Firefox 4 Beta

Who's running it? Apostle83 is posting from it now, and thinks it is neat the way they save space at the top of the window!

Hopefully this will give google and microsoft a kick to their crtoches!

Hmmm, somehow it treats each tab as its own window in Windows 7 so you can get previews of tabs even with only one "isntance" going.

Does this mean the tabs are all "sandboxed" from each other?

Yes, Tabs are supposed to be sandboxed from each other. I believe the idea is that a script or something that crashes one tab won't crash them all. Supposedly. Or at least that's what I remember when I first read about it several months ago.

Link?

http://www.google.com/search?q=fire...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Skin has it -- comparing FF4b6 to IE9b, though, IE9b seems to be quite a bit faster.

It is faster. FF4 has... some decided memory leaks.

What am I doin' standing around here for? <runs off to download FF4>

Edit:

Using it now. I don't like all the extra titlebar space at the top, the font and typeface will take some getting used to, but the interface itself is nice and streamlined, so I like that. Performance wise, it's slower than FF3, and takes extra time to start up.

It does seem to handle flash very well, though. I loaded a flash app and it loaded in half the time as FF3.

I haven't been impressed with it thus far. With the slowdowns I'm currently getting, its less functional than FF3.

It is, of course a Beta.

Somebody tell me that I need to try something different than Chrome otherwise I'm going to pull an old man-type move and refuse to try something new. harrumph!

Chrome is ok for most things, but they have some AJAX and JS handling issues. Right now, IE9 is actually looking like the best base browser for the next generation. Greasemonkey and similar plugins give FF4 a lead in customobility.

SOE seemed to be saying IE9 was faster. That's one of the big things I like about Chrome. How does it stack up?

I haven't seen the next gen of Chrome. I haven't heard anything indicating is uses hardware acceleration (graphics cards) the way IE9 does.

screen shot?

Skin's got that one, too -- nothing really new about it that Skin's seen yet.

I don't like the default handling of tabs at all. I want it to show by Window->Tab. Right now, all the tabs show.

I typically organize my work by window - similar tabs go in similar windows. Having used FF4 for a little over a day, I can say that this is the greatest weakness of it.

I'm going to try to find a way to change that setting, but I have a feeling it will push their market share down if it is released with this as one of the default settings.

Options -> Tabs on top.
Does that fix your complaint, or did I misunderstand what you're talking about?

Indeed!

Agreed. The Beta 7 is supposed to come out mid December.

IE9 TEARS IT TO PIECES in that area.

I feel like a soul warring against myself right now. MS vs. Mozilla.

Aha! To go back to the old, better style of Tab Preview Handling:

Options -> Tabs ->

I just don't like the extra empty space afforded by the title bar and menu. It's just empty, and you can't change it. Changing the tabs doesn't affect it, though.

Indeed!

I don't mind using either. MS still does good work at times (MSE for one), and Firefox is a great browser. In terms of browsers, IE is getting better, but it's still easy to exploit and will probably stay that way due to it's pervasive presence on the net.

I've never felt that IE was easier to exploit, but that due to its dominance, more effort is put into exploiting it.

Browser Wars! FF4 Full Release, IE9, and Chrome

There have been some announcements in browser world today that are interesting!

1. Firefox 4 is out and stable. I'm on the last Beta version (downloading the upgrade right now) and it is stable, runs well, and I like it. It is also boasting massive speed improvements.
2. Firefox 4 downloads have already surpassed Internet Explorer 9 in downloads and users: Tech Crunch Graphic
3. Chrome 11's beta was pushed out. It takes full advantage of the HTML5 Speech Input API.
4. And of course I'm loving IE9 for watching movies. IMO it currently makes the best use of hardware acceleration, which is exclusive to the latest browser generation.

Personally, I am leaning more and more towards Chrome and I hope the market follows. The reason is that it has the best implementation of HTML 5 in upcoming versions (right now that honor goes to Safari's latest browser). I like some of the apps for Chrome too and use them heavily, like Springpad (which also has great android/iphone implementation).

Still, Firefox has a place in my heart and the latest version is just flat out fast. Who knows, maybe it seems that way because half my plugins are disabled!

What are your thoughts?

I'm still a Firefox man. Firefox 4 is great. IE9 is good, better than IE7, but not good enough to sway me.

I'm not interested in Chrome, not one bit.

Just downloaded FF4. I hated the later builds of FF3. Slow, unstable, unreliable... This one actually seems better.

Agreed. The question is "Why?" Is it because of the disabled plugins?

In all likelihood, yes, it's probably due to the disabled plugins. Skin's not been a fan of plugins since he switched from FF to Safari way back when and discovered that plugins drag just about any browser that supports them into the dirt. Even since Safari started supporting extensions, Skin has refused to use them and even keeps all but the Bookmarks Bar hidden. It just streamlines the UI and speeds up browsing, ISO.

Yeah, still unable to delete the "Unsorted Bookmarks" folder in the bookmarks folder. That's the one complaint I had about the beta.

Everything else seems pretty cool, though. Appreciate the space that Chrome users had for awhile now.

Are they going to support "Apps" the way chrome does? For example, I use the springpad app in Chrome - and the Springpad plugin. The plugin allows me to send things from web pages to Springpad; the app allows me full functionality.

I'm using FF 4 and I find it quite a bit faster than 3. I suspect that's because of the disabled add-ons and plug-ins. I like the stripped down model better anyway because I don't use a lot of bells and whistles. If you want a screamin' fast browser, try Opera. It's a lot of fun until you realize it doesn't do anything...

I tried Oprah for a bit when Firefox 3x was at its bogged-down best. But after a bit I didn't find it was much better, so I just found an early-early version of FF3x to revert to.