Firefox/Linux

[snoopy]

Firefox 4 in Linux with GTK+ looks nice. I like the way it looks now more than I did before.

I guess it's more "chrome"-ish.

[Isaac]

I got mine this morning, but I got an error on installation. I'll mess with it after I reformat my system, solving a unrelated problem I caused.

[Jeff250]

It's sleak. I can load a Slashdot page with 500+ comments really quickly now.

The new status bar was originally abrasive, but now I'm used to it and liking it.

I discovered to restore the old refresh/stop buttons, edit the toolbar, drag the refresh and stop buttons back to the left where they used to be, then add a zero-width "flexible space" in between the two buttons. (When they are adjacent, they merge into a single refresh/stop button when you are done editing if you don't insert the zero-width space.)

I got mine this morning, but I got an error on installation. I'll mess with it after I reformat my system, solving a unrelated problem I caused.

For Ubuntu, use this:
https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+arc ... fox-stable

P.S. This is cool:
http://glow.mozilla.org/

[Ryujin]

Downloaded it a couple days ago. I'm a fan. Just used Firefox Sync for the first time and so far so good. My biggest gripe with web browsers today was lack of syncing but that has just been solved. And Firefox 4 will be out soon for mobile so then I will have a synced web experience on my desktop, laptop, and mobile device. Success!

[deathbeam]

It's a whole lot better than the older Firefox versions. But I still prefer Chrome because of it's new tab page that displays most visited pages, or pages of your choice.

[Top Gun]

I really like the new version mechanically, but I don't particularly care for the toolbar/UI changes. If I wanted a browser that looked more like IE or Chrome, I'd just use those. Fortunately, someone has already made a FF3-for-FF4 skin, so I think I'll tweak that to get things back to the way I like them. At least I can turn the menu bar back on; I have no idea why someone would want the far-less-organized single dropdown menu.

[Isaac]

I've been trying to use it more, but it's not as compact as chrome is. Maybe there's a way to do this, but it's not obvious to me. Chrome only has 2 bars visible at all times, which work better.

As for bookmarks, I actually have a custom website I use to manage and use my bookmarks, which is set as the home page; there's no difference concerning bookmarks.

[Sirius]

Only downside is the memory usage. It's scary. At least I have enough for it.

Speed is good though, less freezing as well. That might well have been some badly-written extensions that got disabled by 4.0 though...

[Top Gun]

I've been trying to use it more, but it's not as compact as chrome is. Maybe there's a way to do this, but it's not obvious to me. Chrome only has 2 bars visible at all times, which work better.

See, I really don't understand that overarching desire for "compactness." Even at a fairly-crappy 1280x960 resolution, I have more than enough vertical space to comfortably view pretty much all of the websites I use on a daily basis. To me, any benefits of doing things like collapsing the menu bar or shifting the tab display all the way to the top are greatly outweighed by the lack of convenience then required to accomplish the same tasks. I think FF3's layout was pretty close to perfect, and that's what I'm hoping to return to.

[Krom]

Only downside is the memory usage. It's scary. At least I have enough for it.

Yeah, it goes from zero to 250 MB in no time flat, I don't know how they do it. I'm not bothered by it on my machine which has 8 GB to throw around, but my parents machines only have 512 MB and 1 GB, it is a tight fit. Guess I should buy them some more memory soon.

[Isaac]

Hello Top Gun.

I see your point, but that file/edit/ etc stuff is hardly used and should be tucked away. Secondly, there's no point in the title bar. Chrome uses it for tabs. I wish Firefox did this and I'm sure it can through some manipulation.

Unless there's a major difference in performance I really don't Firefox as a better alternative to Chrome.

[snoopy]

We'll see how FF4 does for me for stability. In FF3 the majority of the problems that I had were related to flash. I have the bad habit of leaving firefox open for weeks at a time, and eventually flash would die and I'd have to close firefox, kill flash, and then start to get flash content going again.

[Top Gun]

Hello Top Gun.

I see your point, but that file/edit/ etc stuff is hardly used and should be tucked away. Secondly, there's no point in the title bar. Chrome uses it for tabs. I wish Firefox did this and I'm sure it can through some manipulation.

Unless there's a major difference in performance I really don't Firefox as a better alternative to Chrome.

But see, I do use the menu bar options a lot. I'm always hitting up History up there, and I have so many Bookmarks that I use so frequently that I almost don't have to look to navigate through that menu. A few of my add-ons also add features to the Options menu that I couldn't seem to find in the more stripped-down mode. I just see no point in re-arranging everything when the previous arrangement is second nature. Hell, I'm having enough trouble remembering that the refresh button is to the right of the address bar (which is a pretty terrible place to put it, but not as bad as the home button), to the point where I'm about ready to move it back to the left.

And as far as Chrome goes, I never saw any reason to try it in the first place. It had absolutely no extensions when it first came out, so I certainly wasn't going to switch to it then, and at this point, I can't see it as providing anything that I don't already get with Firefox. Plus, there are the lingering Google privacy issues.

[TechPro]

I've been trying to use it more, but it's not as compact as chrome is. Maybe there's a way to do this, but it's not obvious to me. Chrome only has 2 bars visible at all times, which work better.

As for bookmarks, I actually have a custom website I use to manage and use my bookmarks, which is set as the home page; there's no difference concerning bookmarks.

The new Firefox is easily (if not by default) just two bars, and with just those two bars I can also tell you it's pretty compact.
Take a look:

FF-Chrome-compare.jpg (94.82 KiB) Viewed 1465 times

[Isaac]

Very nice Tech. I figured out how to customize the buttons. In trying to remove the title bar I ended up with two sets of min max & close buttons... Obviously I did something wrong, but I'm going to put it back to its defaults and just leave it as a back-up browser. Chrome is perfect for netbook use anyway.

I also went back to the older version that's in the main repos. By the time 4 is the standard they might have it working the same as it does in Windows, where I can easily remove the title bar.

[TechPro]

In Windows, you just maximize Firefox and Firefox puts the tabs on the title bar. When Firefox isn't maximized, the title bar is separate from the tabs. I'd expect the same behavior in the Linux version though I haven't tried it on Linux yet.