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Why don't you fire a new bug about this at bugzilla?

...they took away even the *option* to have the status bar.

No, torn between the people that demand that all Firefox features be reduced to addons and the people who want everything in their browser, they gave in to the addon people and made it an addon if you need the old status bar back.

At this point, Mozilla can't win no matter what they do. If they take features away and put them in addons, the people who want everything (like me :) ) complain. If they add features in, the people who want all the features they in particular don't need to be addons complain. They're in a no-win situation. They put an incredible focus on performance, and people ignore it. Firefox 4 doesn't just have a new, much faster Javascript engine - there's DOM performance improvements, the startup improvements mentioned in the summary, and the UI in general is much smoother and quicker. But it doesn't matter, because my $PET_PROBLEM_X exists. I don't understand why other browsers aren't held to the same standard. Chrome, for me, is missing tons of features and crashes all the time. It's still a decent browser, and I don't spend all day on Slashdot railing against it.

That said, there is a really annoying bug in Beta 9 - some of my tabs, after I close them, still exist in the ether somewhere and the Awesomebar wants to "switch to tab" when I go to that URL, and there's no tab to switch to, making me press alt+enter to open a new tab.

But I'm pretty confident that and the other major blockers will be fixed by the final release, whenever it comes out. Firefox 4 is still a major improvement over 3.6 even with those bugs, and despite my personal pet peeves like tabs-in-titlebar.

This very one is 12 years old (yes, you read right), it's huting HTML4 compliance (HTML5 is not a standard yet) and is also affecting all known opensource browsers.
Eyecandies first, stuff that matters maybe.

They don't need that. Firefox has more than enought money to fund itself. In 2009, Mozilla had 104 millions in revenue. Expenses were 61$ million.

Sorry to bring it to you, but since Firefox 3, Linux has been a 2nd priority platform for Firefox.

If you are using Firefox, just install Redirect Remover. Works fine for me.

You are right. All "I" letters seem really fuzzy to me. But there seems to be a workaround addon called Anti-aliasing-tuner. Mozilla should do a patch that tries to apply system wide cleartype settings same way this extension does.

An Addon for this is already out: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/235283/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/

Simples. ;)

Most of the reviews of Status-4-Evar ("Status Forever" if English is a second language for you.) say the status bar should not have been removed.

Yep, apparently the mainstream browsers broke the classic GUI, starting with Chrome -I guess-. Now it's a trend: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1951640&cid=34888476 I think you might be interested in this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=624129

That is because Mozilla doesn't want to spend resources to implement old stuff that never really gained traction and already has a never and better alternative.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119490#c38

The current status is that SVG fonts don't seem to be very important for the
Web. Opentype fonts loaded via CSS @font-face are more useful than SVG fonts in
almost every way. By far the biggest reason to support SVG fonts is to pass
Acid3. I don't think it's a good idea to add an otherwise-unnecessary feature
just to pass a test.

They do have a what happened to the status bar section in the FAQ, it includes a link to Status-4-Evar which will return the status bar to it's formal glory.

Mike Beltzner says that the trend for mainstream browsers is a minimalistic interface in order to give more room for web pages. The web content is important, the browser must remain in a discrete supporting role. http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/air_mozilla/firefox4.ogg

http://userstyles.org/styles/42402 This Stylish style implements tabs on titlebar when window is NOT maximized. I think there's some talk amongst Fx developers about implementing this feature (tabs always on titlebar). Apparently, they worry about leaving some space for dragging the window, that's why they don't put tabs on the titlebar when not maximized. Might be relevant: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=572160

Customizability is what extensions are for. Be glad that XUL gives you the flexibility to re-implement these features using its fast javascript engine.

Here's the one here that I'm using, and it offers more flexibility than the original status bar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/

Extended Status Bar

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:csaNGT3VYK0J:www.mozilla.org/community/mirrors.html

Some (not all) direct Links

North America
http://mirror3.mirrors.tds.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

Europe Mirrors
http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mozilla/firefox/releases/4.0b9/
http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/
http://mirror.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pub/mirrors/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

Asia
http://jp-nii01.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

Japan Mirrors
http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/
http://kyoto-mz-dl.sinet.ad.jp/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

Mid East Mirrors
http://mozilla.saudi.net.sa/firefox/releases/4.0b9/
http://mirrors.isu.net.sa/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

South America
http://mozilla.c3sl.ufpr.br/releases/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

Belarus
http://ftp.byfly.by/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9/

(*) except on the Google homepage, which insists on grabbing the keyboard focus with javascript. So when you want to scroll down the list of results, all you get is "jjjjj" and then the stupid instant search server replaces the results with garbage...

If anyone knows how to get the status bar back that would be nice.

Check out status-4-evah.

That's a show stopper for me.

Same here for quite a while - fortunately Status-4-Evar plugin showed up to remedy that particular ill.

Yeah what's the bet the motherfuckers start blocking extensions when people decide they are standard? Ever since they took away the option to revert from Awfulbar and it started requiring an extension, I don't trust them. They've gone off the rails!

There have been recent issues with gopher causing security problems. http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2010/mfsa2010-68.html

Actually, Firefox addons can use XPCOM components which can be used to access directly the filesystem, for example, and you can even create and include your components written in C or C++ which can basically do anything Firefox can.

And in FF4, you can even use JS C-types to call native C and C++ library functions from Javascript.

That's a show stopper for me.

Same here for quite a while - fortunately Status-4-Evar plugin showed up to remedy that particular ill.

This one works too: Status-4-Evar. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/235283/

I made a big blog post about using Firefox 4 and a bunch of other things you can do to help make it better. Most of you in this crowd can skip to Item 3, I wrote it for users who are not technical.
http://bryanquigley.com/uncategorized/try-the-new-firefox-beta

Or in just one sentence, turn on the surveys to automatically submit, and install/run Grafx Bot - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/200733/.

And in related news, I also would love to see Duck Duck Go be included as one of the search engines...
http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla/topics/include_duck_duck_go_as_option_by_default_in_search_box

No clue what's causing it, but see what plugins are being loaded? HP added a bunch of crap to my installation that brought it to a crawl.

If that doesn't work, may I suggest bugzilla?

You'll have to get addons for both. They want to phase out the status bar, and they figured not providing that functionality was for the best. The titlebar is part of an ongoing WONTFIX, because they think Tabs on Top deserves more love. Thankfully, tired of people's complaints, they whipped together this addon that does the trick: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/221514/ (Vista+)

Sooooo like this? Amber Alert 0.4.4

[citation needed]

Mozilla could certainly license H.264 and distribute Mozilla binaries with H.264 if they chose too, they just couldn't do it under their current tri-license stream.

Currently, Chrome ships with H.264, but the open source Chromium does not.

Mozilla could do a similar thing, they just don't think it fits their project goals, and would harm projects like Wikipedia and downstreams like Linux distributions who would like to rebuild from source themselves.

Strangely enough, Flash manages in a free product.

Mozilla could afford the licensing fees, but they don't wish to. They can't pass on their license to other Mozilla partners like linux distros who build their own packages, and think it's worth either the monetary cost or the cost to the ecosystem.

http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/

They estimate it would cost $5mil, and they had revenues of $104 mil in 2009. They could afford it if they deemed it necessary.
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/annualreport/2009/sustainability.html

BTW, I think Mozilla, opera, and now Google did the right thing for the web ecosystem, as I have the mid-term view in mind. I just think it's worth examining the likely outcome in the short term and long term also..

> Firefox has a much, much better spec on nearly every level, is open source, has the adblock extension available....

one thing it does not have, though, is H.264 support so this move actually brings Chrome on the same level Firefox is.

The Firefox VLC plugin works just fine for playing H.264 in Firefox.

Personally, I like being able to choose which program handles the <VIDEO> tag.

In short: Meh, what's all the fuss about?

Even though I'm a fan of Chrome, you can do Chrome to Phone from Firefox with this extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/161941/

I'm sure it's old news to most of us, but the un-encrusted URL buried in there (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html) doesn't require a cookies, or a free login, if you use something like RefControl for Firefox, and tell www.nytimes.com that news.google.com sent you.

since it doesn't specify the V7 processor. I wanted to port my firefox plugin to android and I had to go with a newer android build because FF requires the V7 spec processor.

That's misleading, since it controls prefetching of <link rel="prefetch"> resources. Anchor tags aren't being followed. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Link_prefetching_FAQ

wow, nice. this nerd is sold. here's the firefox addin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=duck+duck+go&cat=all&x=0&y=0

the first two should be for duckduckgo

In most browsers, including Firefox, popups (including popunders) are blocked except when they appear in response to clicks.

In Firefox 4, we think we've solved the problem that allows popups to turn into popunders. Now that you see them right away, it should be clearer that they're appearing only in response to clicks, and you should be able to tell which sites they're coming from.

What alternative do you propose?

Password Hasher: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3282/

What alternative do you propose? I must have accounts on 100 different websites by now, including this one. I can't create and remember 100 distinct strong username/password combinations on all of those websites.

Use one password. But from that password generate one-per site based on the domain name. All you have to remember is one password, the rest can be generated on demand. here you go.

Only if you're an idiot and fail to look at the whole dialog. There's also FIPS Mode if you're extra paranoid.

Webkit nightly here:

http://nightly.webkit.org/

Firefox nightly here:

http://nightly.mozilla.org/

Install the "OldBar" Extension to change the "look" back to the old way:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Make the following about:config changes to get the "feel" closer to the old way:

browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped = True
browser.urlbar.matchBehavior = 2

okay, but they should have a schedule.

They have a schedule! And they had a setback which delayed everything.

since they've delayed ff4 for perhaps a year now

Considering the alphas came out in June, and the 1st beta in July it is hardly a year!
How about you stop making shit up!

Roll a D20, save vs. Stupidity,...again! (you failed the last one)

Actually (I have been running minefield since beta4):
* several of them at least were actual full browser crashes
* others were partial crashes (eg youtube stopped working for a few days in there because the flash plugin kept crashing)
* odd bugs like the addon bar disappearing (and without it there was no way to get to some extensions)
* bad UX in the panorama functionality (you could close panorama and lose all of the tabs you had open)
* app tabs were (and might still be, I haven't verified it yet) loading the page that they saw out of cache instead of online (resulting in when /. is an app tab me seeing the stories from weeks ago every time the browser is restarted)

On your "points":
@1: while this is true, the new ui is more consistent from a themer's perspective and so this is easier to do

@2: Bull. The JM engine (JM+TM actually) is only currently beaten by the last few revisions of the v8 engine trunk repository, and only in the v8-bench tests (which feature very repeated tests that are benefited most by the v8 optimization set, which progressively further optimizes as lines of code are repeated): http://www.arewefastyet.com/awfy2.php; the IE9 beta engine doesn't actually appear to be any faster than the IE8 engine, but it does have some new dead code matching algorithms so that it seems faster on the benchmarks (that is to say it looks much faster on sunspider because a lot of that code never even gets run due to it being recognized as dead code, but on a site with heavy js usage the changes are insignificant).

@3: Perhaps I don't understand what is so great here. Could someone enlighten me as to why we should care (as users and as web developers) about what particular windows specific hardware acceleration tech is being used?

Actual new features that matter IMO in ff4:
1. JM engine
2. css border radius (proper support in all browsers will affect page sizes on a significant part of the internet)
3. css background image options (background-clip, background-origin, background-size)
4. css calc() function
5. html5 form elements
6. session history management (history.pushState, ...)
7. indexedDb
8. shipping sync with ff4
9. multitouch api
10. HSTS
11. JS typed arrays
12. considerable refactoring and deprecated code removal from Gecko (which will allow future development to happen faster)

While this beta is indeed far better than the last one, there still are some problems that need to be ironed out before it is ready for everyone. It still has some teething issues in the UI that take some getting used to (the status bar is gone, hyperlinks show the new url in the awesomebar, the context menu items for open in new tab and open in new window have swapped, etc.). I believe some of these are still changing. There are still 180+ bugs targeting ff4 and the underlying gecko 2.0 infrastructure (note ff4 is using a major upgrade of the underlying engine which it hasn't done a major upgrade since before ff1):

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&target_milestone=Firefox%204.0b9&target_milestone=Firefox%204.0&target_milestone=mozilla2.0b9&target_milestone=mozilla2.0&product=Core&product=Firefox

I haven't used it myself but Status-4-Evar might solve your problem.

I've been running the nightly release version for a few months now without issues*. Very fast, great new features.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

* I don't run many add-ons so your mileage may vary.

The nightly builds are more up to date, and they do have 64-bit availability:
Linux 64-bit binary
Windows 64-bit binary
Surely you knew at the time you purchased a Mac that Steve Jobs wants you to pay again and again to stay current?

The nightly builds are more up to date, and they do have 64-bit availability:
Linux 64-bit binary
Windows 64-bit binary
Surely you knew at the time you purchased a Mac that Steve Jobs wants you to pay again and again to stay current?

Download beta 8 here