Firefox 4

[MYstIC G]

It's out. First impressions?

 

[MYstIC G]

Well since I'm guessing it's just me using it at the moment, it's a lot faster moving between pages. The Pinned tabs are quite good but need tweaking, i.e. if I pin FH and click another bookmark it will open in a new tab and keep FH but if I click FH in another tab it doesn't switch me back to the pin which just seems illogical.

 

[Tuthmes]

Thus far it rawks. As someone mentioned on a Dutch forum; IE, FF and Chrome (Opera is solid aswell imho) all brought a good browser at roughly the same time. FF wins because of the addons though!

 

[Embattle]

If you use addons

 

[Zenith.UK]

Well done Mozilla, I'm seriously considering dropping Firefox for the first time EVER.

UI changes
==========
1st impression off the cuff... what the fuck have they done with the UI?!?!?
No apparent address bar or search box, the tabs are above the bookmarks and all the menu options are rolled up into one button. It took a bit of time to get everything showing and back where I want it to be.
I found out what it was... I disable the navigation toolbar and move all the browsing elements to the menu bar in previous versions. It seems that having an existing profile could be a problem.

Fonts are thinner and harder to read.
NOT liking the font rendering at all. In the end I had to disable hardware acceleration to get text back to normal.
Tools > Options > Advanced > General tab > untick "Use hardware acceleration..."

Not liking the way add-on management opens a new window and fills the whole screen. It's clearly gone to the "big and bubbly" UI camp which is unfortunately the way most interfaces are going lately due to touchscreen devices.

Where's my status bar gone?
Status-4-evar brought it back, but I shouldn't have to rely on a 3rd party add-on to provide what has been in every version of FF prior to this. At least I can see my download, APB and Greasemonkey icons again, as well as be able to check a link by mouseover.


Add-Ons
=======
Advertising cookie opt-out 1.2 gone
Switched to Beef TACO 1.3.3

Mouse Gestures Redux gone
Switched to Firegestures 1.6.1 but had to ditch it because it prevents me from selecting textboxes on pages. So I'm without mouse gestures and BOY am I missing them!

Past modern 0.3.10.0 theme was killed.
Not found an nice alternative so far.


Plugins
=======
Flash based image zoom on Picasa STILL not working since Mozilla broke it in 3.6.5.
This is the same on WinXP as well as Win7 so it's Firefox and/or Flash that's the problem, irrespective of OS.


It's enough to make me ditch the bitch and switch to something else, but I don't think any of the "alternatives" have all the facilities I want
(MOUSE GESTURES, Advert blocking, customisable UI, sync of bookmarks between machines). I will never use IE as a primary browser on principle. Just like I'll never buy or use Apple products (and that includes no Quicktime on my system).

 

[Ch3tan]

It's still not as fast as chrome for me. So it's not getting used.

 

[Helme]

I'm liking it, especially the UI changes that Zenith seems to hate. I never really understood why we wasted a perfectly good top bar for before, putting the tabs there gives more room to browse it almost feels like I got a bigger screen.

It's significantly faster than FF3 as well which is a plus, my only real complaint so far is that the keyboard shortcut to select the searchengine bar seems to have changed from Ctrl-E to something I don't know and haven't bothered to figure out

 

[Embattle]

It's still not as fast as chrome for me. So it's not getting used.

I'll probably use Chrome again once they give you an ability to relocate temp internet files.

 

[Ch3tan]

As for the UI changes, I'm going to disagree with Zenith, I've always had my FF set up as minimalist as possible - it's why I love Chrome's standard interface.

 

[Talyn]

Literally just installed it, been using it for all of 3 mins, and already I'm impressed. It's quick, I love the App Tab wotsit thing (Got 5 of 'em already), and now I'm gonna find out what else I can fiddle with...

 

[Ctuchik]

It's still not as fast as chrome for me. So it's not getting used.

Nope, but i'm almost at the point of ditching chrome here. I cant get a proper toolbar in chrome and i HATE it. All that stuff is hidden away in that wrench thingy....

Chrome is a LOT faster then FF but at least FF is easy to use.

 

[MYstIC G]

UI changes
==========
1st impression off the cuff... what the fuck have they done with the UI?!?!?
No apparent address bar or search box, the tabs are above the bookmarks and all the menu options are rolled up into one button. It took a bit of time to get everything showing and back where I want it to be.
I found out what it was... I disable the navigation toolbar and move all the browsing elements to the menu bar in previous versions. It seems that having an existing profile could be a problem.

I found that resetting the toolbar and then putting things how you want them (old style or new style) worked best here. My least favourite is the "addon bar" at the moment. I used to have adblock, greasemonkey and nonamescript in my status bar so they could be quickly disabled. They're technically still where they were but the rest of the space is completely wasted.

 

[MYstIC G]

Chrome is a LOT faster then FF but at least FF is easy to use.

I don't think it is now. Loading time Chrome still beats Firefox like a bitch but I'm finding general browsing nippier in Firefox 4 now tbh.

 

[dysfunction]

I don't think it is now. Loading time Chrome still beats Firefox like a bitch but I'm finding general browsing nippier in Firefox 4 now tbh.

FF4 may well be a bit nippier when browsing but I can live with that...
Startup speed is very slow in FF and because of that I'm out!

 

[MYstIC G]

Fair play, but my browser is effectively running on my PC constantly so I'd rather live with overall speed gain.

 

[old.user4556]

Fuck. It's fast isn't it? Wooosht!

 

[Deebs]

I am finding FF4 a joy to use. Memory bloat doesn't seem as bad and it certainly is a lot more responsive.

 

[Wij]

...is a lot more responsive.

Just like a new girlfriend. When you first pick them up from gym club they are excited to see you every day and can be easily assured that everything you can think of is normal and just what every other girl does. Soon though she'll be ignoring you on the sofa in front of 'Jezza' Kyle just like all the previous ones did and it'll be time to start digging a hole in the forest again.

 

[MYstIC G]

Having problems at home Wijlet?

 

[Wij]

Having problems at home Wijlet?

I can easily dig another hole you know

 

[Moriath]

bit of a pain getting to bookmarks now unless i missing something have to open more things to get to them other than that its nice

 

[MYstIC G]

bit of a pain getting to bookmarks now unless i missing something have to open more things to get to them other than that its nice

Toolbar can still be turned on and/or bookmarks button and/or sidebar, so not sure how you've got it setup amigo?

 

[DaGaffer]

OK, I've installed it and its all very nice etc. but the search bar has defaulted to google.com. How can I localise it? You used to be able to go into the "searchplugins" directory and change the URL in there, but that's all XML now and doesn't seem to be an option anymore.

 

[MYstIC G]

Mycroft Project: Google UK Search Engine Plugins - Firefox & IE8

 

[DaGaffer]

Ta.

 

[nath]

Grr. Restarted my PC with firefox open. On 3 that would always restore tabs with no hassle. This time it lost all my tabs and all my tab groups (tab panorama?).

Arse :|.

 

[Raven]

I quite like it. It looks cleaner than version 3 and is a lot faster.

 

[Zenith.UK]

I gave up and switched to Chrome about some days ago. Thankfully I found replacements for most of my plugins.

ABP for Chrome.
Keep More Opt Outs
Search box
Smooth Gestures
Xmarks Sync

Xmarks is what saved it. I already had a profile with them to keep my bookmarks sync'd across machines, so it brought in my bookmarks without a problem.

Now does anyone have any hands-on experience with LastPass? It sounds like something I've been wanting for a while (strong password generation and storage on a per site basis).

 

[Will]

I assume LastPass is a browser-plug-in password manager? I use KeePassX for a similar purpose.

 

[Zenith.UK]

I assume LastPass is a browser-plug-in password manager? I use KeePassX for a similar purpose.

I'm actually interested in Lastpass for multifactor authentication with hardware. Basically using a USB key along with the master login.