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Firefox 4 Beta 9 Out, Now With IndexedDB and Tabs On Titlebar
surveyork writes "''Mozilla today officially released Firefox 4 Beta 9 and it's a big improvement over previous betas and a parsec beyond the Firefox 3.6.x experience. At this stage, after months of development, Mozilla developers are clearly nearing the end of this development marathon.' After Firefox beta 9, a beta 10 and a single RC are scheduled (this road map can change, of course). The main features of Firefox beta 9 are IndexedDB and tabs on titlebar (just like Chrome and Opera). IndexedDB allows sites to store data on your computer (with your prior authorization). Tabs on titlebar is self-explanatory. Old-schoolers can always turn on the 'show menu bar' to get their familiar GUI back. Oh, and Fx beta 9 is fast and starts fast. Firefox beta 9 available here and in lots of official mirrors."
http://mirror3.mirrors.tds.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9 hasn't been hammered yet...
Yes, although it's moved to a more logical spot (the URL bar)
The plan you're talking about is Mozilla's post Firefox 4 plan.
Remember last year when Mozilla said they were moving away from big releases and adopting a fast release cycle with mixed bug fixes and new features? Whatever happened to that plan?
The plan is to do that after 4.0. 4.0 was always planned to be a *big* release, with tons of new features. Post-4.0, they will switch to the model you mentioned, of more rapid and incremental releases, sort of like Chrome.
I've actually found the lack of the status bar quite nice. I only ever used it to see the target link and change NoScript settings. I'm liking the former being done in the remainder of the location bar, and NoScript is handled well through the context menu.
there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back
bite my glorious golden ass.
Yes.
Right click the panel in which the address bar sits, Customize, then drag whatever you want (such as Activity Indicator) to the Status Bar, then press OK.
Personally I find the status bar to be annoying and like the new design, however.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
As always, we've packaged it for portable use (USB, cloud drive, etc) which also lets you try it out right on your desktop without installing it and impacting your local Firefox install at all.
http://portableapps.com/news/2011-01-14_-_firefox_portable_4.0_beta_9
And it really is noticeably faster than previous released.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Wrong. I'm quite happy to have the status bar gone/relocated.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Correction: some people hated and still hate it. For the rest is a godsend.
If I need more viewing space, I just press F11.
1) You can hide it with two mouse clicks in the current version.
2) It's impossible to get in the new version.
Which of those options makes any sense to you...?
No sig today...
As long as Chrome lacks NoScript, there will continue to be a reason for Firefox. Fix that dealbreaker, and all of the rest is negotiable.
It does have a functionality that works EXACTLY like NoScript. Are you guys even trying?
Menu > Options > Under the Hood > Content Settings > JavaScript > Do not allow any site to run JavaScript
Now when you visit a site that needs JS, you have a "JS is needed" little icon right on the address bar. Click it, and you can whitelist that site for now, or for the future as well.
Under the same options dialog above you can do the same for plugins as well, like Flash.
The issue with the awesome bar was never the functionality, it was the interface. Without the oldbar plugin, the awesome bar takes up way too much vertical screen space to be useful. The extra whitespace surrounding the URLs in the list was completely unnecessary, ugly, and a pain in the ass. Also, awesome bar was (and still is) a stupid name.
People wouldn't have rebelled as much against a slight change in functionality (as you said, it proved to be useful). But massive UI changes for no real reason are going to cause fits for people as anal retentive as most /. readers.