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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; }
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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"
Probably why I said:
For folks who don't need specific Firefox functionality or Firefox extensions, Camino is already the answer.
I understand that for many, the lack of Firefox extensions is a killer. But, for other groups of people, it's not.
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.
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.
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)
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Goto "about:config"
Set ui.click_hold_context_menus to "true"
Enjoy!
In illa quae ultra sunt
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...
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.
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.
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
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)".
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.
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.
Holy cown Batman! X11 is like emulation? Seriously, are all Mac users this stupid? There's no standard on the Mac either. Garageband, iTunes, iMovie, whatever. They look slightly different, and behaves slightly different. Not to mention Final Cut, Aperture, and the mess of other applications.
-- Linux user #369862
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.
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