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Firefox 4.0 Beta Candidate Available
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla quietly posted the first beta build of its Firefox 4 browser early this morning. The 'Chromified' browser leaves a solid first impression with a few minor hiccups, but no surprises. If you have been using a previous version of Firefox 3.7, which now officially becomes Firefox 4.0, you should already feel comfortable with this new version. Mozilla has not posted detailed release notes yet, but there seem to be no major changes from Firefox 3.7a6-pre, with the exception that the browser is running more smoothly and with fewer crashes."
Update: 06/29 18:40 GMT by S : Mozilla's Asa Dotzler writes, "Mozilla has not shipped Firefox 4 beta yet. We are in the process of making and testing the final set of changes, but we're not quite there yet." Changed headline to reflect this.
I hate to break it to you, but as chrome adds those features it's going to slow down and get sluggish. Firefox has for some time beat Chrome on memory use. But, OTOH it's somewhat mooted by the fact that Chrome tends to spy and seems to thwart disabling intrusive ads.
What are you people doing that causes Firefox to have such horrible stability problems? I leave Firefox open for literally days at a time, with anywhere between 10-25 tabs open, and I have no stability problems.
Living With a Nerd
Firefox will still be used so long as Chrome maintains its policy of not really allowing any major customizations. Firefox lets you customize -EVERYTHING-, seriously, type in about:config in Firefox, until Chrome lets you do this, I for one will stay with Firefox because I've got it customized exactly how I like it and Chrome won't let me.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm not trying to find fault or lay blame. I'm pointing out that it's ridiculous to assume that because you have a problem with Firefox that everyone else sees the same problem. When you go out to your car in the morning and it doesn't start, do you say that your car manufacturer is making defective cars, or do you simply get it fixed? It has nothing to do with whose "fault" it is. It has to do with effectively dealing with problems instead of immediately assuming it is the fault with the manufacturer. Forget about whose fault it is!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
But what's abusive about it? That style of browsing, to me, is what tabs are for.
I'm sorry, no, that's absolutely false.
The tab metaphor was *never* intended to accomodate *hundreds* of live tabs. If it were, there would be better mechanisms for organizing tabs, finding them, etc. No, the tab metaphor is meant for *maybe* dozens of tabs, tops.