen.

Just tried that here and I can’t replicate (10.6.6).

Re: Back to the front of the pack: Ars reviews Firefox 4

#40

Post by mbrubeck » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 2:17 PM UTC

skippybosco wrote: post #16

I am surprised to see that a restart of the browser is still required to enable / disable extensions and themes in the new FireFox 4. Is this the case with Chrome as well?

Firefox 4 is the first release to support restartless add-ons: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Bootstrapped_ext...

Add-ons written in the traditional way will still need a restart, until the authors adapt them to the new bootstrap API. Here are some add-ons that are restartless already:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/tag/restartless