
Firefox 4 Beta 1 Released - ssclafani
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
======
luigi
The big deal with Firefox 4 is support for Jetpack:

<https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/>

Like with Chrome, and more recently Safari, we can now write Firefox
extensions using HTML/CSS/Javascript.

~~~
natmaster
My obligatory <http://xkcd.com/386/>

Jetpack has been around since May 20, 2009 [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/12025/version...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/12025/versions)

What's new in Firefox 4 is that it is integrated instead of being an
extension.

~~~
luigi
That's what I meant by "support" for Jetpack. We as developers can comfortably
build extensions for it, knowing that it'll have a broad user base.

I didn't say "introduction" of Jetpack.

------
FiReaNG3L
I really dislike the orange thing at the top with the menu being gone - if at
least you could somehow access the said menu by the orange tab, it would make
sense. Right now, I predict a lot of confused users.

Oh you want to change X? Click show menu bar on the orange thing! Notice the
menu? Notice that your orange bar disappeared? Wonder how to get it back? It's
in view, uncheck menu bar!

So NOT intuitive.

Also, their feedback thing was down when I tried to report this :(

------
tdoggette
The single feature that forever ties me to Chrome is _tabs on top_.

On top of the address bar isn't the point. It's a nice touch that emphasizes
the metaphor for "real" tabs, like on a paper folder, but it doesn't have the
huge usability bonus of Chrome's implementation.

The important thing is that in Chrome, the tabs are on the _very top pixel_ of
the screen (in Windows or a Linux UI with no top bar). Since I browse with a
hand on the mouse, this means that I can switch between tabs by chucking the
pointer at the top of the screen and scrubbing left and right, instead of
having to pay attention to vertical alignment.

<http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html>

~~~
smackfu
OTOH, now with larger and larger monitors, how many people really browse full-
screen? If you aren't full-screen, Fitts law doesn't help.

~~~
chadgeidel
I never browsed full-screen because it's too "wide" but with Windows 7's new
"snap" feature ([http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
US/windows7/products/feature...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-
US/windows7/products/features/snap)), I can now have 2 browsers comfortably
side by side. Helpful tip - it won't "snap" to the inside edge of a multi-
monitor setup using the mouse, but Win+<arrow key> works (that's the keyboard
shortcut for "snap").

I realize that this feature has been in tiling window managers for quite some
time, it's just nice to have it in Windows now.

------
angrycoder
Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or this thing is now faster at
rendering HTML than chrome.

~~~
mfukar
Any chance you can provide some measurements or link relevant data in an
article, perhaps?

------
grk
One thing I noticed: it now starts a separate app for running flash:
<http://grab.by/5iXg>

I guess they are going to hide it before FF4 comes out of beta. You can force
quit the bottom firefox and the misbehaving flash object will die:
<http://grab.by/5iXj>

------
dieterrams
View > Toolbars to enable Tabs on Top on the Mac. Unfortunately, the current
implementation looks terrible, as they're the same "underside" tabs as before,
only now they're between the window controls and the toolbar. (They note that
you should wait in Known Issues, so this should get better.)

They also need to adopt something like Safari's URL-field-as-progress-
indicator, or at least an animating graphic to indicate loading. Simply
switching the refresh button to an 'X' is way too subtle, and at first I
didn't think it was actually loading anything.

Edit: Oh, that's weird. I fired it up again and saw the stopwatch graphic and
other loading indicators. Now I'm wondering if these didn't work the first
time around, or if I just wasn't paying attention to them given that I'm
habituated to Safari's indicators.

~~~
uggedal
I'm sure they will fix the tab style issues in OS X before release:

"OSX and Linux Themes: The new interface described above will soon be
available for Mac and Linux users."

from <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/>

------
tbrooks
Noticeably faster that 3.6.6, except none of my extensions work.

FF4b1 disabled: 1 Password, Delicious Bookmarks, Firebug, Greasemonkey, Google
Toolbar, Stylish, YSlow and others...

~~~
cryptoz
Maybe it's just faster because none of your extensions are running? The ones
you listed sound like they probably use lots of CPU time and memory, and if
they are disabled I'm sure FF runs much faster / lighter.

~~~
natmaster
I can't comment on how much the extensions might have affected things, but
startup time was significantly improved:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improv...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improvements)

~~~
seunosewa
Same reason.

------
archangel_one
Looks more "Windows 7"-like on here, in that there's more of that smudgy glass
effect. Looks prettier when active I think, although when not the glass
becomes more transparent and since there's so much of it, toolbars from
applications underneath it seem to show through a lot, which creates a lot of
visual noise. That's not entirely Firefox's fault, and it looks okay when it
has focus, so it could be worse.

Seems faster to start, although it's disabled every addon I had before, so
hardly a fair test.

In general it seems to be more like Chrome. Which I think is probably a good
thing - if Chrome has demonstrated a better way to do things, I don't have a
problem with Firefox following their lead.

------
shortformblog
Still annoyed that I can't drag an image from Firefox to Photoshop via the OSX
dock, despite the fact that it's been a known bug for ages.

Otherwise, it does feel faster, though I find it funny that Firebug currently
doesn't work even though it's prominently listed as one of their main
developer tools.

They worked really hard on making the add-on interface more intuitive and
cleaner, but really the thing everyone wants is better memory management.

------
thegyppo
Beta is incredibly faster for me. Roughly takes around 1 sec to fire up,
Chrome still "feels" faster & much more nimble.

It really feels like Mozilla is playing catch up now, trying to take things
back to basics & fix some core issues (like startup times, plugins slowing
things down, JS performance & so on).

Kudos to Google for giving the browser that once we all used something to
aspire to.

------
CoryMathews
hum...

Sometimes the min/max/close buttons do not appear. Making me have to go to the
"firefox" button and hit exit.

Why does the "firefox" button take up all that space? If they are going to
copy Opera and add the "firefox" button, then copy Opera and make it look
good. (talking about maximized window)

Moving the tabs is still really bad. Chrome and Opera both have really smooth
transitions and opera even adds nice preview windows.

On the flip side

It feels much more responsive. I don't care about the actual numbers just the
feel.

The new addon manager that they copied from chrome looks much better, then the
previous and even chromes.

The loading circle on the tabs is really nice touch. Its nice being able to
see how far along a tab is in its loading phase. This is a feature I see all
browsers copying very soon.

------
natmaster
Lots of cool stuff to come in the next beta as well:

Electrolysis (even more process seperation) merged with trunk recently:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=571166>

Hardware accelerated graphics should be turned on by default soon as well.

And of course, the continued iteration of the new theme, many platform
featured to be added...

~~~
pavs
I want to know if Taskfox makes the final cut:
[http://geektechnica.com/2010/06/5-exciting-changes-coming-
to...](http://geektechnica.com/2010/06/5-exciting-changes-coming-to-
firefox-4/)

------
d0m
Two years ago I really would have love this firefox and I'd have talk to
everyone about it. However, now that I'm used to chrome, it kind of look "big"
and "sad". Maybe it's the brown/gray color at the top and the fact that when I
type g it doesn't automatically complete for gmail.com or n for news.ycomb...
and that tab aren't as movable as chrome.

~~~
robin_reala
The autocomplete learns based on your past browsing habits. Give it some time
and it’ll get there.

~~~
d0m
I know but this isn't exactly the same. On firefox, it suggests idea with a
dropdown.. on chrome, it autocompletes them. Also, if it's not found, it
automatically search on google.. and by pressing [tab], you can search
directly from a known site. That's 3 features I _really_ use.

~~~
mbrubeck
To get autocomplete in Firefox, go to about:config, search for "autofill" and
set browser.urlbar.autofill to "true".

------
natmaster
Really nice summary of the features in the beta, and coming soon to Firefox 4:
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/technology/>

------
EricBurnett
When I look through the new features spotlighted (<http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/firefox/beta/features/>), it seems to me that the vast majority are already
in Chrome, some copied directly from it (tabs on top).

I'm genuinely curious why that is. Options I can think of are a) they are
spotlighting features that take away a perceived edge that Chrome has, b) they
really are playing feature-catch-up and letting other browsers determine the
roadmap, or c) some features (the web console?) are far more ambitious than
I've given them credit for.

Can anyone shed some light on what is really going on here?

~~~
natmaster
Are you trolling?

The three highlighted features are 'new addons manager,' webm support, and
fixing the :visited privacy issue. NONE of these are in any released Chrome,
although the early early preview of Chrome 6 has WebM support.

Of the three UI elements highlighted, tabs on top is the only one in Chrome
(or did I miss the Chrome button in some developer preview?).

~~~
EricBurnett
From my view, the highest highlighted feature was the tabs, followed by the 3
you mention. I counted WebM as Chrome, given that it is Google's codec, but
I'm not sure its in Chrome 5 either :(.

Looking further down, I was thinking that WebSockets, Indexed DB, Crash
Protection, and the key feature of JetPack (Add-Ons not requiring restart)
were all pioneered by Chrome. That leaves The Web Console, which I have not
yet tried so can't really comment on either way, and the two givens (HTML5 and
CSS3). To my eyes this seemed odd. But I take it you disagree?

~~~
natmaster
Ok, if you want to know all the features, I think the best way is to read
this: <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/technology>, and then try it
out to get a feel for all the UI changes.

According to wikipedia, Chrome 5 does not support WebM:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_%28browser%29>

WebSockets: Yay, you're finally right, Chrome did pioneer WebSockets. Sadly,
it did not update its implementation to reflect the changes to the standard
based on feedback from the numerous other browser vendors that actually
implemented it but chose not to release it because of it volatility.

IndexedDB: Google was actually pushing for Web SQL Database, which got
rejected. Learn more here: [http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-
html5-database-apis-...](http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond-
html5-database-apis-and-the-road-to-indexeddb/comment-page-1/)

Crash Protection: IE8 was the first browser with this feature.

Jetpack: Ok, this one is important right? So for bonus points, let's look at
the first jetpack release: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/12025/version...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/12025/versions/) (scroll the to bottom: May 20, 2009)

Now for Google's launch of their great extensions platform:
<http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/08/chrome-extensions-live/> (December 08,
2009). Darn, guess Google stole that one from Mozilla's playbook (and yet,
still no powerful extensions :().

WebConsole: Everyone and their mom has been using Firebug since the dawn of
time. Chrome wasn't even an inkling in Google's eye then.

HTML5: Firefox 4 is STILL the only browser to support HTML 5 parsing. Previous
versions of course supported other features such as video and audio, but since
you didn't go into details here, I'll leave it at that.

CSS3: No details again? Ok, well rounded corners has been in Firefox so long I
can't even remember (1.5 or 2?). Lots of these features were around before
Chrome existed. But no more for this since you only mentioned it in passing.

Call me a fool for taking the bait (<http://xkcd.com/386/>), but with all due
respect please stop trolling, and learn about what you're talking about before
you speak.

~~~
aboodman
You are comparing the first mass-market release of Chrome extensions with the
first alpha release of Jetpack, which isn't fair. A better comparison would be
the first dev channel release of Chrome with support for extensions. That was
May 14 2009:

[http://news.cnet.com/chrome-extensions-draw-near-but-
advance...](http://news.cnet.com/chrome-extensions-draw-near-but-advanced-
html-5-features-recede/)

... which is slightly before the first Jetpack alpha which was May 20 2009.

In any case, the issues that both extension systems try to address have been
well-known for some time. It isn't surprising that multiple people came up
with similar ideas on how to fix them.

 _ninja edit: Got timelines mixed up first time 'round_

~~~
natmaster
Interesting catch. Reminds me of Mercurial and Git births (in that they both
were independently created around the same time to solve the same problem).

