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Help Make Firefox On Mac Suck Less
bluephone writes "Colin Barrett, one of the new Mac geniuses, and an Adium developer, has posted an entry on his blog offering an open call to all Mac users of Firefox asking them, 'What sucks about Firefox on the Mac?' He says he already knows about and is trying to solve such things as: 'Native Form Widgets (currently scheduled for Firefox 3), Keychain Integration, Firefox should have a Unified toolbar (not completely hopeless, it turns out), Performance...', but he wants to hear what else Mac users want from Firefox. So please, if you're a user of Macs and the interwebs, then RTFA, unclog your tubes, and send him your ideas."
Isn't this what Camino is for? Like, the very reason for its existence?
I.e., taking the Mozilla/Gecko codebase, and making a lean, fast browser with Mac widgets, tight Mac OS X integration, Keychain support, and so on?
I understand the goal of trying to get more Mac-specific functionality into Firefox, but with a fundamentally cross-platform browser, inasmuch as it goes, it's been harder to integrate platform-specific features and functionality into Firefox proper. That's the reason Camino was born: to be a more agile project that is focused on making such a browser for Mac OS X using Mozilla/Gecko. For folks who don't need specific Firefox functionality or Firefox extensions, Camino is already the answer.
I can think of one tiny thing that sucks on Mozilla on Mac... when ever I copy a bunch of text from a window, it puts bleeping CR line breaks in instead of LF line breaks. Unless I fix it first, it makes text editing act a bit wonky.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The first thing my s.o. demanded to be installed on her shiney new macbook. She didn't like safari alot (missed adblock+ & weather extensions).
Rather ask how to make FF on mac suck less, I'd just like to thank the Firefox dev team for an excellent port, and ask people for suggestions of how FF on os x can rock even more.
Firefox on the Mac generally meets my needs. I had not really noticed it being much different from Firefox on other platforms. However, there is one thing I noticed. When all open windows are minimized to the Dock, a new window cannot be opened. This happens on a PowerPC-based Mac (10.4.9) with Firefox 2.0.0.3. That is a Mac-specific thing that would be nice to have fixed.
...third-party cookie blocking please! This option was removed in FireFox 2.0 for whatever reason, and although this is not unique to the mac version, it would be nice to have it back, as it majorly prevents advertising cookies and gives me just that much more peace of mind when I surf the net.
Any chance of something like this for Thunderbird?
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Other than that, I prefer FireFox to the built-in Mac browser.
Best Slashdot Co
[ducks and runs away to dodge rotten tomatoes nay rotten apples being thrown]
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The standard FF like the standard OO both look like something running on a Windows 3.1 machine. Whats the point of a nice sleek MacBook if your main app is so clunky and out of place. They should branch the FF code like NeoOffice have done and stick a decent OSX UI round it.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I swear that it is mysteriously locked into US Letter paper size and not using A4.....
I usually use Safari but I don't know why. I have firefox in my dock right next to it. I also tend to get slightly better compatibility with Fire Fox. But... I still use Safari. I think the main reason is probably the bookmarks work better in safari. But I don't really use bookmarks that much. I guess the only feature that I really prefer over Safari that I use over Firefox is RSS I just like Safari RSS Support better then Firefox. If I bookmark an RSS Feed it automatically subscribes me. And there is a search bar right there for me to find info in it. It is not that firefox is bad and there isn't a work around it is not that hard to do a cmd-F (though having the search on the bottom of the window is annoying) It is usually easy to make an app that looks and works good for both Linux and Windows. But for Mac there is a slightly different set of standards. Firefox isn't horrible but if still feels out of place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think the Web Developer Extension is one of the few things that keep me coming back to FireFox. It also doesn't crash like Safari does when closing windows after watching Poker After Dark episodes.
Regarding AdBlock, tho: SafariBlock is pretty close.
DN
Just to add that the one thing that lets me function in Camino (or Safari) at all, is Cocoa Gestures, although if anyone can tell how to tie this into "top of page" and "bottom of page" actions I'd be a happy man.
This sig all sigs devours
I use FF exclusively on both the Mac and Windows, and I think the Mac version works *better* than on Windows...the Mac version doesn't get sluggish after opening and closing a lot of tabs, doesn't gobble up half a gig of ram, and I have never had it just up and quit on me like it does on Windows.
... baroque addons; I admit to being an addon junkie and addons that claim to be fully cross-platform crash on Windows while I've never had an addon crash FF on the Mac.
I find FF on the Mac is also more tolerant of some of the more
So, hey, if they want to make FF better, that's awesome, but to me, it's enhancement, not fixing.
In Firefox when i for example press and hold over a link or image, it doesn't bring up the menu you get by right-clicking on Windows? On Windows I do a lot of right-clicking and don't have to touch the keyboard at all - with mac I have to either use keyboard to 'right-click' or find the function among a maze of menus. And buying a two button mouse isn't the solution you insensitive clod! since I'm using the trackpad on the macbook.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I wish the flash integration on mac wouldn't let firefox/flash consume 100% CPU, making my MacBook want to hoover. I also wish that Adblock wouldn't make my overlays flicker in and out of screen. As for Firefox itself - it doesn't suck. It's still the very best. Even on Mac. So quit whining and get in the game!
/John Sjolander, project manager Contribio
Can anyone comment on how Opera behaves on the Mac?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
one thing I hate with FF OSX is the fact you can't right click on a bookmark in a folder on the personal tool bar and open it in a new tab it was marked in bugzilla as won't fix, and there's at least 6 duplicates, the bug is 300710 it used to work, "It was removed because right click in mac menus fires the menu item command"
I don't know if this is cross platform or not, but when I pull down my bookmarks from the menu, typing the first letter of the bookmark doesn't cycle me through the bookmarks starting with that letter. Rather it takes me to either a subset of that group or, in the case of U on my mac, to the first bookmark starting with W. I really wish that would work better.
Fix all the damn memory leaks. I have to restart Firefox about once a week because it chews up a gigabyte of RAM. I have to say, that's way better than back in the Firefox 1.1 days when I had to restart it several times a day, but still.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Not really useless. It tells you what page you're on/article you're reading if the web dev is competent (ie not myspace devs).
F11 should do what you're looking for.
In response,
I'd like to comment that the Search box being at the bottom of the window is one of the reasons I first switched to Firefox (back in the days when Netscape was dead and Opera was the only real alternative). I've lost track of the number of times I've used MS applications (or anything else really) and have been annoyed by the search box covering up text. Just my 2p.
Perhaps your comment could be more correctly summed up as:
"SUGGESTION: Allow the Search bar to float and not be locked at the bottom of the window."
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
I don't have foxmarks from within camino. Foxmarks are awesome - I can have the same set of bookmarks on my Mac at home, in my RHEL box at work and my windows work laptop!
And Camino doesn't support that. It's a deal-breaker for me.
Stop the brainwash
My last name is spelled "Barrett". People spell it wrong all the time, it's not a big deal.
Thanks for the help getting the word out, Slashdot. I've got hundreds of emails and blog comments, and the more data I have, the better. I really do think I'll be able to gather a lot of useful and interesting data from all these suggestions.
Thanks again!
Dear, Colin Barret
Buy a Mac and use Firefox yourself instead of writing an article about a question for a solution where you don't know the problem for.
Next problem. But this time a real problem please... like "Help Make Slashdot editors suck less in their journalism"
If you want to cycle windows in an app, use Command+~. I'd really appreciate it if Windows behaved this way. Not every window is the same.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
It's that simple. Remove "Talkback" because it's unnecessary. That's the goal.
In the Keyboard & Mouse system pref there is an option called:
"Tap trackpad with two fingers for secondary click".
At least on my MB Pro.
Moving two fingers = scroll.
Taping two fingers = right click
I rarely use the trackpad button in fact.
the most useful thing would be to have an AppleScriptable DOM, like Safari. But that's only because I've got a Firefox only site that I use that I'd like to copy data into programmatically.
They have significantly improved Firefox on the Mac as time goes on.
I found I had to be very dedicated to use Firefox 1.5 - that release just plain sucked, especially with regard to stability, favicon use, bookmarks, and I found the search bar crashed the app more often than not.
However, since v2.0 things have got better, it seems to be overall more stable and they have addressed the favicon issue up to a point. Bookmark control still leaves a lot to be desired. (Though that has room for improvement in the Windows version too - and I know that's being addressed for v3.0).
I seem to remember reading that for v2.0 they had a deliberate policy of a "Firefox look" across platforms, thus moved away from an OS X looking application. I'm not sure if that is the right decision. Firefox does look odd on a Mac. (And for the inevitable reply that says "but you can use a theme to make it look like OS X" - I'd rather not even try, themes can be very unstable and hog resources.)
It's a tough market - Safari is a great browser, the only real reason to use Firefox is the extensions (which is a great reason, and the one that keeps me loyal to the Fox. You'll only prise Flashblock and Adblock from my cold dead mouse hand)
Allow the browser to actually take over the whole screen instead of just removing the buttons at the top.
MABASPLOOM!
given the mac's strength in graphic applications, how about making firefox respect and support icc profiles?
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
This isn't really a big one in the grand scheme of things, but what I like about Safari over FF is that I can just drag and drop images from a webpage and put them into iPhoto. In FF I have to manually save the image first and then import it into iPhoto. I think before you also couldn't do it for iTunes album art, but that has since been added. I still use FF myself, but that is one thing I wish it had that Safari does.
Are they still not evil? And will they continue to be non-evil for all future?
*waves at Sergey & Larry*
Stop the brainwash
I use FireFox with linux and wish they would improve the manage bookmarks part of the browser. I don't find it to be very intuitive and managed to wipe out an entire section of bookmarks. If you click a folder full of bookmarks and click cut , you can not paste it. They are lost forever. Not Mac specific but it would be nice if it got fixed for linux :)
They should be asking themselves "What sucks about the Mac?".
In my experience, FF on Mac crashes a bit too often. And I know it's not just me who's experiencing this. Other things I've had problems with are odd graphical quirks, such as some divs "bleeding" into the scrollbar, straight lines being broken off etc, while the same sites seem to have no such quirks in neither Linux or Windows.
Native Form Widgets scare me.
What scares me is the Mac version of Firefox will act different than the normal version, and will cause a lot of problems for my web applications
I've already run into problems with Mac Firefox because of the scrollbars (I believe they are os native). I had a scrollable div in the center of the screen that I would fill with data using AJAX. Most of the time the div is hidden. On Mac, the div was invisible, but the scrollbars cut out a blank area in the underlying page. I had to set overflow to clip instead of scroll everytime i would hide the div. It worked fine on all other OS's and even IE.
The point is I should be able to test firefox on one platform and expect it to work the same on all Firefox's on any OS it supports.
So I feel Native widgets on any OS is a slippery slope that will cause more harm than good for Firefox.
Fix the damn file associations dialog so that you can not only add file associations and actions from the GUI (rather than digging down into an .rdf file), but that files of the same type open consistently without constantly having to deal with the "open with" dialog.
Oh, wait...same problem on Linux too! Never mind...
Really? What does F11 do for you on Mac Firefox?
I wish it worked like it does in windows, using all the screen real estate, complete with removing the Apple menu too. The only browser I remember having that very useful functionality was iCab, with it's Kiosk mode.
Ctrl + Tab works for most windows apps.
I have two screen attached to my mac, and if I put a firefox window in the second screen and type things in address bar or search bar, the popup menu appears in the first screen. Safari doesn't have this problem.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
In Safari the "search" field next to the url bar is drag resizable. It's the one thing I miss in Firefox.
e fox-2002
Javascript heavy sites - particularly google maps mashups - seem to run a lot faster in firefox. It is also a lot less flaky than safari when doing a large amount of data entry through forms.
Firefox window placement can be a bit flaky on dual monitor setup - the preference panel sometimes decides it will only live in one corner of the screen.
For those who want Mac widgets in firefox, they are available in special builds...
http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/03/29/fir
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
One of the things that irritates me, as a webdeveloper, is that Safari uses native form widgets, which can not be styled, and act differently than the widgets in any other browser (the file browser is totally different, text boxes take up a different amount of space, etc.). The fact that I can make the widgets in Firefox look exactly how I want them to is a great benefit in my book.
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
Ok, I admit it... I have a Mac or three... a PC or four... a couple of Linux boxes too... guess I'm a tech junkie...
The biggest PITA that I face is the which machine did I have that bookmark on? which Browser? Yea, I know that I can create a local web page, somehow push them to all the machines (some are on diffrent VPN's so just a local copy/server doesn't alway connect). I have seen programs that keep multiple IE Bookmarks in sync, or multiple Safari, even one or two that claims to keep the FireFox in sync, but no one program can keep all in sync. Would like it if I added/deleted/moved a bookmark on one browser, it's on all browsers. Also would be nice to have it generate a DECENT looking html page that I could post... Most look like someone's first attempt at a web page.
User not found: Please check the world and try again.
I like to open multiple windows at once, and drag links from one window to the other, so that I can see both the source window contents and destination window contents at the same time.
Problem is, if I try to drag one of the windows by its title bar, it will often, as soon as I let go, JUMP to the position of the other window.
It happens if I don't first click before dragging the window. Even though dragging brings it to the top, somehow firefox is confused and screws up.
To reproduce, open two FF windows, A and B. Make sure A is active. Drag B by its title bar. When you release, B is in the position of A, not where you dragged it.
My main complaint seems like it's already mentioned: ugly form widgets. The first thing i do when I install Firefox on a Mac is to run it through Firefox, which pretties-up the form widgets.
1. In any aqua text box pressing the up key on the first line goes to the beginning of the line, and down on the last line goes to the end of the line, thus in a single line of text (like a URL bar) up and down move to the beginning and end of the line. This does not work if Firefox. This shortcut is very much ingrained into my muscle memory (as I suspect it is for many other Mac users) and I would really appreciate it if Firefox would respect it. 2. This is a problem with all versions of Firefox: put the close tab buttons on the tabs. Better yet, use Camino's tab interface, it is perfect.
Thank you! I've been wanting to cycle between windows within an application for years, but it's never risen to the level of "must figure out how to do now". You've changed my life.
Funny, this was one of my big complaints about Mozilla on Linux several years ago. At the time I was overruled by the developers who proclaimed XBL widgets were the right way to go. I agree that CSS styles should be allowed to override the default widget look, but I still think the default look should be taken from the native OS, not MS Windows 3.1. Even at that, some of the widgets -- or at least parts of them -- still can't be fully styled by CSS in Firefox.
Camino is great and it runs faster than Firefox but it lacks certain options in the configuration that Firefox has. I don't know why they chose to only give it a subset of configuration options but it definitely makes it less usable. They would not need to tweak Firefox toward the Mac much more if they would just expand Camino's configuration.
Firefox completely ignores all system network and proxy settings. Instead, you have to go in and configure your own for Firefox. The most annoying part of this is that Firefox's settings do not have the option to ignore simple hostnames. This makes it virtually useless for browsing intranet sites since you have to manually add each intranet site you want to visit to the exceptions list.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Please fix the (apparent) memory management, or rather mis-management, problem. Maybe this is something external to Firefox, or maybe it's a problematic extension, but it should NOT take 30 seconds for a context menu to show up on a G5 Quad. Furthermore, my hard disk should NOT be going batshit when I have 2.5 GB of real, honest-to-Bob memory for Firefox to play with.
Anyone else experience this ludicrous right-click delay? It's not enough to drive me away from Firefox (or, rather, extensions are enough to get me to stay), but it is nothing short of maddening.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
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Mozilla already designed a version of Firefox that's better on Macs. It's called Camino. It's been out for a while, so there's no reason for you to be complaining.
I truly love Firefox, but I switched back to Safari because it properly handles dual monitor setups. Most of the Mac users I know have at least 2 monitors. Macs invented the damn thing back in the '80s (ok maybe X terminals did that, too, but I digress). The most annoying thing is the popups showing up on the opposite monitor from the one showing the current (topmost) window! Ugh! So-so usable for keyboarding, but not for mousing!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I tried Camino and it is very nice. BUT...
The one thing that keeps me tied to Firefox as a "must have" are the extensions.
Otherwise Firefox is kind of clunky and I'd use something else. But I love Adblock, NoScript, Cookiesafe, Flashblock... That's also the reason I quit using Konqueror in linux and Safari.
Home and End keys do not work as expected (go to the beginning and to the end of a line of text, respectively). I find this tremendously irritating.
Make it look really snazzy and remove 90% of the features.
The Mac advocates will fucking cream themselves.
i'm working on a webapp with several others devs, one using amd64 linux and another using xp, while i rock out on my macbook. we are doing a lot with SVG for our UI and about 95% of our problems have been with rendering SVG (across platforms). the biggest problem is that a page with some 5000 elements takes about 2-3 seconds to load on both the linux and windows side, but about 50 seconds for the mac, despite the fact that the mac has a core duo cpu and 4X more memory than either linux or windows.
I can't believe this hasn't been harped on before. Why can't I open a PDF in my browser window? I'm on a Intel Mac and as far as I know there is no way to do this. Macs have so much built in that already uses the pdf format- why is this so difficult?
There's a ton of people complaining "Yeah, all this is already done, It's Camino!"
Listen, Camino isn't a Firefox replacement. The reason I, and probably the majority of others, use Firefox is the large amount of great extensions. Ad Black, Flashblock, Cookiesafe, etc. Camino by rule will never support these. That's why Camino will never be a replacement for Firefox.
I'm not saying Camino SHOULD change to support them. They have a project going, and what they are setting out to do, they do well. But it's never going to replace Firefox on OSX.
The way Firefox looked in OS X always kinda bugged me, and in my search for a more OSXish theme, I've found UNO. I'd try to explain what it is, but you'd be better off checking the website: http://gui.interacto.net/. There's also a Firefox theme that pretty much completes the package at http://www.takebacktheweb.org/. Its called "GrApple (UNO)".
I use it all day on Mac & Win. I do not think it sucks. It's great! But, since you're asking, here's my main request:
(1) Please keep up to pace in the arms race against web designers who insist on trying to get around Animation/BlinkyPicture/Marquee-TypeText blocking. Please. I don't want to go back to the days of putting Post-its on my monitor.
Not that it's a bad piece of software, but I dislike almost all the interface elements after having gotten used to Opera. The problem is that I can't do any useful key rebinding to make Firefox like I'd like it work. "Ctrl-N" for me has always been 'new tab' and I'm not going to train myself out of it. (Actually, I've tried, and it's not worth my time. :P)
I THINK I'd be able to rebind the keys at home with Firefox and OS X, since that's the sort of thing that OS X does for you, instead of forcing every application to handle it itself.
There may even be a plug-in that does it, but I haven't been able to find one. I suppose I could write one (could I?), but Opera on Windows and Safari on OS X just work so well, I have no reason to switch.
Maybe that's it: I already have really good tools, so why switch? For the sake of switching? What do I get by moving to Firefox? It's not like moving from IE to Firefox, where there's an obvious technology gap.
Unless I'm missing something: When only one tab remains, Option + W will not close the window as in every other app.
Thanks BTW!
Recognize when someone changes the network location, and adjust proxy settings accordingly.
This bugs the crap out of me, and is the primary reason why Firefox isn't used on my MacBook Pro.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
This pretty much sums up the problem with Firefox on the Mac. You have too many people who use it on Linux and Windows who want it to behave exactly as it does on those platforms. On the other hand, you have a lot of Mac users who don't like it because it doesn't behave and feel like a Mac app. Any Mac user will tell you that command-tab should cycle you through apps, and command-~ should cycle you through windows in an app, but then you have Windows users who aren't used to this functionality.
From the comments in this story, it seems like the biggest selling point of Firefox is the plugins. It would probably be a better effort to make Firefox plugins work with Camino (an already excellent Mac browser) than to try and Mac-ify Firefox.
Let me begin by saying that there is no other browser I will use on Windows other than Firefox. On those rare occasions when I have to install Windows, the first thing I do is use IE to download Firefox. Then I delete all references to IE (as much as possible) install Firefox and use it exclusively from there on out. On Linux I use Firefox -- even though Konqueror doesn't suck.
But on the Mac I use Camino and to a lesser extent Safari. The ideal browser for OSX would be Camino with access to the full range of Firefox plug-ins. I use Camitools now, but I'd love more.
Things I like from other browsers:
Seriously, adopt Camino as the main branch of Firefox for OSX and start there. Keep it lean, but allow people to load up the extensions if they want.
The last thing I need is firefox asking me for the fucking keychain password every ten seconds.
I would really like to be able to tab to drop boxes. In windows I can hit a letter key (like T twice to get Texas when picking my state) on a drop box to cycle through the options. On a mac, I can't even tab onto it. So tiny but really annoying when filling out forms.
After reading some of the responses here, I think the question needs to be turned around. What really needs to be done is to incorporate some of the useful FF features into Camino. If I could use FF extensions in Camino, I'd be a Camino user in a heartbeat.
Constitutionally Correct
YES!
I always SOCKS proxy over SSH with wireless (I'm on the road) and don't when I'm plugged in (in the office). All my apps other than Firefox figure this out transparently.
I haven't noticed any other problems, but I use Windows, Linux and Mac interchangably everyday. I wouldn't notice any unMac things.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
In all honesty, Firefox sucks. It's been 4 years now since they separated the browser from the suite and they still have dangling, nonfunctional menu options referring to email. The "UI integration" is a joke. Scrolling has been broken in compositing WMs ever since Xorg 6.9. The filetype/plugin menus haven't been improved at all since they were first added in one of the 0.x releases.
Konqueror is nice but it's not really an option until I can use all my userContent.css hacks in it.
Lets just replace javascript with bytecode once and for all and the J2ME code is only about 1.5 MB, is sandboxed and would integrate far better with server side applications than AJAX. Why isn't anyone pushing for J2ME or some other solution embedded within browsers?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
There is a serious type tracking problem with Mac Firefox that doesn't exist in any other Mac or Windows browser I've seen: certain typefaces will be rendered much too tightly at some sizes, but properly at others. It's bizarre. For example, Mac Firefox will render 12px Georgia horribly but 13px Georgia fine! I've put up a couple of screenshots that show this clearly regardless of what browser/platform you're on. You can see them at http://newsblues.awardspace.com/.
Another problem (less serious, but still annoying) is that in Mac Firefox you can't drag bookmarks and bookmark folders around within the regular bookmark menus, the way you can in Windows Firefox. You have to do everything from inside the "Organize Bookmarks" window, just like in other (non-Firefox) browsers.
Camino already does most of that stuff, and it doesn't have the buggy and insecure XPI problem.
My biggest grievance is with the bookmarking. Instead of a tree-based organization system, why can't we try a tagging or label system where any particular bookmark can have multiple labels and then appear is various locations. And then add smart folders than automatically update when new bookmarks are added.
I find the current system inherently inflexible. I can never get things organized because I can't reconcile that fact that some things belong in more than one place.
An option to keep Safari and FF bookmarks synced and therefore backed up to .mac.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
The Mac Version of Firefox needs a *lot* of help. IMO, Firefox is one of the *worst* browser options on the mac. I use it for front end development work, because it has the best javascript console and dom imspector out there, in addition to many handy developer extensions, but for regular browsing just about any other mac browser is better IMHO.
The biggest problem with FF on a mac is that it is not a Coccoa app, which makes it feel like a shitty port of the Windows version of Firefox. Not making firefox a Coccoa app causes the application to feel incredibly wonky (sluggish, unresponsive, awkward) and not tie into various OS-level niceties that Mac Users expect in every app. FF on a mac, feels like a windows app, that just happens to run in Mac OS X, It takes the users OS away from them to a degree. I chose to use a mac, because I like the way macs work, and if your app violates the standard behaviour/feel of my OS of choice, I won't use it.
-JoeBoy
i absolutely despise how i have to choose between the two when i want both.
specifically i want the FLV (youtube leech) plugin so i dont have to go fishing through the activity window.
why on mac of all platforms should i have to choose betwee customizability and os integration.
heck.. that kind of choice sounds more like a windows idea to me.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Firefox works better on a Mac for me, than it does on Windows XP. That's probably due to Java working better on the Mac than in XP. There are several websites I goto that work perfectly in Firefox on my Mac, but fail to load images, text and other elements in Firefox on XP. Performance is fast enough that I don't notice it, and the only thing that bothers me about the toolbar is that it's too easy to hit the drop-down on the back button then the back button itself.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
usercontent.css is supported in almost all browsers (even IE!)
r _3.5.3
http://wiki.noljads.com/User_Stylesheets#Konquero
FireFox is Very, Very Slow in OS X
Can someone code an OPTIMIZED universal binary of FireFox for OS X Macintosh computers?
How about on Linux? At least, on MY machine. I have an old, small monitor I intend to keep using until it catches fire or otherwise goes completely dark. I don't like to waste money buying crap I don't need to buy.
It's a 14" model, and there is a lot of wasted screen real estate in the Linux version. The Windows version doesn't have such big bars or that big empty spece between the URL window and the actual screen space, but I've disabled networking in Windows for obvious reasons.
Is it THAT bad on the mac? If so, won't one of the other browsers (Opera, Safari, etc) do?
http://www.caminobrowser.org/
'nuff said.
You just identified my biggest beef about FFox. If I said I wanted Flip4Win to open all my .wmv files then gosh darn it sure would be nice if FFox actually did that, instead of prompting me each time.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Please, please, please do not add keychain integration to Firefox on the Mac!!!! The main reason why I use FF rather than Safari is because FF does not have this. I do not use Safari because it seems to want my keyhain password every 3 seconds, asking multiple times in a row before I can even do anything. I do not use the keychain, I do not know what my keychain password is, I don't care what it is, and I can't seem to find any way to turn it the fuck off or otherwise delete that useless bitch. If you DO add keychain to FF, please at least provide a clear, easy to find, and comprehensive way to TURN IT OFF as far as Firefox is concerned. Otherwise, I will have to find a new browser ):
This thread is a shining, comedic gem.
I'm glad I turned my head from Apple before most of you hysterical folks got converted.
Mac users give almost NOTHING back to the open source community. There are scores and scores of Mac-only open source applications, and every BSD/Linux app under the sun has been ported to OS X, but you NEVER see OS X developers release cross platform software, so I don't see why I should have to spend any of my time helping OS X users when they never spend any time helping anyone else.
This bug has been there since Firefox 1.0. It's been in the bugzilla database for mozilla, item 306276 since August of 2005, and is marked "critical".
As someone who uses Firefox on the mac about 14 hours/day, it is far and away the most annoying part of the experience, because all the other issues can be worked around. With this bug you simply need to keep dragging your window over and over until Firefox lets it stay where it is (it seems to have something to do with other windows actively refreshing at the time). It frequently takes me 4 or 5 sequential efforts to move a window where I want it.
Lots of users are working on trying to make a perfect test case - the bug annotations get a new note at least once a week - but AFAICT no coders are actively working on solving it. If you have the skills to work on this problem (I don't), please join the team and contribute.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
maybe this a PPC thing (all of my Macs are various G4s) but you can not open a .pdf in the browser window. when you click a link to a .pdf, new Firefox windows will spawn and the only way to make it stop is to quit Firefox. .pdf, we have to right-click the link and save, then view it in Preview.
to view a
I have no other complaints about Firefox on OS X.
the history of the world
Actually you can do it but you have to run Firefox in rosetta mode (so its performance is crap) and then you can use the PowerPC PDF plugin so it is not an acceptable solution. I would broaden your request to "support for Safari plugins" because as well as PDF Java does not work properly under Firefox on a Mac. I understand it is possible to fix it by installing another Java distribution but that is a major pain. Since this is likely to be a major undertaking why not take a leaf out of the Windows Firefox book and add a Safari tab?
Having moved to Firefox, I miss the instant HTML validation of iCab, but I miss more the OmniWeb ability to edit the markup of a page and then redisplay it as if it had come from the website that way. That feature in OmniWeb has allowed me to submit forms on sites that were broken as well as quickly reorganize a web page's graphics to make it suitable as a DVD menu without resorting to compositing in Photoshop.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
FF doesn't integrate well with OSX, but just get the "SwitchProxy" Extension. It allows you to easily have numerous proxies and switch between them.
5
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12
This space available for rent.
I am not sure if this is really about making the "best possible" OS X browser, but rather that Firefox uptake on the Mac is not as high as it is on Windows?
The reason is simple: Safari doesn't suck. I find IE unbearable for a thousand tiny reasons, so I pretty much have to install Firefox straight away on Windows. I don't have the same unbearable need to change on OS X. Despite having both installed I just go ahead and use Safari.
So, what were my reasons for sticking to Safari last time I checked out Firefox?
Safari has a neat feature where you can right click on the bookmark bar folders and read all my RSS articles. The bookmarks bar is constantly updated with counts of new RSS articles for each folder. This is a trivial feature and I am sure there must be a plug in for FF that accomplishes the same thing. It should be in the core though.
Bonjour integration is nice in Safari, although in practice it rarely gets used.
Firefox should integrate better with the included OS X applications. (Address Book, iCal, Mail etc.)
Improve the integrated as you type spell checker. Of importance- just freaking use the OS X dictionary. Apple updates and maintains that nicely, so use it. Don't re invent the wheel. At least make this a config option.
You should be able to configure Firefox to utilize Safari Keychain entries. Changing back and forth between these apps should be utterly painless.
Firefox should have an option to synchronize its bookmarks in a couple more ways- out of the box without plug-ins
1) There should be a transparent sync mode that makes sure Safari and Firefox both have the same bookmarks and history all the time. If I make a new bookmark in Safari, then swith over to a FF window that bookmark should appear in FF in the correct place live, as if I had added it directly in FF. This feature needs to be bi-directional.
2) You should be able to use Apple Sync services with Firefox. I think if you accomplish #1 above you should effectively get this for free.
Some of these features may be in FF, or they may be in Camino now. I haven't looked seriously in at least a year, and it is entirely possible I just gave up too quick when I did check. If so please reply with more accurate information.
For what its worth, adding similar features to the Windows version couldn't hurt.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
I use Firefox on my PowerBook, I love it. But to be honest, MacOS X already has an [almost]-Firefox-quality web browser at its disposal already. For this reason, it's not as imparative that it be as top-notch as its PC counterpart.
Seriously, there's only three reasons I use Firefox over Safari:
- the "type to search" system in Firefox is unholy goodness
- allowing the addressbar to be "programmed" to search various sites via keywords is amazing
- plugins (of which I find myself not using very many of)
These are three great little features, but they're neither central nor paramount to the usability of a web browser. As for rendering quality, accuracy, and speed, the two are practically on par. Safari even has one major advantage over Firefox... its look and feel, and the robustness of its UI is MUCH better. I'm currently running a number of themes and plugins in Firefox to make the browser look and act like Safari, because I think its UI is far superior.
I'm forced to use IE at work, which makes me wanna vom, in comparison. Mac users don't really NEED Firefox, okay? It's nice for Mac users to support the platform in order to get PC users away from IE, but I wouldn't feel guilty, in the slightest, for ditching Firefox for Safari.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
In the Gang of Four Design Patterns book, they deal with a specific windowing example exactly like this using a bridge pattern. I don't remember the details, but it definitely deals with interfacing specific GUI widgets on different platforms
I don't think that Mac-ifying Firefox would be harder than making extensions work in Camino. But unlike other people I don't think a rewrite of Firefox for OSX is in order. Instead we should just have a series of Mac related extensions for these types of things. Keychain integration? Extension. Native widgets? Extension. Mac key bindings? Extension. Each would be simple to do by itself and updated by itself. But implementing a good Extension manager for Camino would be much harder.
I notice that firefox on 10.4.9 has a couple of windowing quirks. If the downloads window is open, and the current browser window is closed, then the downloads window must first be closed before a new browser can be opened.
also I noticed that if the browser windows can sometimes go nutty. I have a powerbook with external monitor as a second screen. Moving a browser window around on the second screen can cause it to jump back to the original screen. Usually happens if I am watching a flash based web video from somewhere like youtube.
I would like better javascript control. I hate to go into the prefs to turn jscript on and off. A console that would show me what scripts are trying to do as they do it would be awsome. Like a terminal, but only for what pages are trying to do.. even cooler would be a terminal that not only shows what page scripts are trying to do, but would let me correct little things before actually running them. It would be an advanced feature that would slow normal page viewing, but I would like the control.
One thing I don't like is how your tabs are not saved when the window is closed but firefox is not "quit".
I often, out of windows habit, close the window... and only then remember to quit the application by right clicking on it in my dock and selecting quit.
When I restart firefox... my tabs are not recovered.
I would also like to see additional ff windows opened by clicking on the dock icon... perhaps only if ff already has the focus? This probably breaks a mac interface rule though.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I like safari a lot.. but i'm really pissed at how i've been reporting slashdot crashing safari for the past 1.5 YEARS and apple has not fixed it.
this is not some bum()*@#$ site.. it's slash-"over a million registered users"-dot.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Firefox on OS X crashes on me, a LOT! Sometimes once or twice a day. This is my home machine so a "day" is anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. This is unacceptable.
I've been using Camino, but I miss some Firefox features (which I use at work on Windows XP), so I tried switching to FF at home and the first thing I noticed is that Firefox can't maximize a window properly:
0 1
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3787
Sigh. If FF can't properly implement one of the basic window operations available, it doesn't give me a lot of hope that they've really looked at it.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Camino (called Chimera before they had to change the name due to infringing on someone's trademark) came out before Phoenix (Firefox) in February of the same year Phoenix 0.1 was released. I'm not sure which started development first (as the articles on it seem a bit vague) and there is overlap between the teams who developed the browsers, but Camino had little to nothing to do with Firefox (aside from sharing developers) in its origins, and was about making a clean, lightweight browser based on the Mozilla engine, without the bloat and Mac-unfriendly UI and codebase of Mozilla.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Many people who work on it are the same people who also work on Firefox [wikipedia.org]. The lead Camino developers already work for the Mozilla Foundation.
FYI, both those statements are false; the wikipedia article is misleading. Mike Pinkerton doesn't work on Firefox (see his recent blog entries), and Josh Aas hasn't really contributed directly to Camino since he started working for Mozilla doing full time Firefox work (see recent checkin and bug activity for camino; yes, he is doing a lot of work in core code that will benefit Camino as much as Firefox, but he's not doing Camino development). There is basically no overlap between Camino developers and Firefox developers, and not a single Camino developer works for the Mozilla Foundation.
system dictionary integration
fewer pixels above and below toolbars and tabs
allow aquafied widgets to be turned to graphite
Like anyone can even know that
It's not OmniWeb.
Well said! Particularly when I have many sites open, if I go out of my office onto wireless for a bit, I have to open up Safari so as not to have to restart Firefox....sheesh!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Suggestions:
1. Make it so that contextual menus don't get stuck, orphaned, after I do something (still not sure what it is) that puts the context of interaction back in to the web page. Yes, I know I can press the escape key to make them go away, but Firefox is the ONLY Mac program where I've ever seen this occur, so I think it can and should be fixed.
2. When I create a new window in Firefox (no, I don't like tabs) and Firefox offsets the new window down and to the right from the one that is already open, don't let the bottom of the new window fall off the bottom of the screen!
3. Let me view and configure file types, mime types, their associations and behaviors. There's a section of the preferences where I can supposedly "view and edit actions" but I've never been able to usefully accomplish anything at all ever with this, and it appears to have no mechanism to create new "actions." This is stupid and obnoxious, just like it's stupid and obnoxious that OS X has no mechanism for editing the same things...
4. Let me remove toolbar bookmarks from the toolbar by simply dragging them out. This is a Mac. We like to drag and drop things. I don't want to have visit the annoying Bookmark organizer thing to do this. To illustrate the correct behavior, look at Safari.
5. In Firefox 2 the forward/back buttons have a very small area that you have to click on to get any response from the button. Make the button's active mask a rectangle the width of the button and as tall as the toolbar.
6. When I update Firefox, don't be a jackass and have the browser load some bullshit "welcome - did you know that you just updated Firefox?" and "what's new!" pages. They're completely pointless and rather insulting. Since they serve no useful purpose from the user's perspective and are annoying, I have to conclude they only exist to beam version and usage statistics back to Mozilla -- which rubs me the wrong way. Yes, I know I can manually disable them via about:config (unlike with Camino, where there's no obvious way to say no), but I'd rather not be harassed in the first place.
7. Support Services.
8. Not specific to OS X: fix core bugs. There are bugs that have blighted Mozilla for five years, like the inability to split absolutely positioned frames. This particular bug makes it impossible to print many web pages. Printing is important to people. Printing works in other browsers. Many people thus use other browsers. There are other similarly tardy and debilitating bugs.
Those are just the issues that come immediately to mind. There are others, but fixing these would be a great start.
Firefox on Mac crashes more than it does on other platforms (i.e. Linux and even Windows).
I wish they'd fix this really odd error I've had since I upgraded to 2.0: I can't download files. For example, right clicking on a picture and trying to save it simple does not work. I can copy it, bring it into photoshop, and save it that way. I can open the link in Safari, and save it that way. I have no clue what's causing it, disabling extensions one by one doesn't fix it, reinstalling firefox doesn't fix it, and it doesn't happen on my linux box or when I run windows in Boot Camp.
I'd love to add to that blog but it seems I have to be a Member or something before I can post.
So here's my beef:
As of V2.003 I am now unable to use contextual menus in Firefox with my Mac laptop. The usual double tap for contextual menu no longer works. Now I must lift my other hand from my lap to press CTRL while my trackpad hand leaves the trackpad to press the 'mouse' button. The contextual menu then appears and my lap hand can return to its previous activity.
Before V2 all this effort was not necessary and my lap hand could blissfully go about its business without interruption.
Additionally, since installing V2 my TiBook will not sleep without my express command. I'm not sure I can blame Ff for that.
I reported this to the dev team via a comment system. If I recall correctly, the bug report system was too complicated (like the blog) and required too much effort (would have required both hands and keeping track of passwords--like I need more of those!).
...omphaloskepsis often...
The thing that bugs me with firefox on mac is that I have to install it.
Seriously, my mac already came with a working browser; why do I have to install another one?
No, I will not work for your startup
There is only one thing I really want to see "fixed" in Firefox, and it's not really specific to the Mac platform. I honestly have never understood all this whining about Firefox not fitting in with other Mac applications, even before it got a lot better looking. I've been using it on Mac OS X for years with very few problems. That whole thing about native widgets on forms is something I really don't get. To me, the form widgets in Safari are icky, not the other way around.
What I really want to see are some of the features of the "strongly unrecommended" Tabbrowser Extensions by Shimoda Hiroshi integrated into the next version of FF. As far as I'm concerned TBE is/was the best extension that has ever existed, and pushes FF from just being a decent browser to being amazingly useful for a power user at a level that no other web browser can approach. Most of the main features should have been integrated into FF by the FF developers years ago. The extensions that are usually recommended to replace TBE like Tab Mix Plus are a joke in comparison. There are various lengthy forum threads in various places where people have discussed ways of replicated some of the features of TBE, but it just can't be done. Laugh if you want but TBE has kept me using FF 1.5 to this day on my personal machine. Various features haven't quite worked 100% for a long time, but back when it was all working I had the following features and more, with cross-platform support for all of it:
- Automatic grouping of related tabs
- Automatic coloring of tab groups so I can tell them apart!
- Automatically stays within the tab group by moving left when rightmost group tab is closed
- All popups including javascript windows forced to open in new tab
- Links to other sites automatically open in new background tab, same group
- Automatic wrapping of too many tabs into multiple tab rows (broken on Mac, unf.)
- Ability to save/bookmark tab groups and load entire groups in background tabs
- "Close group" option to quickly and easily close a ton of related tabs (much faster than closing tabs individually)
- Restriction of FF to using a single window no matter what (new window command disabled)
- Automatic saving/restoring of the browser state including groupings and their colors
- Drag & drop tab reordering
- Automatic opening of bookmarks, new address bar URLs, history, almost everything in new background tabs (I absolutely hate it when I have to manually open a new tab in Safari or regular FF just to avoid overwriting the contents of the current tab)
- Export/import of my TBE preferences between computers and platforms
- Probably several more features that I can't remember right now
Basically it gives me complete control of how my browser behaves and does everything in its power to help me stay organized and unconfused. It keeps the browser from making decisions on its own about when I'm done with a particular page or site. It keeps websites from being able to tell me when I should open a new window. I tell them when they're allowed to open a new window. Everything is forced into background tabs, even those idiotic javascript popup links that can't be opened in a tab the usual way. I don't lose pages just because I forgot to explicitly open a new tab before attempting to load a new URL or open a bookmark, it opens that new tab for me. It groups my sites clearly and logically in the same way that Mac OS X groups my applications clearly and logically. (OS X lets you stay within an application and cycle through all the open documents or windows in that application with Cmd+` [backtick/tilde key] instead of doing the Windows thing where you have to Alt+Tab between a bunch of unrelated application windows to get to things like Word documents that should be right next to each other. Alt+Tab on the Mac only cycles between applications. Together this makes task switching on the Mac immensely more efficient, IMNSHO.) TBE just makes things work the way they shoul
They don't do that because that's not what Home and End do on the Mac. They go to the beginning and end of an entire document, not just a line like on Windows (and Linux?). You want Cmd-Left and Cmd-Right.