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Mozilla To Release Firefox 4 Next Month
Neil writes "Damon Sicore, Senior Director of Platform Engineering at Mozilla, has announced that the company is almost ready to ship Firefox 4. On its mailing list, Mozilla has revealed it has around 160 hard blockers to fix, before proceeding to Release Candidate stage. Both the RC and the final version would arrive in February, according to Sicore. Mozilla was originally planning on having Firefox 4 out by the end of last year, but it had to delay the release till 2011. Last month, Firefox 4 Beta 8 was released for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux 32-bit/64-bit, with support for 57 languages. Mozilla's roadmap says it still wants to release a Beta 9, a Beta 10, and at least one Release Candidate build before the final version."
Been using the beta. No real complaints, seems a bit snappier, but on the whole no big whoop. If anyone knows how to get the status bar back that would be nice. And for some reason they always put find at the bottom of the page, which is totally not intuitive since users enter info at the top with the search and address bars...
Wasn't this supposed to be the answer to Chrome - yet Chrome has shipped several iterations in the time it took them to get from 3 to 4? I think Firefox is on beta 10 or whatever. For a while, I maintained that I would switch back to Firefox once it matched the speed and minimalist interface that Chrome had, as I didn't like using a browser from Google. Now? Not so sure anymore - I'm so used to Chrome and it fits my workflow so well. It will take a lot to get me back.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
I've never reverted a version before, always liked the new one, but with FF 4 and it's lack of status bar and lack of SSL related security notices and missing right-click menu options, I've got to ask what the hell are they doing? Mozilla seem to be trying to dumb down FF and are removing useful features in the process. Double click blank space for a new tab is gone, right-click -> new tab is gone.
It's slower to use now because quick options and quick information have been removed. Also, hovering over URLs now squeezes the URL to be visited into the URL box with the current URL, unreadable light coloured fonts have been chosen and for most URLs you can barely read a fraction of the URL - It's dreadful. Plus right-click -> block image has been removed.
What next? Quit trying to copy Chrome and IE if I wanted to use those corporate straitjackets I would be.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
With "Panorama" aka "Tab Candy" aka "Bolted on tab management feature that only power users need", I'm not so sure. :-(
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
but once they got a good market share and user appreciation, it became bloatware.
Some people call it "bloat", other people call it features that they asked for and find useful.
Seriously, if you want a stripped down / light-weight browser, there are other options.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You'll have to get addons for both. They want to phase out the status bar, and they figured not providing that functionality was for the best. The titlebar is part of an ongoing WONTFIX, because they think Tabs on Top deserves more love. Thankfully, tired of people's complaints, they whipped together this addon that does the trick: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/221514/ (Vista+)
Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.
By default on Windows, it's replaced by the Firefox Menu. Just right-click anywhere on the UI (besides the page) and turn the menu bar back on. You can also do this from the preferences menu inside the Firefox Menu itself.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
I know you can get an add-on to replace it.
But that requires each and every user to look for and install something that should already be there!
For the developers to take the status bar completely out... that's just ridiculous.
At the very least, put a little check box in the options page to turn it back on.
I think your desire is in the minority. Most people don't want to play around under the hood of their browser. Most people could care less. Most people want to see more facebook, foursquare, linkedin, twitter (ad naseum).... and that's exactly what they are getting with these new revs. Welcome to Web 2.0... 3.0... eh... whatever...
They want to phase out the status bar, and they figured not providing that functionality was for the best
Wow, that's simply awful. The status bar is there for a reason. Do they really want people following links with even less information than they have now? If my browser is stalling out trying to load a page, how will I know what domain to block?
Looks like Mozilla is continuing to dumb down its user interface. Is there a browser around that targets the geek market? One for those of us who want more information and more control?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Its NOT the seamonkey model; unlike opera, mozilla, seamonkey etc, it doesnt have built in mail, torrent, ftp (at least not worth mentioning), an HTTP server (opera...), newsreader, etc.
Its JUST a browser, like its always been.
And I raise a motion that all complaining that 3.0 is too slow and bloaty, should be forced to use version 1.0 or 1.5 or 2.0, and see just how slow they really are when used with modern expectations of heavy duty JS, 30 some tabs, and zillions of extensions. I seem to recall an AWFUL lot of complaining from days of yore about 1.0 and 1.5's memory usage and bloat.
What is it they say, "the grass is always greener..."?
Bring back the god damn status bar. Change for change's sake is never a good idea.
That's a show stopper for me.
Same here for quite a while - fortunately Status-4-Evar plugin showed up to remedy that particular ill.
Chrome lacks a status bar only when the status bar would be empty. As soon as there is something to put in it, it appears.
Mouse-over a link, and it shows you the target. Click a link, and it tells you what the progress is, until it's finished. Then the status bar disappears again.
I was forced to use 2.0 on certain machines until a few months ago, and frankly it can't handle the modern Internet.