

Firefox 4 RC now available - jlongster
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/03/09/mozilla-firefox-4-release-candidate-for-windows-mac-and-linux-now-available/

======
Samuel_Michon
I'm used to Firefox 3.6 on Win7. There are a few reasons why it's my go-to
browser when I'm using Windows:

1) Plug-ins like Firebug, web dev toolbar, greasemonkey, and resizeable
textarea

2) Tabs are well-placed and readable, and you can simply double-click next to
tabs to open a new tab

3) A proper status bar that's always visible

4) A full menu bar

5) No Adobe Flash built-in

I've installed Firefox 4 RC. The colors are loud. Tabs are on top, tab text is
illegible, and double-clicking next to tabs doesn't create a new tab (it
simply resizes the browser window). The status bar and the menu bar are gone.
I couldn't even find Firebug and Greasemonkey.

Luckily, a few of these unfortunate decisions can be reversed. Apparently, you
can turn on an "add-on bar" to show the controls for Firebug and Greasemonkey.
You can also opt for a top menu bar, which has the added benefit that it re-
enables the "double-click to create new tab" behavior.

IMHO, the new UI sucks balls. If Mozilla wanted to copy Chrome/Safari's UI,
they've succeeded.

EDIT: After viewing some of my websites in Firefox 4, I must say that CSS3 and
text rendering is _a lot_ better than in FF 3.6. From what I can tell, it's on
par with Chrome. I just wish it didn't have its UI as well.

~~~
yesimahuman
> If Mozilla wanted to copy Chrome/Safari's UI, they've succeeded

They haven't succeeded because they still see the need for both a search box
and an address box and the tabs don't close right under where the last close
button was (my biggest gripes).

~~~
alexqgb
The nice thing about the separate search box is the corresponding list of
available search engines.

~~~
albedoa
Can you explain what's nice about that (compared to alternatives)?

~~~
shrikant
1\. I can drop-down the list of available search engines and see what's
available, without having to remember any key-words to do the searches.

2\. (and this is the killer feature for me) If a particular search engine is
selected (say, IMDB), I can right-click on any word on a page, and one of the
context menu options is "Search IMDB for <selection>..."

Also, horizontal real-estate is not much of a concern on a wide-screen monitor
- how much of the URL would I really want to see..?

------
tshtf
Serious question here... I now use Chrome, my parents use Chrome, and almost
everyone I know has converted. Most HN users seem to use it too:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2105954>.

Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?

~~~
azakai
> Is there anything compelling in Firefox 4 to get excited about?

Sure! Here are some things I personally find exciting about FF4. I'm not
saying everyone should find them exciting, they are just my personal opinion:

* FF4 is the only web browser to combine a tracing JIT with a method JIT for JavaScript. Some websites run amazingly fast with that. See the mozilla demos site for examples.

* IE9 has great hardware acceleration on Windows (but JS engine is inferior to FF4 and Chrome), while Chrome has a great JS engine (but hardware acceleration on Windows is inferior to FF4 and IE9), while FF4 is the only browser to have both great hardware acceleration on Windows + a great JS engine.

* Firefox is the only major browser that is 100% open source. (Chrome isn't open source, it bundles closed-source Flash and a PDF viewer as well as other stuff. Chromium is open source, but the vast majority of Chrome/Chromium users use Chrome.) Firefox is also developed in the open source way, completely in the open, unlike any other browser (including Chromium, where a lot of development is behind closed doors, then 'dropped' into the open - e.g., CrankShaft).

* Almost the same codebase used on desktop and mobile (mobile FF4 will hit RC very soon too). Opera has a mobile version, and Safari and IE have mobile versions too, but they are quite distinct. Firefox brings the mobile and desktop versions closer than those. Among the benefits is you can view desktop versions of websites in FF4 mobile very well. (Of course you generally want mobile versions of websites - but now and then, you do want a desktop version, especially on a tablet.)

~~~
digitalinfinity
Sorry- I'm curious- why do you think IE9's JS engine is inferior to
FF4/Chrome?

~~~
BrendanEich
Try any benchmark other than SunSpider.

~~~
yaovi
Word!!!

------
marcamillion
Wow...I must say...as someone that abandoned FF for Chrome, FF4 feels SOOO
much faster and cleaner than 3.6.

Will definitely continue testing it out.

------
mrinterweb
One thing that FF3.x has had on chrome is total memory footprint. About a
month ago, when I was testing FF4, I noticed that the memory usage for FF4 and
Chrome were pretty close. I personally think Chrome consumes a bit too much
memory for my liking, and I was disappointed to see FF4 following suit. Has
anyone noticed if the new RC is more conservative with its memory consumption?

~~~
scott_s
Keep two things in mind: virtual memory usage is not the same as physical
memory usage; an application consuming more memory only matters if you can
notice performance degradation elsewhere in your system.

~~~
mrinterweb
I usually only pay attention to real memory. I also notice when my real memory
runs out or real memory, my machine immediately start hitting swap. I guess 4
gigs is just not enough anymore.

This is what I use to measure what I believe to be real memory usage for
Chromium: <https://gist.github.com/864606>

~~~
scott_s
I actually don't think that's accurate, since it naively adds up the resident
set size for each Chromium thread. The problem is that there is probably a lot
of shared pages among those threads - the Chromium runtime and such. I think -
but I'm not sure - that the resident set size _includes_ pages that are shared
with other threads/processes.

~~~
mrinterweb
You may be right. I get the same memory usage numbers with my Chromium memory
usage script as Chromium's "Stats for nerds", but Chromium's detailed memory
usage tool does link to a bug where it over reports its own memory usage.
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25454> I guess if even
Google can not figuring out how much memory Chromium is using, laymen, such as
myself, are not going to do much better.

~~~
scott_s
At the very least, we can provide bounds. What you and Chromium report is an
upperbound. We could provide a lowerbound defined as:

    
    
      def thread_low(t): return resident_set(t) - shared_set(t)
    
      lowerbound = sum(map(thread_low, all_threads)) + min(map(shared_set, all_threads))
    

(Forgive the Python notation, it would actually be easier to express this
using actual summations if I could draw freehand, but given that I can't, I
figure code would be clearer.)

For all threads in the process, we know that it must be solely responsible for
its resident set minus its shared set. This already is a lower bound, but it
ignores what is shared. We can increase (improve) this lowerbound a bit by
figuring out what the smallest shared set among all of the threads is. If my
thinking is correct, then we can be sure the total memory used won't be lower
than this.

------
statictype
Firefox: Chrome

Emacs: Vim

I guess different browsers for different types of people. I still use Firefox
on occasion but mostly as a runtime for Firebug. Otherwise, I switched to
Chrome more than an year ago and haven't looked back.

~~~
w1ntermute
That's funny, because one of the main reasons I've stuck to Firefox is its
superior Vim emulation support (via Pentadactyl).

~~~
statictype
And Emacs has viper :)

~~~
w1ntermute
Well, all the web browsers had Vim emulation, so Emacs was feeling left out ;)

------
Qz
Since beta 10 or 11 FF4 has been really sluggish for me when opening new tabs,
and at startup (aka opening lots of 'new' tabs). I don't know what changed,
but it's enough to make me consider switching to Chrome. I don't want to, but
RC1 is still sluggish to the point of being nearly unusable, given my browsing
patterns.

~~~
bzbarsky
Did you file a bug on this? If not, could you do that please? Since people
aren't seeing this in general, your help would presumably be needed to narrow
this down....

~~~
Qz
Actually, I've been thinking about it and the problems happened around the
time I upgraded to Windows 7, at which point I installed Firefox to my
(relatively old) SSD, which was problematic in the past for Firefox. I'm going
to reinstall it to my HDD as I had it previously and see if that fixes the
problem.

~~~
bzbarsky
Sounds good. If the problem persists, please do file a bug!

------
elliottkember
I'll try it later and edit this comment, but have they changed the way it
stores passwords? Currently, without a master password, you can view a user's
passwords in plain text.

Ideally, a master password should be a requirement, or passwords should go in
the keychain on OSX. Many, many Firefox users do not know about the master
password, so if you can sit at their computer you can see their passwords.
It's terrifying.

------
kunjaan
How long after the release candidates do they usually releases the final
product? Does anyone know the history of their release periods?

~~~
asadotzler
It's been decreasing consistently over the last few releases. If we don't find
any major flaws in the RC, we'll ship it as final in a week or two. If we do,
you can add a few days to that estimate.

------
AndreSegers
I admire Firefox for what it's accomplished, but Chrome has stolen my heart. I
had to use Firefox today actually to test something, and discovered a Bing bar
that I'm pretty sure I didn't consent to, taking up valuable real-estate.

~~~
ootachi
Whatever that bar is, it's not Mozilla official. Some other software on your
computer put it there.

~~~
GHFigs
_Some other software on your computer put it there._

Why does Firefox allow this?

~~~
amalcon
Technically, your operating system's security model allows this. There's
little Firefox could do to prevent it.

This is a historical accident; only toy and mobile OSes have any sort of
application-level access control.

~~~
HelloBeautiful
>> There's little Firefox could do to prevent it.

Wrong, they can just add DRM.

------
twodayslate
I switched to chrome after trying to use Minefield for about a month.
Minefield was ugly - I just couldn't get it to look perfect. Chrome has all
the extensions I need now. Firefox doesn't have anything special in my
opinion. Chrome is faster and light weight. I just wish it had a tab preview
like Firefox's "Tab Scope" and a proper title in the titlebar.

