Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 4 is here

mozilla.com

41–50 of 355 posts

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#41
post #12
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?

The startup time of Chrome is hard to beat - I'll stick with Chrome for now.

There is no startup time in Chrome, it is always running even if you close it.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#42

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.)

Mozilla made the decision that it was better to make it absolutely clear to the user when they were making an ordinary web request, and when they were sending trackable information to a third party.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#43
post #10
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?

Different (Chrome-inspired) UI; faster (rendering speed) compared to previous versions and some techy-things like hardware acceleration. They also have synchronisation built-in now. I'm also a Chrome user but I'd quite like to switch back if they've sorted out the chronic lag issues I've always had. Update: In ff4 now, looks and feels great, if a little sluggish with page scrolling. I don't know, Chrome just feels sl…

I have been using chrome on a Mac and it felt so sluggish that I looked at ff4 betas to improve it. The ff betas feel much more responsive and the rc was even more so. It might have something to do with my mbp having trouble with the high res external monitor but anecdotally that's what I have seen.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#44
post #7

Why is text aliased and ugly in Firefox 4?

This is usually a graphics driver problem. Try updating your drivers or disable hardware acceleration in the Firefox preferences (under Advanced: General: Browsing).

Disabling hardware acceleration worked for me.

I'm on Windows 7, and now, with it disabled, it looks like Cleartype is working as it should. With hardware acceleration enabled, it looks like Cleartype isn't working, but Firefox doing its own anti-aliasing, and doing a worse job of it. Does that sound reasonable?

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#45

And to mark the occasion FF4 RC2 just crashed on me twice in a row. Are there any crashing issues fixed in the production release compared to RC2? Also, the IE-style reload button (at the right end of the address field) is too small and awkwardly positioned. I never realized how often it is actually used.

RC2 is bit-for-bit identical to the final release - we did not make any changes after RC2.

You can right-click the reload button and choose "Customize" and drag it to a different location if you want. (It will become a full-sized button.) You can actually rearrange/remove/add any of the toolbar items this way.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#46
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth a try? Yes. Better Tab handling and has the ability to hold tabs in "groups" and a "panorama" view which allows you to view all tabs across groups. The awesome bar has also improved significantly and has some smart features (like the option of tab switching instead of opening a new tab when you already have a URL open). Better Add-ons management interface and some add-ons work without a restart of the browser.…

I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.

It is invaluable when I'm doing research or development and I want to "swap out" something that I'm working on to focus on something else. Since that takes up the vast majority of my time -- yeah, I use it a lot.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#47
post #40

[deleted]

Are you sure it "started" your current version, or did you have an old window open somewhere?

By default, Firefox sends a new-window message to any running Firefox instead of spawning a new one.

Try killing all existing Firefox windows (e.g. "killall firefox" or "pkill firefox") and run it again.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#48
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth a try? Yes. Better Tab handling and has the ability to hold tabs in "groups" and a "panorama" view which allows you to view all tabs across groups. The awesome bar has also improved significantly and has some smart features (like the option of tab switching instead of opening a new tab when you already have a URL open). Better Add-ons management interface and some add-ons work without a restart of the browser.…

I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.

I do - kind of. Since I don't have Firefox set to reopen the last batch of tabs I had opened the last time I was using it, Panorama is kind of useless in my case, since I would mainly use it to keep tabs grouped by content, and it would be a chore to redo the grouping at each restart. Still, it comes in handy to keep reddit/hn on one group and work related stuff on another groups and quickly switch between the two by doing Ctrl - Shift - ~. A big optimization was to set browser.panorama.animate_zoom to false in about:config. That animation was killing the flow in my case.

Re: Firefox 4 is here

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Character encoding options are now in the "Web Developer" sub-menu of the Firefox menu. (Weird, I know.) UPDATE: This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this. You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.

This may confuse the few hundred million users whose languages don't use Roman letters and weren't told about this move...

I'm a user of such a language (Arabic) and by now all websites I care about use utf8, so the character encoding is a problem from the past as far as I'm concerned.

I'd be really surprised if there are still sites that don't use utf8.

Post reply on HN