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Mozilla Reveals Firefox 4 Plans
Barence writes "Mozilla has given a breakdown of its plans for Firefox 4. Perhaps the most striking change to Firefox 4 is the user interface, which takes a great deal of inspiration from Google Chrome. 'Something UI designers have known for a long time is that the simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem,' said director of Firefox Mike Beltzner during the presentation. Also mooted was the ability to give applications such as Gmail and Twitter their own permanent tabs for easy access, and the introduction of a 'switch to tab' button, allowing power users running hundreds of tabs to quickly find the one they want. Beltzner said Mozilla was also looking at replicating Chrome's tactic of silently updating the browser in the background, removing the annoying wait when Firefox first loads up."
Pretty much the only thing the new version will be is retarded. Permanent tabs? Garbage.
Anyone remember that episode of the Simpsons? "These are speed holes. They make the car go faster."
Personally, I'd rather have the browser go faster than look faster.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
First of all, am I the only one who hates Chrome's interface? But that's just window dressing, the real question is will it support H264/HTML5?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It won't be "silent" if it keeps that obnoxious behaviour it does now, where it interrupts you with a new version splash page. It's no less rude than a popup ad.
Fire Fox Four, sounds like a cheesy name for a new Charlies-Angels-kinda-group... But seriously, the new browser looks good with some nice new technologies for web developers and hopefully some better speed for the users... For other waiting: we can expect the beta in June, and the RC in October with a release within a month, so FFF should land this fall.
I still love my Firefox, but it seems like those devs have been playing catch-up for the last couple years instead of being the innovators. I dunno, but that inclines me to want to make a switch..
Seems faster? In my experience it has been more than "seems", Chrome actually is faster. The thing keeping me on Firefox is the various add-ons which I cannot get in Chrome. If Chrome were to get vertical tabs, that would go a long way towards making a switch.
It would be nice if Firefox did improve performance though. Would be a lot more significant than a trimmed down interface while the program runs just as slow.
Fear is the mind killer.
Thank you! That is the most annoying part of Firefox. I hate when I open Firefox and it makes me wait while it updates, and then when it finally does open, it does so on a pointless tab that offers me absolutely no useful information and once again delays what I'm trying to do.
I don't like the secret/stealth update either. Here's a very simple idea:
First, install the update when I shut down the browser. You're not wasting my time then because I'm done using it. Second, don't give me a tab telling me what I already know. I know it was updated, I just fricken saw it updated. I'm not an idiot.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So that's gone MIA, then? What's the current obsession with removing menu bars, creating "ribbon" interfaces and taking away stuff that has served us well for over 20 years..?
Not sure I like the look of that new interface. Aint broke, don't fix it.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Nooooooo!!!
Seriously, what is the point of having Firefox then? The fact that I need to open new tab in Chrome in order to access some bookmark pisses me off and pretty much makes bookmarks pointless.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
As long as they manage to isolate Java and Adobe from crushing the whole damn thing it's good enough for me.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Perhaps the most striking change to Firefox 4 is the user interface...
There's a shocker.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Just because an interface looks simple doesn't mean it looks faster. Who thinks like that? The "Speed holes" reference" above is quite right. Those UI designers either have been misquoted or are just complete fools.
What a simple interface means is that common tasks should be more obvious to do.
Don't give the users 100 options at once, especially things that only power-users use only once in a while. I'm not a fan of putting options in tabs and sub-menus, but sometimes it's the right thing to do.
Put the basic features at the beginning, the most obscure ones at the bottom. Put them in named groups such as "Basic", "Advanced" and "Expert" if necessary, so that non-technical users aren't afraid to mess with the basic ones, and advanced users don't waste time looking for what they need in the basic and advanced options.
His slides (on "slide share") don't work for me, using Firefox and Gnash.
C'mon guys. Attention to detail with your open web!
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
With the popularity of Netbooks, I see FF losing market share to Google because of the performance differences.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Great. That means I will be staying with the current version of Firefox for a long time. I just tried Chrome a few days ago and the user interface totally sucks. What is is with these people who have to fuck up a good design just so they can make it different and justify a new version number.
For those who don't want to rtfa, there's a video presentation on the director of firefox, Mike Beltzners blog: http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/air_mozilla/firefox4.ogg
I used chrome for several days but went back to firefox because I hated having the tabs at the top.
My dual core with 2 GB memory slows down when I have 10-20 tabs open. Hopefully Firefox will address the memory issues before implementing this feature...
Firefox 4 ! The best mashup of Chrome and Opera since Firefox 3.5
I'll second that, and put in a request for more HTML 5 support. I am particularly interested in when firefox will implement the "combo box" feature of HTML 5. This is something that has been requested in web programming since day one.
Here is an example of how to do it (opera has the only implementation as of yet).
its hard enough to convince users that the internet isnt the blue E on their desktop and use Firefox instead.
keep changing the UI and sure as dammit they will be back using the blue E,
it may take us geeks a couple of minutes/hours to get used to a new UI but the average user it takes forever and they want familiarity they dont want to hunt for that buried option or find the new print button, hell some people dont even know what a home button is! and they absolutely hate having to throw away the knowledge gained on learning an applications UI just for it to change again
Tweak the default UI slowly, very slowly.
and for the record Chrome's UI sucks like Fisher Price (an example in gone too far in dumbing down)
eg. removing https:/// from the location bar after we (the security/it industry) have spent 25 years teaching people to look for it when signing into their bank/mail etc.
lets trash all that training and start again ? after all that business training is free right ?
and and people wonder why IE is standard in corporations ?
perhaps Mozilla should start working on aiding administrators (group policy options (have you seen IEs massive list?) /locking down functions/ automatic updates that are truly automatic and dont need user interaction etc)
instead of playing with fluff.
A.Dmin
Seriously...if you have 100s of tabs open, you have ADD or you need to learn to let go of your tabs. Relax. Close them. They'll still be there when you wake up.
And some people live in countries where software patents are not even legal. Why should they pay anything?
Are you willing to foot the bill for the emigration of the entire Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation to one of these countries?
Hopefully Firefox will address the memory issues before implementing this feature...
Firefox has no memory issues, what you're seeing is a user issue. Just as the Firefox Devs...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Most progress bars on the world are there to make the wait more fun. Drawing the progress bar takes CPU, and probably some activities sould be done in a incremental way, to be progressbar friendly, where a bach apropach would be faster.
Most progress bars are not really needed, but make programs feel faster by making programs a bit slower but more fun.
Anything that make a program 0.1% slower but feel 20% more faster is better for everyone. Yea, any human.
-Woof woof woof!
First, install the update when I shut down the browser. You're not wasting my time then because I'm done using it.
When you shut down the browser, you could be shutting down your computer.* Firefox doesn't want a SIGKILL from sudo shutdown -h now to make the updater leave the system in an inconsistent state. So if startup is unacceptable and shutdown is unacceptable, the only remaining solution is to do so in the background while the browser is in use.
* Not everybody is as lucky as you are to have proper driver support for hibernation. And some people apply security patches to their operating system kernels every month or two.
Leave everything else to add-ons and plug-ins.
hundreds of tabs??
Provided I can delete these "permanent" tabs. If not, fuck off.
I'd love to switch our companies users to FF but having no way to centrally manage/monitor and update is a complete killer. There's no way we can have users with 10 different versions and different issues, etc. It's a nightmare. Give me a cool central control panel and have each browser be able to be hooked into it and it would be amazing.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
The only thing which keeps me from switching to Chrome is that Firefox still has a non-sucky UI (after some extensions such as LastTab).
If Firefox will look the same as Chrome, I'll just switch as Chrome is way faster.
They're just too eager to jump into the "me too" bandwagon and will lose market share because of it, by betraying their loyal users. They've done it once with the "awesome bar" and are doing it again now. No wonder its market share is currently stagnated.
It is "R" stickers and huge un-aerodynamic wings that make a car go faster.
1) Have your monitor shake and blow air in your face while opening a browser.
2) Add some motion blur when scrolling a page.
3) Lower your desk. Generally, the closer to the floor you are the faster it seems. I am using go karts as an example.
4) Make ALL youtube videos play at 2x speed except for videos about rival browsers, which shall be played at 0.5x.
Unlike the curmudgeons here I believe firefox has the worst UI of the popular browsers, and the mock-ups look like a nice improvement, even if it seems ripped from Opera. Surely you all have learned the keyboard commands for the common menu functions that are pretty much universal for every app? I say good riddance to the days of the menu bar, there is a reason nearly EVERYONE is abandoning it.
Out of all the browsers for Windows seems Firefox is the slowest when it comes to starting it. Once it is open I don't have a issue. I really hope they fix that one day.
Why would the user have write access to the directory where the web browser is installed to even be able to auto-update?
Are people running their web browsers as Administrator or root?!
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
How long on the fork of Firefox so that the Mozilla Foundation makes a light browser that is fast at what it does again and has another full and bloated client for those that don't want to browse too fast?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
allowing power users running hundreds of tabs to quickly find the one they want
But isn't that what bookmarks are for?
Microsoft is implementing h.264 in Media Foundation. Apple is implementing it in QuickTime. Firefox should just rely on those implementations and let the OS vendors pay the royalties
On Linux (etc.) they could require that you download and install ffmpeg on your own time. That way, if ffmpeg gets sued out of existence, it's no skin of Mozilla's nose.
Not an ideal solution, but it allows users to view content without sullying the precious Free codebase.
I rarely use the buttons or the menu since I've got the hotkeys firmly engraved into my mind, but if they take away my sidebars I'm going to get pissed. About this whole Chrome speed mishmosh, I recently did an extremely simple test of my own. I set the homepage to my google personalized homepage on both browsers and resized them so that they took up about half the screen each. After opening both browsers simultaneously it seemed that the start up was pretty close but Firefox loaded my homepage a lot faster. Why is that?
Error: No error occurred
allowing power users running hundreds of tabs to quickly find the one they want.
Sorry, that”s not “power using” but “being a messie who clutters things up”.
The same type of person whoses desk is full of paper sheets and his display borders are full of post-it notes.
In other words: No a very healty person, and not someone you would want to hire.
A power user would use TabMix Plus storable sessions and bookmark folders, plus TagSifter tagging.
Or even one writing his own extensions.
But I guess the guy who wrote it considers using any kind or CLI something only experts use...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
While I like Firefox and also SeaMonkey just fine, I have always been a bit bothered by applications (and there are many of them) that take their time updating the screen or make the UI unresponsive. Look back at the original Mac running on a 8mhz 68k or Windows 1.0 running on an 8088. Menus, dialogs and such display almost instantly after a mouse click. Now we have multi-gigahertz CPUs with multiple cores and video cards that have such powerful GPUs you almost need a built in nuclear reactor to power them! What is the excuse for not being able to display a menu the very next video frame/refresh? If data is slowly tickling in over a network, why not display what you have the instant it comes in?
I remember running the first public Mozilla Suite builds on a Pentium 200 and how incredibly slow they were. I know there have really have been many speed improvements, but sometimes it feels like Mozilla just let the hardware get faster rather than addressing some of the core speed issues that Chrome is now putting them to shame on.
It looks like their solution to slow menus is to remove the menus? The standard way people have been interfacing with GUI applications since 1984? You people do know Chome is just trying to look like IE 7, which was trying to look like Safari, which actually does have menus just not attached to each browser window?
On the topic of video, I wish more people would provide direct downloadable links to video files so even if my browser doesn't know how to play a video, I can view it in an external player like VLC. And it seems like the only realistic answer for bundled in-browser video here is if Mozilla can negotiate some kind of special licensing agreement with the h.264 folks. Although I seriously think video should be implemented as some kind of plug-in that can be updated separately as the video-codec-of-the-day changes.
All that aside, it is interesting how open Mozilla appears to be in discussing their plains. Apple keeps their plans top secret with not a word uttered, Microsoft's plans are openly "leaked" so people feel naughty when a preview/beta , Oracle's plans are covered with legalese and subject to contract terms, Linux plans are written in some cryptic programming language or something. Well, it is just nice seeing somebody try to be open like this (even if they still wind up doing their own thing)
What I would like to have is (the option, of course) Firefox UI elements somehow run vertically along the left side of the screen. Horizontal screen space is cheap these days with the ubiquity of wide screen displays. Vertical resolution, not so much anymore. However, the left to right text of the address bar, bookmarks, tabs, etc seems like an insurmountable barrier unless someone can come up with a good idea for representing that vertically.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Is it fair to ask if a software project has "jumped the shark" when they are copying innovations (instead of making innovations ) off of a competing piece of software?
FINALLY.
Never again will I be alert-bombed.
(I looked for an add-on to change script alerts, confirms, and prompts into something non-modal. I couldn’t find anything.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
There is some real HMI theory behind this though. HMI studies show the less buttons and dynamic the interface the more people think and feel it is faster and more responsiveness even if nothing has changed at all. Give a user an interface with a lot of buttons or one with a few, the user perceives the one with less buttons even when the guts function at exactly the same speed.
They aren't trying to hide a problem but avoiding creating a false one. Gravitating towards a minimal interface also helps with mobile versions.
I ask the Mozilla folks: why copy Chrome? If I wanted to run Chrome, I would run that instead. I run Firefox because it's firefox and has a GUI which provides a lot more functionality, and I install extensions to add to that functionality (firebug, web developer toolbar, adblock, tinyurl, colorzilla, cooliris, google toolbar, etc). I LIKE menu bars, and being able to turn features on and off, but having a basic toolbar, status bar, and menu bar enabled by default. I hate the current trend of dumbing down UIs and making them look like they were designed using Play-Doh (make that play-d'oh).
Want to know what you should work on instead? Sandboxing each tab, sandboxing plugins, decreasing memory utilization (with the realization that you can't do much about flash, quicktime, mplayer, etc. plugin memory utilization), fully multithreading the UI so one tab waiting for a message queue doesn't freeze the entire browser, and work on the javascript engine so it is on par with Chrome, etc.
Seriously. If all you do is reinvent Chrome, why bother? By offering a Chrome clone, any reason to run Firefox disappears.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
H.264 has already won, it's already used everywhere. The more they fight, the longer Flash video will survive. Does Adobe pay Mozilla or what?
If the FSF had given up on their ideals because of the success of commercial Unix and compilers, we would not have GCC and a lot of the other free software ecosystem.
While you're welcome to live a more pragmatic / practical life, having idealists around isn't such a bad thing as it gives others goals to strive for. As it stands, MPEG is looking at creating a patent-free codec:
Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1 directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard. MPEG would appreciate if NBs provide the names of individual organisations that will commit resources. MPEG will use the information gathered from the NB responses, particularly including the number of countries willing to actively participate, in order to decide at the Geneva meeting whether to request approval of a new Work Item Proposal. MPEG does not intend to reopen the issue, unless strong support of at least five national bodies is presented in the future.
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n111851.doc
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n11185c.htm
In their parlance, a Type-1 license is one where:
The Patent Holder is prepared to grant a free of charge license to an unrestricted number of on a worldwide, on-discriminatory basis and under other reasonable terms and conditions to make, use, and sell implementations of the above document.
http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/04/04/T04040000020002PDFE.pdf
More at:
http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty-free-standardization/
This is what firefox needs most from my perspective:
- Multiprocess build: everything plugging away at one core isn't really ideal..
- Task manager: what page is hidden away in some inactive tab sucking up CPU due to javascript? (No, I don't want to run noscript.. I do have yesscript though). Also memory usages would be useful for some people.
- Why are pages in hidden tabs or on different desktops using CPU anyway? If it's not in front of me I don't really need it to run in most cases. Slashdot's pause functionality with firehose was a good thing.
Since I end up with maybe 8 virtual desktops with a workflow on each one in a firefox window there, if I want to do anything fun the browsing experience becomes pretty sluggish.. I pretty much have to fire up chrome if I want to use a JS heavy site/youtube/etc.. which can't be right.
I know a multiprocess build is underway, but waiting is frustrating and I see more and more people switching to chrome each day.
To me the only thing I like about the Chrome interface is that you recover some vertical screen real estate.
The FF 4 mockup seems to have a much fatter blank area at the top. IMO they need to shrink this more, not enlarge it, if you are going to copy improve, don't degrade.
Whenever the description to a new product/software version is something like this...
Perhaps the most striking change to Firefox 4 is the user interface
...I always know it's going to be a huge disappointment. Why do companies (see: Google with iGoogle AND default search now. Also see Microsoft and XP -> Vista, Vista -> 7) feel the need to obsessively change their interface without actually improving the software behind that interface?
Most people LIKE what they're already using, and yet these companies constantly take away something that WORKS for whatever brainchild their marketing department thought would "sell better." Never mind the millions of existing customers that it pisses off.
Firefox is a has been. People in the know are switching to Chrome or Safari. People who aren't are sticking to IE like they always have. Unless they get back on track, I seriously doubt Mozilla will still be a major player 5 years from now.
Firefox is the New Netscape! ;)
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
... it's just much more fun. I don't care why. No understanding required.
Quickly? Hundreds of tabs? Are you SERIOUS?
Runing 20 tabs makes firefox run at snails pase and freeze everytime you click a button/tab. Just opening 5 links from google search will compleatly freeze firefox for ~20seconds
(I use firefox for it's live bookmarks function) (and yes 20 tabs run without problems in opera)
...and I read a reasonable amount. Weird. Was the summary writer trying to educate people, or is he just a lawyer who doesn't realize it's an obscure word?
Clearly some kind of joke...
Before I switched to Chrome, I couldn't use more than 10 or so tabs without the memory usage going through the roof, and I'd need to restart. Show me someone using firefox with 100 tabs who isn't using a supercomputer.
I am very disappointed that Mozilla is only interested in changing the user interface for new versions. Current Firefox is very slow and is getting slower in every new version. They should focus on making it blindingly fast before even considering more UI changes. The start up times for Firefox are excruciatingly slow, for some stupid reason Firefox seems to enumerate all the files in your temp directory! The user interface is also very slow on slow networks, the concept of threads seems to be an alien concept to the developers.
Consider most people pay $10 for an album or CD. How hard would it be for Firefox to charge $5 for a version of Firefox which supports extra features?
The Slashdot site even has this mechanism of funding. It would work if it were done in an Itunes way and if people could pay via Google's payment system.
Chrome happened to be the ones smart enough to include this with their distro, but there have been third party preloaders for Firefox out there for quite some time. They let it get loaded and updated before you even get to opening the browser.
I'm in high resolution mode and I'm still having problems with the font DPI. They need to make it so that the fonts look good regardless of the monitor resolution. It should automatically adapt. How hard is it to make an intelligent font mechanism for Compiz/Xwin/Windows7?
I have ADD and would love to be able to search through 100 tabs.
I would prefer if they made the search intelligent enough to predict which tabs I'll go to, and use regular expressions so that I can program it to respond to words I highlight on a site.
So for example if I highlight a word with my mouse and I already have wikipedia open in another window, it should ask me if I want to search wikipedia in the window already open rather than asking me to open a new wikipedia window and search. Regular expressions and intelligent text.
An example, you highlight "Give me" and it asks (Search for Give Me). This feature should be expanded via plugins, regular expression, and AI so that if I have Google open in another tab it can search for it within the Google search tab already open. This would save browser resources and make it a lot easier to manage tabs. I always leave a tab open to Google, Wikipedia, Slashdot and YouTube. Why not let me highlight text and select which site I want the text to search from? Why not use keyboard shortcuts so that I can highlight the text and hit "g" and it searches Google, "y" and it searches Youtube, "w" and it searches Wikipedia, or "d" for the dictionary if I don't know the word. And the plugin interface should allow regular expressions and individual programmers to code new features.
This plugin/extension interface would revolutionize the browsing experience because it would increase the amount of information the user can work with and take in at any given time. This should be the goal of Firefox. To help increase the amount of information users can handle rather than trying to merely simplify he interface without any known practical enhancements.
The application tab idea is good. That has a good function. But I want that application tab to be connected to the text highlight function of the browser. And then something like the pipes function in linux should be used to allow the highlighted text to be manipulated any which way and or used as input for the software applications. I should be able to highlight text on your post and have it to into my word processor application or email application as a direct quote with source citation included. This way I don't have to worry about managing the sources.
And there are a million other improvements we could probably think of that they aren't or don't seem to be considering. I hope the Firefox4 team reads this post and considers adding these features.
Firefox since the beginning for me has been a bad joke. Things like trying to remove the inline auto-complete make it so that I have to click more to get to what I want. I get repetitive strain injury every once in a while and I found with Firefox it got worse. Fortunately for those of us who value our hands there is Seamonkey, an easy, feature rich interface that allows us to do what we want.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
The only thing--- and I mean ONLY thing--- I prefer about Chrome is its task manager. If a website's terrible code / flash movie / javascript is dragging my system to its knees, Chrome lets me shut down just that single swf. This is a terrific idea. However, on the balance, Firefox has far more user support, compatibility, and security.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
The goal should be to allow the individual to take in and interpret as much information as possible with minimal clutter. One of the best new features browsers have added is the ability to highlight text and click "Search for What a joke.", the problem is they don't expand on any of this. They want us to use web apps but they don't provide anything to allow us to take input from one website and send it to another without opening up a bunch of useless Windows.
If I want to email you through gmail I should be able to click an icon next to your sn, this Window should instantly allow me to send this post to your gmail or whatever. It should be much better integrated. We should be able to also search more than just "Google", for "What a Joke", but it should allow the individual to search any application on their computer or on the internet that they select. I should be able to search for "What a Joke" on several sites search bars and the results should appear on one page.
Why is this so difficult? It's adding the features of regular expressions to the browser experience. That is the next level, and if it can be made intelligent and the AI can predict the context, even better.
When I have 100 tabs open I want to be able to have my browser intelligently send data between these tabs. If I have Google open and I highlight something I don't want another Google to have to open. I want a Google Icon which represents ALL the Google tabs much like the taskbar can group windows. All Google should be under Google, all Slashdot under Slashdot, all Youtube under Youtube, and these categories should all be independently searchable or searchable as a whole.
I should be able to search through all my Youtube or Slashdot tabs for any specific sentence contained within those tabs. I should be able to know which tab has been active, which tab is inactive. I should know which tab is consuming a lot of resources via blinking or whatever mechanism.
Features like these would save time because I wouldn't have to open the tasklist to kill the tabs which are consuming too much resources. I wouldn't have to scroll through inactive tabs to find the active tab. And if I want to search ALL my search engines for a phrase I should be able to search them all, I don't see why I can do this via Beagle or regular expressions in Linux but I cannot do this in Firefox???!
The main problem with Firefox is they aren't integrating with the systems they operate under and they aren't giving users features we ask for.
This is another feature they'll probably never implement. But it would be incredibly useful if while doing research you can set Firefox to search Google and open up sites which match the specific concepts/phrase/whatever you are looking for. If I want to learn all I can learn about a subject like the history of the automobile, I should be able to program Firefox to search every search engine for the terms "Automobile" and "History", then future program it to only go to certain results from specific reputable websites from the list I choose. I should also be able to program Firefox to search within those websites for specific phrases, quotes, or to highlight certain concepts I'm trying to learn more about.
Finally I should be able to highlight those quotes, save them into an Open Office web app, have all my quotes entered into he webapp in the MLA format. Why can't it happen?
Firefox loads all windows and tabs into one process. If one crashes, they all crash.
Chrome separates each tab into its own process. If one crashes, one crashes.
When I'm using a browser, for work or play, I typically have anywhere from 15-40 tabs open split among a few windows. Then they get shoved to a second (or third, or fourth) desktop while I have my nose in monodevelop or geany. I don't want some random flash advertisement to crash everything I've opened if I happen to pull up a code reference page in a 41'st tab.
That's stability, imho.
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
Forced down our thorats is forced down our throats. I don't care if its better, if its a hundred times faster, I don't care if it has 20 new whizbang features that compromise my privacy ...... I WANT THE BUG/SECURITY FIXES WITH THE SAME OLD SAME OLD CLASSIC USER INTERFACE THAT I'VE BEEN USING FOR THE PAST DECADE
"GP's point is that there are real performance gains that they could be making..."
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use. Every recent update has included fixes for instability, and there are many more sources of instability. THAT'S the performance gain needed most.
Somehow Firefox interacts with Windows XP with Service Pack 3 in such a way that it crashes Windows. Anyone fixing the Firefox instabilities will have bragging rights, and maybe job offers, because they will also discover the cause of the instability in Windows.
In contrast, I have never known Firefox instabilities to crash Linux. Linux just throws Firefox out of memory.
The instability in Firefox occurs especially when many windows and tabs are open, and Windows XP is hibernated or put in standby several times. Normally only people who do a lot of research have many windows and tabs open. However, the instabilities are indications of coding errors that need to be corrected. Also, those who do research should be served, also, and not just because they may be vocal and influential.
I haven't tested Firefox with Windows 7 yet, but will do that in the next month.
Another valuable performance fix would be to allow multiple instances of Firefox, so that a crash in one instance does not affect the others. Google's Chrome is designed that way.
Please don't give excuses. Crashes need to be fixed. Much of the reason for the popularity of Firefox is the availability of extensions. Logically, Mozilla cannot simultaneously recommend extensions that crash Firefox and blame the extensions for crashing Firefox.
Firefox crashes.
Crash Statistics.
Crash Reporting.
Why is everyone so eager to suddenly replace one proprietary format for another?
Because Ogg quality SUCKS?
I used to run Firefox 3.0 on Ubuntu 8.04 with an ext3 formatted partition on an EeePC 900 with a "1st gen" (read extremely slow writes) SSD. Start up time and general pauses were so agonising I had taken to making a script to copy the profile into RAM and run Firefox there. Chromium on that system was a dramatically faster.
Now having upgraded to Firefox 3.6.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 with an ext4 formatted partition Firefox is much faster. It's hard to tell if the difference is down to ext4 or Firefox but the situation is much improved.
Err... we have tried using browsers that ditch the menu bar. Given your comment above, perhaps you can post your home address so that we can fit some square wheels to your car?
Getting rid of a user interface element used extensively by millions of people every day will prevent technological stagnation will it? Give us a break!
Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
Somehow Firefox interacts with Windows XP with Service Pack 3 in such a way that it crashes Windows.
Well, if Windows can be crashed by a rogue program and as Microsoft points out, nobody uses Firefox, it would appear that Windows itself is actually simultaneously unstable and more common than Firefox. :P
multiple instances of Firefox, so that a crash in one instance does not affect the others. Google's Chrome is designed that way.
Yeah, that is the real solution. Flash *will* continue to crash, Adobe's goal is being ubiquitous not stable, and it's not the only buggy plugin, so Firefox needs to at most lose the one tab that crashed and carry on.
The Firefox logo that Slashdot uses for Firefox-related stories is severely out of date. Slashdot is still using the very first logo from ancient times, whereas Firefox has gone through two branding updates since then, the most recent one with Firefox 3.5. Here is the new logo.
End the HMTL5 compatibility nightmare before it starts. All browsers should just move to webkit and then compete with the interface features.
Perhaps you haven't come across it because its usage varies by geography/region/dialect? I'm sure in the UK people use "mooted" periodically - mooted turns up on the BBC site a bit.
what i really want, what firefox really needs is one thread for the ui, one thread per tab.
that alone would make HUGE difference. flash blocks only one thread, huge page loadings don't block the ui and so on....
is it going to be there?
Of course by "via Internet Explorer" I mean "via Windows Update."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think Firefox and others should make a bigger effort to improve the browser programming environment. This means improving the javascript language to support strong typing and real classes/methods/inheritance. It means adding more UI controls to html so that it is easier to write applications. Reducing developer/QA costs means more time and money can be spent on application features. There is a big focus on making the javascript interpreter faster but more effort is needed to make javascript a better language. I don't think authors of Javascript understood that it would be used to build the complex web applications we see today. Most other languages (Java, C#, etc) and UI SDKs (Swing, SWT, MFC, Flash/Flex etc) are much more powerful. Html-5 is a good step. I don't think we really need innovation, we just need modernization to match capabilities we already have in other languages and UI SDKs.
The article mentions MacOS X. Unfortunately, Firefox is not a good browser to use on Apple notebooks under MacOS, because it actively prevents the machine from going to sleep if you leave it idle. It'll just drain your battery down. And compared to Safari, Firefox uses significantly more CPU load for exactly the same set of pages (I've tested this across a lot of different combinations). So Firefox will drain your battery faster.
What I like about Firefox is that it's a memory miser. Compared to everything else (that I've tried and according to various articles I've read), Firefox is much skimpier on memory usage. Its data structures are smaller to begin with, and it's better about releasing memory back to the OS. In theory, you should be able to have more documents open at the same time without hitting swap. The trouble is, each open document adds appreciably to the CPU load, which creates another limitation to the number of documents you WANT to have open, else you drain your battery too fast.
Firefox also has much better crash protection. Safari+Saft is acceptable but still problematic. I tend to use Firefox nightly builds, which crash slightly more often, but it's so good at restoring to the state you left, it almost doesn't matter. (Someone once pointed out that crash reliability is what prevents sleep, but this should not be true, because if you're not doing anything, there's no changed state that needs to be saved.)
and all these themes @ https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/cy/themes/index.html make Chrome even uglier.
...maybe they'll fix the whole 'Firefox is suddenly an unreliable and slow piece of crap' bug introduced over the last several updates... ...but I doubt it.
Now if only someone would make a Chrome plugin that provides full FF-like 'awesome bar' support. I love Chrome, but the address bar's history seems very selective, and it makes recalling the addresses for images I've uploaded to my site a total pain in the ass, whereas in Firefox it was damn near like having an eidetic memory.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
If 4.0 is going to cause further confusion by merging the address and search bars and removing security indicators, then forking may be the best tactic to help even typical users.
Firefox is not a good browser to use on Apple notebooks under MacOS, because it actively prevents the machine from going to sleep if you leave it idle.
I've been using FF very extensively on my own Apple notebooks from Powerbooks running 10.3 to Macbooks running 10.6, and also setup and administer these machines for others, and I have never seen what you are describing.
'Something UI
designers have known for a long time is that the simpler an interface
looks, the faster it will seem,' said director of Firefox Mike Beltzner
during the presentation.
I would much rather say that good, simple UI design actually makes the interface faster because, you know, it's faster to work with.
Plus there's a little bit less to render, I guess.
I am not devoid of humor.
Sounds like Mozilla is taking Firefox down the same road that they took Thunderbird...and T3 is a steaming pile of crap. I wonder why Mozilla is busy trying to make their products look and act like other competing products. Looks like I'll be using the current version of Firefox and not upgrading; I am still using Thunderbird version 2.x. If I wanted to use Chrome, I'd use Chrome. Please don't keep screwing up a good thing. It's bad enough as it is that all of Mozilla's products are suffering from feature creep, but it's worse when they're just as bloated as other commercial software. --MM
While you're in there making changes, I have the following request: please set up Firefox as a generic XML reader.
You can pre-load XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument schemas and pre-load one stylesheet for each. But allow other, user-specified style sheets to be used and other XML schemas or DTDs to be loaded by the user. Valid, well-formed XML allows that to be doable.
Firefox doesn't have to do more than render, but that will be of value.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
1. when loading 200 tabs, stage load them in batches of 10 or 12. Don't try and load 200 tabs all at once and pummel my cable router. They'll still take the same amount of time to load.
2. when I have 200 tabs open, have a single thread that you force all AJAX queries to go down, and let me throttle it. Each tab with a javascript event timer is what is sucking down 20% of my CPU at firefox Idle. That needs to be contained.
3. For unused tabs - things that haven't been activated in a long time, unload, or make them static in some fashion - like a screen shot. Then reloads don't have to actually hit the network until the next time the tab is actually "viewed" by a human.
I use my firefox session as a steady-state representation of what I was working on. I love the fact I can open 150+ tabs, and manage them how i see fit.
I want my ACTIVE FTP transfers, grrr. sick of that passive thing. at my workplace only active works because of firewall.
fix it already, dammit
Firefox on Windows 7, 32-bit, is leading me to dabble in alternate browsers again.
It's actually getting to be so aggravating that I would actually consider reinstalling Internet Explorer.
I hibernate my system each day when I leave for work, simply because I'm gone for up to 12 hours a day. It makes no sense to leave a machine with a 300w power supply on for half a day when I can't use it. Important-to-me stuff that I can't have shut off was relegated to a 30w machine that sits in the living room.
After a couple of days of such behavior, Firefox has blimped up to 500 MB of memory in use, and I only have about 12 tabs open, usually to image intense pages, and not flash!
I tend to watch a couple of stupid vids here and there, watch someone draw through one of the streaming video sites, check email, and peruse a couple of sites with artistic communities of varying skill levels and styles. Other than that, I'm not doing much in the browser itself.
The fact that closing the browser takes minutes, instead of seconds, is already an annoyance. Reopening is just as bad, since it's reopening the tabs I had loaded earlier.
I don't have toolbars loaded. I only use a few plugins, of which the notorious Adobe Cra^WFlash is one (blip.fm, youtu.be need them for my usage).
My addons use is relatively minimal, compared to the number of addons there are.
Every few months, because it just drives me insane, I uninstall the current version of Firefox, nuke the profile, and just run a clean install. I get some speed back.
I run vacuumplaces extension regularly to try to keep it stable... but this is the most high maintenance, buggy piece of junk I've ever run.
Sadly, because of a few specific things I need that I haven't found out how to replicate in another browser, I'm stuck with Firefox.
(Give me a working alternative to DownThemAll!, and I might be able to survive.)
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
Thanks for the suggestion: Vacuum Places Improved. Soon I'll be trying it with Windows 7 64-bit.
Article: "Vacuum Places Improved" Speeds Up Firefox with a Click of Your Mouse
Article partly about "out-of-control memory use" in Firefox: Five Features We Want to See in Firefox.