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A Few Improvements for Firefox's Android UI
The latest Firefox for Android nightly build now features a number of changes to the UI with the goals of "...keeping a clear distinction between different types of tabs; making better use of the screen real estate on different form-factors and orientations; and being more compliant with Android’s design language. ... the tabs tray is now divided into sections for each type of tab — regular, private, and remote — so that you always keep things separate and organized. Furthermore, once you select a private tab, the main toolbar becomes dark as a clear sign that you're in a different browsing mode. ... We now use a horizontal scrolling tabs tray whenever it improves our use of the screen space. This is achieved with a TwoWayView ... We've recently landed a new skin for Firefox for Android that is more aligned with Android's Holo design language. Almost all textures and gradients were replaced by flat colors giving a much lighter feel to the browser."
Firefox for Android was important when it was first envisioned because the default browser for Android sucked. Today the default browser is Chrome and its much, much, more usable. About the only thing I think Firefox is better than the stock Android browser (Chrome) is that you can get reliable adblock working for it, something you can't do (or at least couldn't do) with the stock browser.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Give Mozilla credit man?
They are improving it vastly as Firefox 3.6 was beh and 4.0 was frankly aweful. The mobile versions for Android 2.x were terrible too. But that is not the case anymore. So much so I find myself starting to use it again in a non irritational like way and even like it.
I think one browser engine is harmful and I do not care if it is better. Ie 6 was far better than Netscape and even Mozilla 1.2 sadly and people forget that.
I do not want a webkit future no more than I wanted a IE 6 only future a decade ago. Website owners have to use all sorts of hacks with -webkit prefixes and strange relatie:position bugs that do not exist in IE nor Firefox. Many bash IE and Firefox for not being -webkit standard while ignoring W3C standards. It is not nearly as bad as it was but it is going in that direction as sites like HTML5test.com rush to benchmark futures that only exist in webkit to prove that any other browser sucks which are not even part of the W3C standard.
http://saveie6.com/
The start page showing the browser history was a deal breaker. Did they get rid of that?
Chrome for Android is still only available for Android versions greater than 4.0, which excludes about 60% of all Android users, while Firefox is available to Android 2.2+, which constitutes about 98% of all Android users (source)
Firefox for Android was important when it was first envisioned because the default browser for Android sucked. Today the default browser is Chrome and its much, much, more usable. About the only thing I think Firefox is better than the stock Android browser (Chrome) is that you can get reliable adblock working for it, something you can't do (or at least couldn't do) with the stock browser.
Adblock and Orbot (Tor) without root access are pretty good reasons why some people use it.
Perhaps the most important differentiator is one you don't see: putting user privacy first.
In the last 2 months the other browsers kind of pooped out and stopped supporting Flash, everyone has been flooding over to Firefox.
Firefox has an opportunity to take that second place to chrome, take over Dolphin browsers spot.
So that's why you see all this development for it all of a sudden.
I don't have much to say about the mobile browser; I don't really use a mobile browser all that much and Dolphin works fine for what I need.
But when I clicked on the links in the summary, much to my dismay, I find that the Firefox team is embarking on some grand plan to have a unified look and feel across all platforms. They call it Project Kilimanjaro or some such thing. And by that I mean eschewing any attempt to look like it belongs on a platform, and to go its own way, Google Chrome-style. Bad enough that Gnome thinks it is an operating system, but now Firefox? I just want a browser that fits with my desktop theme, and looks like a normal app. I don't need an "experience."
I don't get it. Maybe I'm too old. I'm totally happy with the way Firefox looks and works with my GTK theme extension that I've kept alive for the last few firefox versions (well I'm on 10ESR right now). And tabs on top never made sense to me. When a tab is up that doesn't have a url bar or a search box, how do do a search? With tabs on bottom, I just hit the search bar, type, hit alt-enter, and a new tab with my results shows up, no matter what my current tab looks like.
Anyway, it seems like we're regressing in terms of UI design. I guess years of research (not to mention that milions of people have learned things a certain way) doesn't mean much.
I've found Chrome offers no benefits over the latest versions of Firefox. At all. In fact, Firefox feels noticeably faster, more responsive, more extensible, and doesn't feel like a skeleton still waiting to be filled. It also feels like it's moving more quickly, somehow.
I think it's really down to perception more than anything. I've heard a lot of people badmouth Firefox lately simply because it's Firefox, and praise Chrome simply because it's Chrome.
Sounds about right to me. Generally, people still want Google to annihilate any competition because thats their browser of choice and again, generally, people want to validate their choice as correct by making it look like at the only proper choice. /me generalizes a lot, but really, that's how it is.
Firefox's almost completely automatic syncing feature has saved my ass more than once. That's why.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The problem with trident being the only browser engine wasn't just the single, but also that the sole developer was anti web browsers as a platform.
google wants the web to be the way to go, they'd prefer to not pay royalties to other people, but they're entire business is about a strong web, the opposite of Microsoft's vision, so I don't think it'd be the end.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
With Chrome, your sync data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy which basically means they can plunder it any way they feel like to serve you ads.
There's more than one set of keys. This blog different sync solutions in browsers fairly well and describes what Firefox does.
Thats because web designers use webkit CSS and not the W3c one whenever it detects a small screen.
Perhaps part of it is because the effects needed to make the UI that users of devices with a small screen expect aren't in the latest W3C Recommendation, and the names of those effects differ between WebKit and Gecko by the prefix.