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If you want a highly customizable browser, Firefox is it. Chrome is in its infancy when it comes to customization and they often make decisions that prevent power users from taking advantage of their browsing experience.
For example, they've disabled custom stylesheets in recent releases despite a clear indication that people were sharing themes, they have very old bugs that don't get resolved (like the stupid white flashes on dark themes), major accessibility issues.
Generally they try to appeal and prioritize regular users (which is fine) but go out of their way to make decisions that ignore power users and not even provide alternatives intentionally.
Finally and the most frustrating part is they don't value feedback. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/ is a joke and a waste of time. The most starred issues are often closed to the public when it reaches a certain level and users are asked to submit a new bug again if the old one is not fixed. This means that if there is still a bug, you have to wait months before other users experience it, find the time to search for the bug and star it, reach enough stars to get attention and then get a response. Bugs are often miscategorized and the wrong team has it in its backlog. It's a mess.
There isn't a feature in Chromium or Google Chrome that Firefox doesn't deliver.
Take it from a serious chrome user and extension developer for several years, switch to Firefox if you want to tweak anything that bothers you easily without having to change the damn source code.
> There isn't a feature in Chromium or Google Chrome that Firefox doesn't deliver.
Multi-process browsing. It is incredibly annoying when my entire browser locks up because one of the fifty tabs I have open is doing something stupid. That never happened in several years of using Chrome, and it happens several times a day in Firefox.
I'm sorry but the developer tools in Firefox are a nightmare to use. Sure they have fancy things like 3d view and other awesome functions. But plain old jane stuff, is just easier to do in Chrome.
At least in my experience.
> For example, they've disabled custom stylesheets in recent releases despite a clear indication that people were sharing themes, they have very old bugs that don't get resolved (like the stupid white flashes on dark themes), major accessibility issues.
The Stylish extension works fine for me http://userstyles.org/
> There isn't a feature in Chromium or Google Chrome that Firefox doesn't deliver.
Applescript support. This prevents me from using Firefox.
Flash support. And no, supporting the old deprecated Adobe plugin doesn't count as many sites now require newer versions. This is to support flash games. My kids love the simple flash games on Kongregate and similar sites, so I have to use Chromium on their systems.
"There isn't a feature in Chromium or Google Chrome that Firefox doesn't deliver."
On this ubuntu machine, "the ability to have a bunch of tabs displaying pdfs open at once" is a really big selling point for chrome.
I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time.
But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pretty (nit-)picky eye.
* Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing
* The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention of "search bars are rounded," but the inconsistency remains.)
* Tapping the hamburger menu on the far right, it appears with a combined drop-and-fade-in effect, and then disappears instantly.
This is jarring on the Mac, because it is exactly the opposite of native menu behavior, which is to appear instantly, and disappear with a fade. (I also believe the native behavior makes more sense: when you're tapping a menu, you want to do something, so you don't want to be slowed down by an animation -- just show the menu.)
(Addition of a hamburger bar on the far right at all is suspicious; often it's a UI "dumping ground")
* The "what's new" slideshow that appears at the bottom of the screen has to be controlled by clicking small <- or -> arrows, instead of just scrolling, which feels very outmoded
* The scroller applies a fade effect to incoming content, but only to the text, not the image, which is jarring.
* Multi-touch swipe to go back/forward shows no feedback! (Safari does this best, where the whole page slides away, revealing what's underneath; Chrome does a half-assed thing with arrows fading in, which isn't nearly as nice, but at least better than no feedback.)
Pretty nitpicky, I know, but I recently read an article trumpeting this release of Firefox's incredible attention to detail.
On the Mac at least, I think it still falls short.
> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing
As a user, I want separate edit bars for separate functions. I don't want Google know everything I type (or mistype) in the address bar. When I type foobar in the address bar please give me anything that returned the web server at foobar or give me an error if there is no foobar or the foobar have no web server. If I want to search foobar then I will type it in the search bar by myself.
Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned.
Exactly how I like it, I HATE getting search results when I make a type-o, or try to go to an internal site and forget to specify http://
>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing
Use the customizer. People complain when they change and complain when they don't
> The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention of "search bars are rounded," but the inconsistency remains.)
Maybe this is just the Mac version. On Linux they both have about a 3px border radius.
>Tapping the hamburger menu on the far right, it appears with a combined drop-and-fade-in effect, and then disappears instantly.
Sounds like a bug, not happening on linux though.
>The scroller applies a fade effect to incoming content, but only to the text, not the image, which is jarring.
Is this only on the slide show or something? That's not really much to complain about. I see web pages with different designs all over the internet.
>Multi-touch swipe
I have multi touch swipe set up for other things, but that sounds like something that needs work.
[Sorry for going meta]
As I write this, the story is about one hour old, there are 118 other comments and the top voted comment - the top voted comment - is criticism by someone who doesn't use Firefox. The comment is totally without technical analysis of why Firefox does what it does nor does it mention anything that FireFox gets right. The only positive thing the author says involves dragging out some tired anti-microsoft trope.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667040
That's the problem when stories have this sort of velocity. The quality of comments goes down to the point where "It doesn't try to be an Apple product" is what collects the most upvotes. It's little more than trolling for defenses of FireFox and Safari fan upvotes.
Where the hell is my forward button? Why does browser.tabs.onTop not mean anything anymore? Where's my refresh button? On the... right side, inside the Awesome Bar? Why isn't a separate button? Why can't I put the Home button back beside the Back button? Why is the back button permanently part of the Awesome Bar? Why does the Awesome Bar change shape and size to allow the forward button to exist? Why isn't the forward button an element that I can move around like the refresh button? Why can't I move the Awesome Bar at all? What happened to the Status Bar? Why can't I replace the Status Bar with the Bookmarks Bar at the bottom of the screen? Why is the Start Button now permanently overlapping with anything displayed in the browser? Why can't I move the Menu Button? Why is your Menu Button right where Google Chrome's menus are by default? Also, when you remove the Title Bar, I can't grab the window because I keep my bookmarks as icons without titles on the Menu Bar.
Why are you messing with everything, Mozilla? Why are you breaking the UI metaphor? With the tabs on the top, all the elements under it are made to appear a part of that tab. There's no reason that I can see for the tabs to be on top. It doesn't look pretty, it takes extra pixels to render the smooth curve where the tab meets the next bar. Even if I'm insane and it's the same width, it still looks awful.
I've got five HD screens, and everyone is taking the tablet friendly, ergonomic approach. I want consistency. Please stop breaking everything. You're the last good browser, Firefox. Don't ruin it.
Please bring back: tabs on bottom, the permanent forward button, the refresh button, the bottom bar anchor, and the separate back button.
What's this about the status bar / add-on bar gone?
The main reason why I use Status-4-Evar is because when I hover over a link I don't want that link to pop-over the page content, which is what Chrome did first, then Firefox copied like sheep. It's distracting, like a tiny little pop-over in the corner of your eye.
I like having URLs show in a status bar separate to the main web window. It's out of the way, and I just like having my web browser framed by an interface. Is that so wrong?
What's so bad about a status bar? Why is there this idea that everyone wants the full screen web?
First Mozilla forces their CEO to resign, now they're being the soup nazi over the status bar which has been with browsers since day one of web browsers. You call that progress? I call it chopping down an old tree that nobody wanted chopped down.
Release Notes: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/29.0/releasenotes/
Overall I love the redesign, but I wish they would have compacted the top chrome a bit so it matches the height of other major browsers. Firefox has slightly taller chrome for no good reason, as seen in this picture:
http://i.imgur.com/BlPRitn.png
When I'm doing cross browser development I want my stuff to line up in all three browsers.
At least Firefox no longer has the heaviest browser chrome. Safari wins that dubious distinction now by keeping the tabs below the address bar.
I also noticed that Firefox finally added a better option to disable cache for one tab which will be very useful while developing:
http://i.imgur.com/Nc5eamq.png
It's still not as good as Chrome's ability to automatically disable cache while devtools are open, but its way better than what I had to do before, which was override the automatic cache management settings to limit cache to 0 MB of diskspace.
Am I the only one who's not comfortable with the fact that the "whatsnew"[1] page can activate my browsers menu with Javascript?
[1] https://www.mozilla.org/sv-SE/firefox/29.0/whatsnew/?oldvers...
* Where is the "use small icons" option? This should be priority #1 to fix.
* Can't double click top left corner to close on windows.
* How do i get to the hamburger menu with only my keyboard?
* If my mum accidentally removes something from the hamburger menu, like options, and one day i have to guide her to that option over the phone there are like hundreds of steps to go through. First i have to figure out if she actually is looking at the right menu, then i have to figure out if she actually has the icon on her menu or not. When that is done i have to guide her to the customize menu, then pull the icon back, close the customizer, open the menu again and then click the icon. These steps will all be different depending on how your mum customized the menu. Previously i could just tell her click the top left menu and go to add-ons. There is no standard path to follow (except the alt-key, down-key keyboard fallback still using the old menus from version 3). The hamburger menu should be a shortcut for your favorites, not the only way to find an option. Seriously, it's as if Windows forced you to add a control panel shortcut on the start menu before you can access your network settings. This is trying too hard to be too user "friendly".
* How do i find the dropdown menus for my add-ons? Seem like the only path to get there is again to use the hidden alt, down keyboard fallback and then go to tools.
The incessant rearrangement of the UI is why I switched to Chrome. Each time they change the interface, it is unclear to me what the benefit is to the user.
I was fine with Firefox when it looked like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mozilla_Firefox_3.5.png
I like it. There are a few changes that I will need to get used to, but in a few weeks I doubt I'll notice the difference.
One thing that I think FF doesn't get enough credit for is how efficiently it runs these days. I prefer Chrome's developer tools, but for browsing, FF gets my vote.
I liked the screenshots but I really don't like using it...
* it's no longer possible to open a new tab by double-clicking in the tabs bar, seriously guys...
* I really liked the Ctrl + / status bar, I used it to drop my add-ons icons, it didn't use much space and I was able to use them whenever I wanted, now I can't do this anymore (except if I overload the top bars with icons I use... say once a week ?) // EDIT: I just figured out I can use the sandwich menu to do this, that's pretty cool
* it's not possible anymore to move the refresh button... WHY ? I loved it on the left with the previous/forward buttons, why would it be in the URL bar ?
* and it seems it's no longer possible to add a button to show the bookmarks (Ctrl+b), there's only this awful double button with "add fav" and this useless menu.
It's beautiful but lacks a lot of customizations that were possible before... I'm really considering switching to another browser (maybe Opera ?)
I think it's beautiful. I can't explain exactly what I like (I'm not much of a designer) but I can say that I now find it more visually appealing than Chrome. The only reason I'm staying on Chrome is because of a few extensions and because it syncs so well with my Android phone.
I think there is a lot of hate here with the tone "I liked it the old way because I was used to it!". New designs change things, that's why they're new. If we didn't ever want anything to change, we'd still be looking at this every day:
http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-old-new-design-2007.png
And just like the old Firefox design, that has more features up front and almost everything today's version has. But I'm glad I see this instead http://cl.ly/image/2d3a0c2h1Z2R.
Maybe I'm an idiot, or not a power user. But I like pretty things and I appreciate Mozilla's effort here. I'll be using Firefox more often.
This is just one anecdote but on my (currently) somewhat slow computer at work, the new Firefox is noticeably faster. This is under Windows.
Additionally, I am not sure about the new UI yet, but I probably wouldn't care about the changes after I get used to them.
Firefox team, thank you for another great release!
* I just tried and your developer tools don't cause the tab to freeze for 1 second every time I switched into the tab.
* Wanted to see the addons I had, clicked the menu > nice icon that said Add-ons - massive UX win.
I feel at home with this browser. You stand up for privacy and for that you deserve so much more praise than you get. I'm switching to Firefox and see how it goes. The only thing keeping me on Chrome are the Dev Tools, and I want to give Firefox another try.
I expect that this release will mark the point of rapid decrease of Firefox usage. Lets wait a few months and see. Such UI changes are. The best way to irritate the users who actually used the browser and got used to the placement of the controls. It seems as the designers themselves at the same time used Google's Chrome and now "unified" their own experience. Well at least now they removed some reasons for users to not switch to Google's browser.
About Australis:
Good:
* Menu bar is hidden by default on Linux and can be opened with Alt (that didn't work before).
Bad:
* Menu ("Firefox") button is still not movable for no obvious reason.
* Reload/Stop button is now forced to be in the URL bar (before users had a choice where to place it). That's pretty annoying, it's very uncomfortable when Back/Forward and Reload buttons are so far apart.
* Bookmarks button is now outside the URL bar and looks bulky.
I've always had a bookmarks bar of single and double letters, like R for Reddit, Y for YCombinator, F for Facebook, $ for stocks, etc. Now with FF29 I have these blasted file folder icons next to each of my little codes, cluttering up the whole bookmarks bar.
I can't find any way of getting rid of the file folders -- not even thru Customize. Anyone found a way?
I like it so far. Seems pretty responsive.
Firefox 28 had been crashing at least once a day for me (which is rare, I didn't have any crash logs since 2011) so I'm hoping they squashed whatever bug was causing that.
Gamepad API enabled! Cool! I used that API with Chrome, shame the browser prefix... my old games* won't work with Firefox without changing the source code :(
Um, just wondering how people feel about actually using FF 29, rather than talking about what it isn't? A really great browser is being obscured by a bikeshed.
tl;dr It's awesome.
Can Firefox get a sandbox for tabs already? It may be the more privacy-friendly browser, but it's far from being the most secure, it seems, and that's mainly because of its lack of a sandbox:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/178587-firefox-is-still...
They still haven't get rid of the checking updates for add-ons dialog. Damn I hate that.
the only question: will tree style tabs work as before?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ - Halleluya! Finally the 64bit builds for Linux are listed.
Every god damn time I had to install I had to go in ftp.mozilla.org ...
About 5 years late, but better than never. :-)
I really don't like the new UI. I miss the good old menu bar on top of the screen and i don't understand why firefox is trying to copy chrome :/. I wish there were an alternative to firefox and chrome, s it looks today I don't want to use either of them.
I must say I am impressed. When I saw the screenshots of the new UI I thought that I would not like it but now that it's finally landed in stable I find it really nice. I was afraid that the new tabs would behave too much like Chrome's (when a lot of tabs are present they all become smaller), I'm glad this is not the case. I also think that making only the selected tab curved and keeping the rest a straight shape was a good call.
Apart from the UI changes I noticed that memory usage went down considerably. But we'll see how it behaves after some prolonged usage.
The one weird thing I noticed was that my bookmarks are gone. I'm not sure if this happened in this release, or some previous one, or whether I accidentally deleted them somehow.
Without the contrasting tabs, 29 looks worse. Compare
I always thought I would dislike the tabs. Well after upgrading, I was right. Congrats, you succeeded to make them uglier than Chrome's.
I'm even surprised I hate the non-active tabs more than the active one.
Sorry about the rant.
Already using it.
I am impressed with the updated supported on the developer tools, although Chrome DevTools still wins in tooling.
The birth year (while signing up for Sync) is a neat feature. It doesn't ask your exact date of birth but only the year. Further, it doesn't ask for your DOB if you are born 1990 or earlier.
In the screenshot, they misspelled Mozilla as "Mozila" in the tab title. (At least on OSX... maybe they tailor the screenshot depending on your user agent.)
Hmm, I think the separators between tabs in the new tab bar are too subtle, and overall it is too dark. The curved appearance of the selected tab also seems out of place.
edit: also, transparent elements with text on them? Noo! Maybe I am just sensitive.. I don't have the best eyesight, and I don't have the best monitors. In any case, I am thankful for Classic Theme Restorer, which someone mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Just made the switch from Chrome to Firefox. I noticed that even on a high-end Macbook Pro, when I opened a large amount of tabs in quick succession Chrome would lag intolerably. It did so on earlier releases of Firefox but I just tried on 29 and it opened 40+ tabs with without a hick-up. Very pleased indeed
Edit: I just noticed that the text selection now works as it does in text editors with blinking cursor and all. Great feature!
Had to revert back to 28 to mitigate UI issues caused by Pentadactyl in the new update. I'm not sure I'm going to be missing much in 29.
Anyone know how to "tighten up" the spacing between icons?
Just a question, but why is the interation cycle so extreme with Mozilla? Version 29? What is so different from version 3.x.x ... where we had normal interations I could wrap my head around. The whole number upgrades are insane. I know its such a simple thing, but trying to relate with software interation steps on such a fast moving number, just is mind boggling.
The area above the is too large, takes up too much space.
When you hover over the close button ('x') on a tab the red outline is square and looks weird on the rounded tab. Why not make the outline rounded or make the 'x' bold on mouseover.
Why use the hamburger icon and not the Firefox logo or the old Firefox button (and keep it on the left side)?
While I love firefox, the new UI is too much for me and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... came to the rescue
the lack of options is what kills me, also the UI is filled with clear design flaws, and i still need an addon-bar, now i have to use even more add-ons just to make it work like it used to... ohh but we still have the weak performance, thats far from a priority...