Firefox 4 is here • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#341

Post by primigenus » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

prakashk wrote: post #337

primigenus wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One in thousands. Like I said: people make mistakes. It doesn't bother me that we're dealing with human beings who aren't perfect; better this than the big brother corporation with an agenda.

> One in thousands. What if that one person is one who thinks "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"[1], and who just happens to be the CEO of the company? Would you still trust the company totally? What the head honcho of the company says _is_ its agenda. I love Google for the cool things they have done and continue to do. But it does get scary…

Yes, because I actually agree with his statement. I have nothing to hide; Google can know all about it if it makes my life easier.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#342

Post by nbaumann » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

stianan wrote: post #7

Why is text aliased and ugly in Firefox 4?

It's really annoying. People say it looks more like Safari. I don't agree, it's just fuzzy and ugly. I was trolling the internet to find a solution to no avail.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#343

Post by technomancy » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

zacharypinter wrote: post #334

technomancy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. You would never be able to do something like http://conkeror.org in Chrome. At one point I tried to change some key bindings in Chrome, and I had to spend 2 hours recompiling the whole thing; it was an absolute nightmare.

In fairness, isn't Conkeror more of a fork of Firefox than an extension (though I believe it started as an extension)?

Not quite. Mozilla is a platform with which you can build apps. Firefox is by far the most popular app running on the Mozilla platform, but there are many others, including SongBird, Thunderbird, etc. The bare executable for the Mozilla platform is Xulrunner, and that's what Conkeror uses.

Anyway, the one thing that keeps Firefox competitive is that they built a platform in a fast yet very awkward language, then they built an application on top of that using a much more pleasant, flexible language. None of the other browser vendors understand this; Chrome devs parrot the "but Javascript is too slow to build our UI in" even though they have the fastest JS engine in the world. It boggles the mind and cripples them in the long term for anything other than your standard point-n-grunt interfaces.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#344

Post by ephemient » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

bilban wrote: post #211

dstein wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You want to talk to the SRWare Iron team.

Do you?

http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam

At a glance, it doesn't seem like much has changed. Some more tweaks and a minor amount of development.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#345

Post by ephemient » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

weaksauce wrote: post #139

tvon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not my main browser but I don't seem to have issues with Chrome on OSX, I'd suggest maybe purging your install (or at least it seems you're experiencing something unusual).

It was working ok until I got a 30" monitor. Then it became a choppy scroll and sluggish. Sluggish I can handle more than the scrolling.

Are you on OS X Leopard?

My understanding is that the out-of-process rendering used by Chrome forces blitting the whole page from the child process to the parent chrome on systems predating Snow Leopard.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#346

Post by jjcm » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:38 PM UTC

SeanDav wrote: post #117

giu wrote: post #38

I started using Firefox again the day I heard about the 4.0 Release Candidate, and thought I could give it a another try after it failed to convince me the few times I tried to use it in the past. I was pleasently surprised. The browser's way faster; launching it doesn't take that much time; the UI is way more responsive; and all the add-ons I've been using in the past are compatible with 4.0 (Web Developer, Firebug,…

Disclaimer: I am a Firefox Fanboi At work I can only use Firefox or IE so no brainer there - I use Firefox. At home I use Firefox but generally have Chrome open to play the odd Facebook game. The thing that puzzles me is I really don't notice any difference in performance between Chrome and Firefox and never have. I have a 4mb internet connection at the moment but noticed nothing different when I had 8. The only reas…

Disclaimer: FF user turned chromite

I enjoy the speed and simplicity of chrome. For development work, I actually prefer the webkit DOM inspector to firebug. I was never a heavy plugin user to begin with, so firefox never tempted me much there. I think that if you're not planning on using plugins, the core browser features of chrome are more polished (again, this is just my opinion). If you're a heavy plugin user though, ff or opera is the way to go.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#347

Post by jjcm » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 5:45 PM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #58

d0m wrote: post #2

Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?

* Real ad blocking (more generally: real extensions). Other points (not so major for most): * Audio api (allows you to synthesize audio) * Better language support (Chrome on Linux has tons of issues with non-latin languages)

This isn't in support of Chrome or to down FF at all, but for ad blocking I've always just blocked ad networks' DNS addresses from resolving. Just point my router to a vps running DNSmasq and pull down the latest entries from easylist every week and bam - global ad blocking on your network. It has the advantage of allowing blocking on all browsers/systems. Good if you have non-technical peeps using your network too, as it'll save bandwidth and deliver nicer looking pages.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#348

Post by mahmud » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

primigenus wrote: post #324

mahmud wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Google's case, I find young, smart, cool people just like me who I trust not to be dicks What is this? has any thought gone behind this? I'm not your peer: I'm stupid, uncool and very, VERY old. That's why I decided to teach you fuckers a lesson and put on my fake cop uniform. With a few fake emails & and a phone call, I convinced Bobby, the head of security at data center #34 in Dallas to give me your life's reco…

I was talking specifically about trusting Google's motivations, not the concept of security itself. You're twisting the issue; of course it's possible that Google's security will be broken somehow. But that's the case with anything, anywhere, anytime. So there's not much point (IMO) in basing decisions around that possibility.

"Motivation" means jack-squat in world where powerful entities can buy, steal, or subpoena Google's stash of your personal data. And it's no longer just your data, but involves your entire social-graph. Say, you write to your sister about your father's health in great detail, because you chose to "share" your data with Google, now you're sharing his health information as well, and whoever steals or buys this information (remember, Google is a commercial entity) has it.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#349

Post by weaksauce » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 2:02 AM UTC

ephemient wrote: post #345

weaksauce wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was working ok until I got a 30" monitor. Then it became a choppy scroll and sluggish. Sluggish I can handle more than the scrolling.

Are you on OS X Leopard? My understanding is that the out-of-process rendering used by Chrome forces blitting the whole page from the child process to the parent chrome on systems predating Snow Leopard.

Nope snow leopard with the latest patches applied.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#350

Post by jtheory » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 3:00 AM UTC

primigenus wrote: post #324

mahmud wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Google's case, I find young, smart, cool people just like me who I trust not to be dicks What is this? has any thought gone behind this? I'm not your peer: I'm stupid, uncool and very, VERY old. That's why I decided to teach you fuckers a lesson and put on my fake cop uniform. With a few fake emails & and a phone call, I convinced Bobby, the head of security at data center #34 in Dallas to give me your life's reco…

I was talking specifically about trusting Google's motivations, not the concept of security itself. You're twisting the issue; of course it's possible that Google's security will be broken somehow. But that's the case with anything, anywhere, anytime. So there's not much point (IMO) in basing decisions around that possibility.

The likelihood of someone going to great lengths to break through Google's security is rather higher than someone going to great lengths to break into your personal computer (assuming you are at least capable of securing that against generic threats, which really isn't that hard for technical folks).

It's the agglomeration of lots of people's data that gets dangerous/interesting. And seemingly boring data like your browsing history can actually be pretty revealing -- ah, hey, I notice you regularly sign into the Bank of America site, plus you have an account on the forums at (easily hackable site)... might your username and/or password be the same? Ah, you sign in as the admin on an "anonymous" blog... and you mention your first pet (common security question) and link to your favorite uncle's blog, but he has a different last name from you... so is that your mother's maiden name? You see how this works.

If some clever had access to this level of data on lots and lots of people, they wouldn't strike gold for everyone, but there would be quite a few casualties.

All this to say that there are some very good reasons to avoid letting corporations gather lots of wide-ranging data about you in one place. The intentions of the corporation don't actually matter as much (though obviously if they're selling your data, the risks are higher); it's how valuable that data stockpile is, and to whom.

If you just have your own data, and you manage it yourself, it's not worth it for someone to put much effort into hacking you personally, so you're in a much safer position.