Slashdot Mirror


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."

6 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by Megane · · Score: 4, Informative

    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; }
  2. to be fair to mozilla... by owlnation · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)

  3. Re:Camino by fangorious · · Score: 4, Informative

    ctrl+k puts the cursor in the search bar, ctrl+up/ctrl+down cycles between search engines

  4. UNO makes Firefox look a lot prettier on OS X by spam38 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)".

  5. Re:Sync Bookmarks by Gadjet · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google for 'Google browser sync firefox extension' this does exactly what you've described

    I use it for 6 computers, all running different operation systems. I even have it syncing to my work computer. Its great.

  6. Re:Camino lacks foxmarks! by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 3, Informative

    Speaking of integration with OS X...

    Being able to sync with bookmarks stored on DotMac would be a nice feature that Firefox currently lacks but Safari has. That, and the Safari using the OS-standard spelling dictionary are the reason I prefer it right now.