OSNews

It can do it through a 3rd party plugin called NSPluginwrapper

That's fine for Linux, but what about MacOS? Of course, Mozilla has always put Mac support on the back burner. Still can't use Firefox without running down my battery -- it prevents the computer from going to sleep after a period of inactivity. This bug has been in the database for a LONG time with no attention.

Mozilla should just drop the Mac version entirely.

I can't believe how many bugs I came across that were FF/Mac specific. You'd think the rendering engine would be consistent across platforms but...not really. I came across other bug reports from people who assumed that testing in FF/Windows meant it would work fine in FF/OSX. Mozilla really treats the OSX version as second rate.

Oh and with the same ajax project Chrome had zero cross-platform issues. Chrome was just a pleasure to work with. IE8 wasn't a big deal either.

Sorry to say but i think this is because Apple users are mostly users (leechers). VLC has the same problem with there Mac version, to few people who contribute to the platform in result that the Mac version is not as far as the other platforms.

No flame, just a my couple of euro cents left in my wallet.

VLC & Firefox are two very different products.

Mozilla makes money when people use Firefox (and use the search box). More users, means more money.

With Chrome becoming more popular, and Safari adding plugin support, Mozilla has got to up their game if they don't want to lose users.

Mozilla could just put their Mac OS X development time into Camino and be done with it since it has always been the light, quick browser that sparked the development of Firefox. I'd use Camino, but without Mozilla's push, things lose momentum.

I've been using 3.7a6pre/4.0b2pre for a while now and it's quite good but there is no hope that Mozilla will wake up and give Mac OS X a good effort.

I'd rather see Gecko based browsers fall out of favor.

Mozilla should just bite the bullet and switch to Webkit.

Why, exactly?

Gecko is integrated into the rest of Mozilla's code. Entrenched might be a better word.

With soon-to-come hardware accelerated page rendering, Firefox claims the title of fastest gpu-accelerated upcoming browser, easily outclassing Google Chrome and Opera, and beating even IE9:

http://blog.gsmarena.com/firefox-3-7-claims-title-of-fastest-gpu-ac...

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/24/4-way-html5-speed-test-fire...

When the Jaegermonkey technologies for accelerating Javascript performance are integrated together and added to Firefox, it may also take the crown for fastest Javascript performance:

http://arewefastyet.com/
http://arewefastyet.com/faq.html

Firefox has always has had the best and greatest range of extensions.

Firefox 3.7a6pre (which is an alpha version of upcoming Firefox 4) scores 97% on acid3 standards tests, which is not quite up to webkit but good enough not to worry about it all that much.

Why exactly should Mozilla drop their best-of-breed browser technology and move to webkit?

ON WINDOWS, maybe. Might even succeed on Mac, too. Linux is a completely different job. I don't myself trust on OpenGL to be the right technology for the job. XRender sucks because the mainstream drivers totally blow with it (Nvidia...).

Linux needs fast software rendering. WebKit has that. Gecko is - currently -ridiculously slow in rendering and as long as Mozilla concentrate on keeping the fuzz on with Windows & Direct2D, there's no hope in the Linux world.

Firefox already feels much slicker on Windows than on Linux when using KWin and OpenGL-based compositing with Nvidia drivers. Chrome and the others don't suffer of the same blow in rendering performance.

Edited 2010-07-09 05:15 UTC

Well that would be a moot point if FF, Chrome and Safari used the same engine.



It's your opinion that it is best of breed. As I stated before I came across all kinds of bugs in the OSX version. Wasn't the web supposed to simplify cross platform development? With Safari and Chrome I could just test in Windows but with FF I needed to boot up the Mac due to Mozilla not caring about keeping the rendering engine consistent. You can go look through the Mozilla bug reports yourself to confirm this.

Keep in mind that just because a browser follows W3C specs on paper does not mean that it is free of rendering quirks. Browser engines are very complex and W3C standards are only guidelines to follow.

If Mozilla switched to Webkit it would be a major boon for web developers.

A better question right now is why you absolutely need to use the 64bit version when it is absolutely not ready. Do you often hit that 2GB memory limit?

Hit the 2 GB limit? Flash? Yes.

Not that it would help giving it access to more. The 64 bit version would consume all available RAM (and then some) when I tried to access sony-ericsson.com.

Even with the separate process for flash that was introduced with 3.6.4?
fyi I have never seen firefox go beyond 700MB

No. I switched to the 32-bit version. I'm just saying that this is an oversight on their part.

This is an oversight on who's part? Seems like an oversight on Adobe's part for not having 64 bit flash for the Mac. You are asking Mozilla to place some 32 bit hack into the browser because Adobe is slackin?

Yeah, I'm basically suggesting that. Adobe does very poor work, leaving it up to the rest of us to work around their problems. People just need to accept that until we can replace Flash with something else.

I'm running Minefield 3.7a6pre on x86_64 Kubuntu 10.04.

I have a 64-bit Flash plugin installed.

File: libflashplayer.so
Version: Shockwave Flash 10.0 r45

Minefield supports it just fine.

the list of improvements for developers is quite impressive
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/07/firefox-4-beta-1-is-here-whats-in-...
but what i've specially appreciated, and I'm sure more people will do, is greater UI responsiveness.

adblock plus is yet updated to work with this beta so I encourage all non-critical installations to backup their profiles and start to use it on a daily basis.

Some of us were using a browser many times as fast as IE years before Firefox even existed.

When Firefox was released and over hyped I was utterly underwhelmed. Opera was offering a better feature set in the late 90s, and Firefox was slow and unstable in comparison.

To me it just seemed like Netscape+ rather than a new browser with "wow factor".

Yeah, I used Opera 3.x back in the day, running it off a floppy in the university Windows 3.11/95 labs. It was nice! Things went downhill starting with Opera 4.x, though, and that's when I gave up on it (altough I do run each major version for a few days to see what's new/improved/worse/etc).

However, that has absolutely nothing to do with a discussion about Firefox.

By the time of IE6, Opera still had that horrendous ad in their shareware version.

So it was not Firefox who overtake Opera through hype, but Opera himself who killed their own chance to became the second most used browser today in one of most crucial moments of the browser wars, and as a side effect, made Firefox the only usable non-annoying free alternative to IE6. =)

If that is actually true, I may actually switch back. Haven't used firefox since the day chrome came out.

The Firefox 4 beta has not yet included the JaegerMonkey JIT compiler for accelerating javascript performance. This is still in work, but it is getting there:

http://www.arewefastyet.com/



Apple nitro and Google V8 are both still faster than Firefox, but the developing trend for JaegerMonkey technology in Firefox is quite promising.

http://www.arewefastyet.com/faq.html


Edited 2010-07-08 13:51 UTC

it is already avaliable for linux
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

you have to extract the folder, put it where you want (eg: /usr/local/firefox4) and edit your typical shortcut to point to the executable file (eg: /usr/local/firefox4/firefox). I much more prefer to install things through Ubuntu Software Center or apt-get, but for Firefox 4 betas I am doing an exception.

If you just want to test the beta without affecting your normal FF profile, you can install the FoxTester extension. Point that at a directory, then copy the .tar.bz2 file for whatever version you want to test into that directory, and then you can access them via the FoxTester menu.

Run multiple versions at once, without installing any of them.

I hate that new confusing web icon used in the address bar in the new Chrome builds.

Try accessing a Zimbra account using FF3. Then try accessing the same Zimbra account using Chrome. Then try accessing the same Zimbra account with FF4. After that, you'll realise just how slow and clunky FF3 JS engine really is, how fast the Chrome JS engine is, and how far the FF4 JS engine has come.

Try the same with a GMail account. Or a Slashdot account.



No, it has very little to do with the interface, and a whole lot to do with how crappy the FF3 JS engine is, compared to Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.



Chrome has a title bar is you want it. Just enable system title bar in the options.

Actually, the only reason I use Chrome is because of the interface. There is NO way I could ever use a browser without tabs on the top again (much faster mouse access). I really can't notice much of a speed difference between Chrome and Firefox.

Most people I know the use Chrome use it for the same reasons, and can't really notice any difference in speed.

I should note that once Firefox supports tabs-on-top with Linux, I will probably move back to it instead of Chrome.

Edited 2010-07-08 22:58 UTC

FF4 allows you to select tabs-on-top (default) or tabs-under-addressbar.

Yes, but AFAIK, not on Linux yet.

Yes, but AFAIK, not on Linux yet. "

Yes it does, on Linux. On Linux Firefox pre-releases, right-click on the menu bar away from the menus themselves, and apart from the ability to turn the navigation toolbar and the bookmarks toobar on and off, there is now an option to display "tabs on top".

Out-of-the-box default settings are: the Bookmark and Navigation toolbars are enabled, and "tabs on top" is disabled.

Edited 2010-07-09 00:17 UTC

Yes, there is "tabs on top", but it actually doesn't help me with anything. There is still a menu bar and a title bar above the tab bar.

Until I can change tabs with my mouse at the top of the screen, I will continue to use Chrome, which is unfortunate, because I prefer Firefox in nearly every other way.

Just install Compact Menu or whatever extension you prefer and stop fudding, please.

While not all extensions have official support for Fx 4.0, most of them work fine after manually editing their max version strings. Compact Menu 2 has a Git-branch with official Firefox 4.0 support.

Chrome features a title bar too, what's your point? Meaningless moaning about beta software.

Edited 2010-07-09 17:13 UTC

There are several different extensions that hide the menu bar. I use HideMenu and Personal Menu to put all that crap behind a single icon in the addressbar.

Once those are updated for FF4, it'll be very difficult to tell Opera, FF, and Chrome apart.

I'll double-check when at work tomorrow, but I'm almost certain that feature is there and can be toggled.

I notice a difference when I have a bunch of Flash and Javascript heavy pages open, but it isn't significant.

I use Chrome because it rarely crashes and has an interface that stays out of the way.

I'm not the only one who finds FF4 to be a lot faster than FF3:

http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7822

yes, or I wouldn't be here posting this

Seriously though, NoScript does a great job keeping up with Mozilla APIs and has working version for trunk nightly builds and the beta, in my recent experience, on Win,Mac,Lin (32bit all).

hth,
adric

Right click on the toolbar to toggle tabs on top, and press Alt to show the menu and choose View > Toolbars > Menu to keep it on.

Thanks. Off to upgrade then...

we hit the point of diminishing returns a while back.

Just because a browser gets a 10% gain in a synthetic benchmarks does not mean that anyone can tell the difference in daily browsing.

GPU acceleration will be the next big improvement in browser technology. IE9 is going to provide Mozilla with some serious competition.

That is if every browser hasn’t already released a version with HW acceleration by the time IE9 actually comes out. Besides the time frame, yes, I think IE9 is going to raise the bar because of tight integration with Windows’ capabilities.

Firefox actually beats IE9 performance when it comes to GPU acceleration.

Firefox with Jaegermonkey will soundly beat IE9 performance when it comes to Javascript. One cannot get enough Javascript performance when it comes to web applications ... aka "the cloud".

Firefox handily beats IE9 when it comes to standards compliance.

Firefox has a native, built-in player for HTML5 video (with either Theora or WebM video).

Firefox can also do many other things that IE9 (or Google Chrome for that matter) simply do not allow you to do:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006/

Sigh.

IE9 isn't even in beta yet. Geez.

IE has had years and years, with the field virtually all to itself, in which to develop and advance browser technology. Instead, it stagnated development of the web for years, for example refusing to implement stuff like SVG, until it got spanked by an open source, Johnny-come-lately upstart.

Deal with it.

It is exceedingly unlikely that IE9 will even be close to competitive with any of the other major browsers at versions that will be released either before it this year or at about the same time.

Deal with what? Unlike you I'm not emotionally attached to a browser. Open source advocates like you make the mistake of assuming that there are bizarro opposites of yourselves that are equally zealous of closed source. I use Chrome because it meets my needs and I will use IE9 if I find it better.



Not so because MS has the advantage of being able to break from XP and rebuild their browser around DX11. IE9 could end up being a lot lighter due to Mozilla having to keep their codebase cross-platform.

Remember also that IE9 doesn't have to be the best at synthetic benchmarks, it just has to be "good enough" for people to not download Firefox or Chrome.

Deal with what? Unlike you I'm not emotionally attached to a browser. Open source advocates like you make the mistake of assuming that there are bizarro opposites of yourselves that are equally zealous of closed source. I use Chrome because it meets my needs and I will use IE9 if I find it better. "

You make the mistake of assuming that I am touting for one browser or another, or that I am touting against IE. I am not.

What I promote is the idea that there should be many browsers operating to the one open set of standards for all things. Despite your ramblings, it is true to say that Webkit, Gecko and Presto (Opera's engine) are very, very close to this ideal.

From a developer point of view, it is pretty trivial to write a web page (once) with rich content and tweak it a bit so it works fine on all three engines.

The ONLY rendering engine that is still a problem is trident. Fact. Deal with it.

It is NOT Gecko that one should be hoping is dropped, it is trident.





What has this got to do with anything? DX11 deals only with drawing some elements on a screen. This is a tiny part of a browser.



Doubtful. Mozilla uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, which works cross-platform. Unfortunately, OpenGL on Windows is (probably deliberately) abysmal performance, and so Mozilla got ONE PERSON to write a Direct2D backend for Windows only. That backend happens already to out-perform IE9 beta, BTW. One persons effort. Not a big deal at all.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/HardwareAcceleration
http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2010/05/25/hardware-accelerating-firefo...



Too late, one would think. Net applications is an extremely biased source, but even they plot the long term trend for IE very clearly:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Usage_shar...

The overall number of computers, and therefore browsers, and therefore Windows machines, goes up all the time. IE share percentage drops all the time, even net Applications has it as dropping by 30% over the past five years.

Given that most people who had a Windows machine and were using IE five years ago are probably still using IE, this means that a lot more than 30% of people shun IE and install another browser on their new machine.

I think you might find that when Firefox 4 comes out, Firefox's share will climb again at a rate similar to the boost that came when Firefox 3 came out. Chrome will also continue to rise, probably sharper than Firefox.

It won't be long before even Net Applications has to admit that the equation has become:

(Gecko + Webkit) > Trident

That means that developers will be able to write fancy, rich content web pages, such as YouTube-like sites, and cloud apps, that work on most browsers without any plugin required.

Some of that "cool stuff" will be beyond the capabilities of IE9.

This will only accelerate the trend of people installing a browser other than IE (most people will install one in addition to IE).

One they install another browser, and discover extensions that allow them to do things they want to actually do, then word-of-mouth will even further accelerate that trend.

Edited 2010-07-11 01:59 UTC

That's only for simple websites. Start working with complex AJAX web apps and you'll understand the limitations of W3C specs.


That isn't an realistic expectation and you know it.



By focusing on DX10/11 and WPF they can keep their code lighter and faster.



Ok you have gone into fantasy land with that statement. No for-profit website is going to ignore IE just to have a flashy interface.