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Firefox 4 Beta 9 Out, Now With IndexedDB and Tabs On Titlebar

Posted by timothy on from the let-us-now-praise-famous-foxes dept.

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."

41 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. Status Bar??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does it have a status bar at the bottom?

    If not, then it's still EPIC FAIL.

    1. Re:Status Bar??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Browsers are going the way of minimizing the amount of space taken up by the user interface and maximizing what's available to the actual content. I think it's a good thing, especially as web pages transition from something like a post board full of stickies to having their OWN user interfaces that look odd next to the browser's. I don't see what's bad about not having a status bar.

    2. Re:Status Bar??? by IB4Student · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, although it's moved to a more logical spot (the URL bar)

    3. Re:Status Bar??? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Does it have a status bar at the bottom?

      If not, then it's still EPIC FAIL.

      The status bar is gone for good. Why? Because the developers said so, and like many other decisions, they couldn't care less what the users think and apparently have so much free time on their hands that they constantly look for ways to fix things that don't need fixing. Fortunately there's an extension that adds the status bar back in. Of course it's horrendously stupid that you now have to resort to extensions in order to get back things, like the status bar, that have existed in every browser ever made since the beginning of time. The issue here is not resistance to change. The issue here is removing functionality and actually making things less useful.

      Fortunately the stupid and pointless "Tabs on Top" and equally stupid and useless big orange Firefox button in place of the normal menu bar are both optional. However, I have a bad feeling about this, given all the other stupid changes they've made, and I wonder how long it be be until they are forced on us and we will have to rely on yet more extensions in order to have a decent browser.

    4. Re:Status Bar??? by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Additional advantage is that it squeezes even more space out of the UI, thus giving you more screen space for what really matters: the website.

    5. Re:Status Bar??? by Wallslide · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, although it's moved to a more logical spot (the URL bar)

      When I hover over a link, there's a few things I'm expecting to see. I want to see the protocol, the domain, and finally the end of the link that would have the actual page/file that the link is pointing to. When the status bar is at the top next to the URL, there isn't enough space to display all of those things. I much prefer the status information at the bottom because the available horizontal space is much larger, and there's a better chance I'll be able to see all the info I need. In that sense, I believe locating the status information at the bottom is much more logical.

    6. Re:Status Bar??? by shadowthunder · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:Status Bar??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The status bar is gone for good. Why? Because the developers said so, and like many other decisions, they couldn't care less what the users think and apparently have so much free time on their hands that they constantly look for ways to fix things that don't need fixing.

      I am a Firefox dev, and I see what you mean about the status bar - it's definitely controversial. But we definitely do care what users think. If this was a mistake, then it was a mistake made in good intentions, because we thought it would be useful to our users. We're not making a browser for ourselves, but for many millions of people.

      Again, I'm not defending this particular decision, of the status bar removal - I am personally not in favor of it.

      Overall, though, I truly believe that the features for 4.0 are ones Firefox users like - speed, HTML5 support, stability.

    8. Re:Status Bar??? by digitalchinky · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If LCD manufacturers would actually stop making 1900x600 screens then we wouldn't be having a lack of space for the status bar. (1900x600 was a random resolution plucked from my backside that highlights the stupidity of current low to mid range displays currently available)

    9. Re:Status Bar??? by gfody · · Score: 5, Informative

      there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

      --

      bite my glorious golden ass.
    10. Re:Status Bar??? by igreaterthanu · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.
    11. Re:Status Bar??? by Soukosa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you guys care so much then why not leave in an option to have everything that previous versions had to remain there as they were before? Not just the status bar but also the split home and refresh buttons and non-transparent menu and tab bars. The interface was just fine how it was before. If you want something different yourself then sure, go ahead and add options for it but don't assume your users want the same and force it on to them as well. We should have to be forced to use add-ons for this stuff either, especially considering how many times it been said that too many add-ons are the reason for the slowness and memory bloat problems the browser has.

    12. Re:Status Bar??? by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because the developers said so, and like many other decisions, they couldn't care less what the users think

      Or maybe they do care what users think, but not all users agree with you...?

      If your complaint were simply, "I don't like the design," then I think I'd say, "fair enough." But you seem to be complaining that the developers are making design decisions about the project, as though it's somehow improper. Like they're supposed to just take a vote on everything, and literally design by committee? But it's not even that, it's more like you think the developers should cede their own tastes and judgement and do things the way you would personally like them to, and if they don't, then they're committing some abusive act.

      Developers need to make decisions, and no, sometimes those decisions won't adhere exactly to your personal tastes. If you don't like the decisions, maybe you could get more involved? Or you could help to create a fork somehow? If all the users are really being alienated by these changes, then it should be possible to get a fork going. A lot of people didn't like it when Mozilla dropped the old suite, and so Seamonkey development has been going on this whole time.

    13. Re:Status Bar??? by IB4Student · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My netbook is 1024x600, and having a statusbar blocks crucial links on my homepage. I'd have to scroll down (not as fun when you don't have a scrollwheel)

    14. Re:Status Bar??? by PReDiToR · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Like this?

      Menu is TinyMenu, Back/Forward appear and disappear depending on where in the tab's history you are, the "B" is bookmarks. User agent, ABP and a few other useful plugins make FF 3.6 a firm favourite of mine for the foreseeable future.

      --

      Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
    15. Re:Status Bar??? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

      But, why remove it in the first place? For a decade or more, the status bas has been useful to check what that link you are about to click on actually points to. Removing it just opens people up to all sorts of things.

      To me, that is kinda like having a mod to my car to add back the rear view mirror. I just don't see why removing it in the first place is 'progress' ... I am beginning to fear Firefox may have jumped the shark.

      Which is annoying, because IE still sucks, Safari is annoying, and I can't even begin to care about Chrome.

      The last cool innovation in a web browser that I actually found useful was tabs. Quite sad, really.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    16. Re:Status Bar??? by Bill+Dog · · Score: 5, Funny

      I figure after home 3D flops, next they'll introduce home simulated IMAX wrap-around TV, with a 16:1 aspect ratio. Look for 1280 x 80 netbooks.

      --
      Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
    17. Re:Status Bar??? by nabsltd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It appears if you want all the other FF 4 goodness (faster Javascript, etc.), you have to live with some questionable changes to the UI.

      Would it have been so hard for the Mozilla developers to just add a config option to pick where the status bar display goes? Pretty much everybody would be happy then.

      This is a repeat of the FF 3 "Awesome Bar" disaster, which also could have been averted with a choice for the user in the form of an easy-to-find config option.

    18. Re:Status Bar??? by mqduck · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Browsers are going the way of minimizing the amount of space taken up by the user interface and maximizing what's available to the actual content.

      When web browsers were new and screen real estate was limited, that might have been a good idea. What the hell is the point of removing functionality to save a dozen or two vertical pixels today?

      --
      Property is theft.
    19. Re:Status Bar??? by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Informative

      If I need more viewing space, I just press F11.

    20. Re:Status Bar??? by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

      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...
    21. Re:Status Bar??? by Renstar · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    22. Re:Status Bar??? by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Flexibility to different needs and desires is not bloat.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
  2. Chrome... by xTantrum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just switched to Chrome from using firefox for the last what 4, 5 years? I gotta say chrome just seems to make sense. not trying to troll just saying.

    --
    $action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
  3. ... in lots of official mirrors by jackdub · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://mirror3.mirrors.tds.net/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0b9 hasn't been hammered yet...

  4. Re:I thought the final would be out now. by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

    The plan you're talking about is Mozilla's post Firefox 4 plan.

  5. Re:I thought the final would be out now. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Tabs on Titlebar Issues by asa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The trade-off is between using Aero Snap, something users do only rarely, and not repeatedly during a browser session, and benefiting from Fitts's Law as you switch between tabs, something users do all the time. The current thinking is that it's better to optimize features for the overwhelmingly common case at the expense of the exceedingly rare case.

  7. The more it copies Chrome, the less reason to use by barrkel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The more it copies Chrome, the less reason there is to use it, and more motivation to switch to Chrome instead.

    I don't even use tabs at the top; I use tree-style tabs. Hopefully they'll still work.

    In other news, I do like the status bar being visible. The primary reasons I don't use Chrome are the missing menu and status bars.

  8. Confused by Tabs on Top by harmonise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One thing that confuses me about tabs on top is that it implies that everything below the tab is associated with that tab. Ok, I get that part. I watched the video by Alex Faaborg and it makes sense.

    But I therefore expect that if I rearrange any items below the tab, such as customizing the layout by adding or removing buttons or moving the home button to the right side, or resizing the size of the address bar versus the search bar, that those changes would be limited only to that tab and be sticky for that tab. That doesn't happen and visually it's confusing. All of those elements are grouped underneath the tab and when I switch tabs, the changes are there too. Huh? It's completely counter to what I was expecting and doesn't make sense. The only thing that changes from tab to tab is the text in the address bar.

    I would think this would be very important due to the ability to save app tabs. I might want to save an app tab to a specific site and have the navigation toolbar customized a certain way just for that tab.

    Note: I'm using beta8 and haven't upgraded yet so maybe this bug has been fixed.

    --
    Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
    1. Re:Confused by Tabs on Top by shadowthunder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'll choose to not be an ass in my response, unlike the other two. I think that if I changed the layout of buttons and bars in one tab, then changed tabs and everything moved around again (back to however the new tab had things configured), it would be more confusing. This might make a little more sense for session-persistent app-tabs (I still wouldn't like it, but it would make a little more sense), but it would confuse the hell out of me when I'm switching tabs during a regular session. Also, how often do need to change your tried-and-true, personalized button layout for one site? What would make you do that?

  9. Re:Still busted by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now up to Firefox 4.0b9 and STILL you can't watch Flash videos with 64-bit Flash on 64-bit Firefox on Mac OS X. It's been two or three betas now since they broke this, and they just refuse to fix it..

    In November 2010 they fixed a bug that was originally submitted in November 2000. That's Not a typo. 10 years ago. So just get in line and wait your turn.

  10. Firefox Portable 4.0 Beta 9 - Easy Way To Try It by CritterNYC · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  11. Why the need to become other browsers? by KarlIsNotMyName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm using Firefox because I prefer it over Chrome and such. I don't want the layout changed every major release.

    --
    We are all God's parents.
  12. Re:What about those that don't USE titlebars? by EvanED · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Changing the default behavior is always bad. Always.

    If that were true then you'd turn on the computer and get "C:\>" (or "$" as appropriate). Clearly absolutes are not so absolute.

  13. Tabs in the title bar are a disgrace. by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What a complete and utter disconnection between summary and data, who the hell made this UI decision?

    Seriously now, try to imagine a proper filing cabinet with the files containing the data, only the labels per file are 4" higher than each file, with stuff inbetween obfuscating and disconnecting the information?
    Thank christ this stupid, stupid option is able to be disabled.
    Furthermore, the status bar being on the address bar - ok I tried to like it, I tried not to be 'backwards' and old fasioned (as I am with classic UI in Windows) but I just can't do it, I like to see a huge, giant URL down the bottom - I want to see the full thing incase it contains something dodgy. I'm a tech, I need to know what I'm clicking - I find it an utterly stupid design decision.

    Furthermore the performance is better but hardly sufficient, the performance is the only thing chrome has going for it in my opinion, sorry but I'm not going to bow down and love it just because it's googles product. Firefox has and continues to serve all I need in a browser, even then with a couple of addons ("tabs menu" - "tab mix plus" etc)
    I will continue to adjust FF4, FF5, FF6 to look like FF3. (Oh and I'm not too old fasioned, the awesome bar is bloody incredible)

    ALL firefox needs, the ONLY thing it needs in my opinion is speed, I have a quad core 64bit machine with 6gb of ram, I browse between 3 and 18 hours a day,.. I absoloutely don't care how much resources my browser takes, I just want the best performance possible, period.
    Fuck copying Chrome, ugh - don't latch on to fads which are stupid but popular (see: white plugs on everything after the ipod, see: fucking glossy screens on laptops)

  14. Re:The more it copies Chrome, the less reason to u by macshit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not really true. There are tons of little detail differences that favor FF over chrome.

    It's a good thing that they're copying each others' best ideas; they're both still vastly different implementations, produced by very different teams, with different priorities, and will always have many differences.

    --
    We live, as we dream -- alone....
  15. Re:Tabs on Titlebar Issues by aitan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Correction: some people hated and still hate it. For the rest is a godsend.

  16. It's already easy to hide the status... by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The status bar can be hidden with two mouse clicks. Were people really having so much trouble with the "View->Status bar" option that the devs needed to take matters into their own hands?

    Worse, they knew it was controversial and was going to piss off a lot of people but they did it anyway.

    --
    No sig today...
  17. Re:The more it copies Chrome, the less reason to u by suv4x4 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  18. Disagree by bcore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I disagree.

    Turn your argument on its head: If the controls are above the tabs, that seems to imply that they apply to all tabs. Does that mean that if I click "reload", all tabs should be reloaded? If I enter a new URL, should all tabs go there, since the URL bar is outside the tabs as well?

    I would argue that actually interacting with controls is far more important than rearranging them, so their placement should agree with the latter, not the former.