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Firefox 5 Details: Sharing, Home Tab, PDF Viewer
An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 4 may be still new, but Firefox 5 is already being prepared by Mozilla. At least the UI features have been laid out by the Mozilla team — there are nine new features in total. There are some features that are replicating Chrome functionality (tab multi-select or an integrated PDF viewer that will also extend to other file formats), but there are completely new features such as tab web apps, an identity manager a home tab that replaces the home button as well as a social sharing feature that is integrated in the URL bar and enables users to post directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages."
Facebook? Twitter? Since when did Mozilla integrate commercial websites into their browser? Since integrating the Google search engine? Since AOL? This is why Netscape and Mozilla were originally kept separate. To keep the commercial bloat in the Netscape browser and allow the community to use Mozilla.
I want an in-browser PDF viewer, because to me PDFs I find online are just an alternative to an HTML page with the same information. That's not what PDFs are supposed to be for, but many web developers use them as such.
A built-in viewer would likely load much faster than an external plugin, too. So why does anyone not want an in-browser PDF viewer?
We need a security and functionality oriented fork ASAP. Performance matters also.
Nobody asked for changes to the interface. The interface to Firefox was never broken and nobody complained about it.
Nobody asked for the "awesome bar" or whatever the hell that is. If it improves productivity then fine, tabs make sense, but the majority of this shit is just gimmicks. Integrating the cloud makes sense but not when it's specifically "facebook" and "twitter", but to allow anyone to select anything and make it completely transparent and open. They are going commercial in a really bad sell out kind of way, and you can tell the developers I said it.
Ok, seriously: why do so many people harp on the "awesomebar"? I'm beginning to think it's just a strawman for some strange repulsion to Firefox, brought on by something else entirely.
Why not just take the Chromium tree and figure out how to run Firefox extensions on there and just call that Firefox? Would save time and have much better memory use and performance. Firefox is basically converging on a Chrome clone with slightly worse performance and some dumb UI hacks that will end up largely unused/abandoned (like Panorama).
Isn't all this what the extension ecosystem is for? Why would a team that already is overwhelmed by the task of testing its product incorporate MORE features to test? My main issue with Firefox right now is not a lack of Facebook integration (-_-) but the obvious memory leakage in the released FF 4 with AdBlock/NoScript, which was present through the entire last half of the beta cycle.
Mozilla has really wandered off the reservation here. I want a solid, fast browser that supports the great extensions that Mozilla didn't write, and continues to support developments in the core web standards space. If I want Chrome or Flock, I'll just download those, seriously.
I think it's because of the hubris of calling it "awesome". Some people were bound to not like it, but being told it's awesome when you don't like it makes them feel like it's being forced on them by completely out of touch developers.
Are they trying to drive me to Chrome? I don't want any of that crap.
They need to fix the massive memory leaks. I don't need any features. Spending a year making it more robust.
Right now with 4 simple tabs open(Win7-64), FF4 is consuming 650 MBs. I have to restart it every hour or two as it just keeps growing and growing.
It is my favorite browser for features, but the memory leaks are ridiculous (note the Windows build seems to leak more than Linux/Mac builds from what I read).
If FF5 adds a bunch of lame features and doesn't fix the fundamentals, I am gone.
PS: From the time I typed 650MB above till I previewed and ready to submit, FF4 memory usage as increased to 725 MB...
I'm sticking with Firefox 3.6x for as long as possible - it's very stable and runs well.
Firefox is making many of same mistakes Netscape did by trying to be everything to everyone.
On a related topic, the strong push to integrate social networking and apps into upcoming versions of the browser makes me wonder if Facebook is heavily influencing the development of Firefox these days.
Ron
I don't, because it will either be an Adobe plugin, hence slow and a memory hog, or it will be written from scratch, hence not fully compatible and probably slow as well. Add to the mix all the potential security issues with active content in PDF documents. I disable all of it in Adobe Reader, now I'll have to disable it in Firefox as well.
PDFs should be treated like executables or archive files - saved to disk.
Other than that, I really don't understand why Firefox has to be aping Chrome instead of going its own way. What's wrong with the top-level menu that it had to be replaced with a single, hierarchical menu that's always harder to navigate? What was wrong with the well-established, intuitive tabbed interface metaphor, which Chrome managed to break so badly by disconnecting the tabs from their content?
And really, websites will be putting items on the tab context menus? Advertisers are already salivating. Good luck finding the "Close tab" command among fifty links to commercials.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
All new features in firefox should be implemented as extensions. That is all.
Yes. I'd rather have an external app. Mostly because adobe seems to think that 'active' elements inside pdf's are a brilliant plan. This just makes malware injections that much easier.
Om, nomnomnom...
When Mozilla 5's codebase got too unwieldy, they rebooted it for what we now call SeaMonkey. When what would later be called SeaMonkey's codebase got too unwieldy, they rebooted it for what we now call Firefox. Is it perhaps time for another reboot?
The backend work done for FF4 is good and much appreciated, but the it sounds like the team is resting on its laurels again: it thinks the work on the basics is done. Standards support is still not where it needs to be, yet they're working on fluff like site-specific browsers. It sounds like it's time for someone to go back to the basics again: just a browser in the core, with a good extension model for people to hack all these things into for people who actually want them.
For me, yes, I would rather have an external app. Specifically, I want PDFs to download and NOT open automatically. I want them to go to my downloads folder and I will open them at my own discretion. If I want to open it instantly after downloading, I can use the browser's download manager to open it with an extra click.
Why, you ask? Because I am one of those who still feels that PDFs are not fit for human consumption. Outside of pre-press and raster image printing work, PDF is a terrible file format. In their lust to own as much of the computing market as possible, Adobe has pushed PDF well beyond its original, intended use and into areas that are better served by plain text, RTF or HTML pages. Hell, I loathe the Word .doc format, but I find it preferable to PDF.
The link above gives more reasons for why I don't want to deal with PDFs unless I have to. And that article is eight years old; things have only gotten worse since. I sure don't want them loading automatically in my browser.
:q!
So what are you going to do, switch to Chrome 10?