OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18788/Firefox_3_To_Go_Native_in_Appearance Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:15:28 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279193 http://osnews.com/thread?279193 Firefox 3 sports native GTK+ 2.0 themed HTML controls on web pages. Gone are the days of the ugly Windows 95 looking buttons, check boxes, text fields etc from Firefox 2. 8-)Edited 2007-10-18 22:15 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siimo) Comments The look http://osnews.com/thread?279197 http://osnews.com/thread?279197 What has each distro look go to do with how firefox looks, Firefox adopts the native GTK theme, font and colour. To me Firefox looks more "native" in Linux than any other OS, it's the firefox devs fault they dont implement native GTK/Qt in their framework. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SlackerJack) Comments RE: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279199 http://osnews.com/thread?279199 Yeah, I wish there were screenshots for KDE, as this one is more difficult to integrate, as Firefox is a Gtk application. Firefox is very well integrated in my WinXP and openSUSE Gnome OSes. I thought Firefox was already as integrated as on the screenshots of the article. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments Distros don't look different http://osnews.com/thread?279200 http://osnews.com/thread?279200 "Firefox will have different looks for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but the much broader diversity of Linux interface options makes it more challenging. Red Hat, Suse and Ubuntu all look different, just to name three popular versions, and as a further complication, each is available with the KDE and GNOME graphical interfaces."

What? No. Two. Two things: GTK, QT. What do different distributions have to do with it? And what's so hard about making it follow the user's GTK theme (including icons)?

Or is this only about how widgets look, which commands are in which toolbar menu and OK/Cancel button order type stuff?

Anyway, if they make FireFox integrate better with OSX or Vista than with Gnome I'll be.... not overjoyed.Edited 2007-10-18 22:30 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jaylaa) Comments RE http://osnews.com/thread?279201 http://osnews.com/thread?279201 They should have just gone with UNO for Firefox http://takebacktheweb.org/ for Mac OS X. The drop down and go buttons for the search box are hideous. What is wrong with a down arrow like Safari? There's something about Firefox that wills devs to try and cram in ever more chrome and buttons onto the toolbar. (Yet still won't put a new-tab button on by default - like IE/Opera) Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE: Distros don't look different http://osnews.com/thread?279202 http://osnews.com/thread?279202 It's open source - it'll integrate as well with a platform as people are willing to support the cause. If you have concerns, download a nightly and file bugs, join in on IRC or make mockups. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[2]: Distros don't look different http://osnews.com/thread?279205 http://osnews.com/thread?279205 It's open source - it'll integrate as well with a platform as people are willing to support the cause. If you have concerns, download a nightly and file bugs, join in on IRC or make mockups.

My point was that
1: saying that the existence of different distros makes Linux integration harder is dumb. All distros use the same 2 toolkits.
2: It's already (mostly) GTK so making it integrate with Gnome should be much easier than making it integrate with Vista or OSX.

Spurred by this article, I've spent last 10 minutes doing searches about more Firefox Linux integration; the bug reports and discussions are already there on this subject, so there's no need for more of that.

Also, your response could be given to anything. I could say the same thing to you about your complaint in your other post about which theme to use for OSX and the chrome buttons.Edited 2007-10-18 22:57 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jaylaa) Comments I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279207 http://osnews.com/thread?279207 I'd rather they work on speeding the start-up time and improving the memory utilisation of Firefox before they did things like this.

Skins to change the GUI appearance are plentiful and are quick and simple to install.

Wouldn't it be better to either ship each build with a more 'native looking' (or even a set of, then the user will choose a 'look') skin or set the homepage to prompt the user to set the skin from the online repository?

I think there's far better things to for the Firefox developers to work on. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (flanque) Comments Fedora patch for GTK icons http://osnews.com/thread?279212 http://osnews.com/thread?279212 On the general topic of Firefox looks and Linux:

Apparently Fedora used to have a patch for Firefox so that it would use the icons of the user's GTK theme. Does anyone remember this or know why it hasn't been updated?

Here's the actual patch, but it's years old and no longer of use:
http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/devel/firefox/firefox-RC1-stoc... Edited 2007-10-18 23:02 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jaylaa) Comments RE: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279213 http://osnews.com/thread?279213 Yeah, but the people who work on skinning/theming, etc... are NOT the same people who work on memory utilization, startup times, etc... Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (CPUGuy) Comments Finally http://osnews.com/thread?279218 http://osnews.com/thread?279218 i am already running a very recent nightly, and it's already a big step forward to use GTK+ widgets in the HTML area. And the proposed changes are phenomenal, finally i can use Firefox on _any_ OS and don't think it looks ugly and "out of place". And no, no "custom" theme can change that, apps should respect the design of the OS they run in. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (maxauthority) Comments Native Feel not Look. http://osnews.com/thread?279219 http://osnews.com/thread?279219 For BeOS/Haiku I want the native feel not the look.

By that I mean the response I get with other programs because *every* window is driven by it's own thread.

FireFox really slows down when it is still rendering a number of windows/tabs. And using FireFox to download anything is a real pain, not only are the downloads slow but they affect the speed other windows are updated. However, if I use NetPositive to do the downloads, not only do transfers go faster, also FireFox does not slow down so I know it is not my network load doing the slow-down. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Earl Colby pottinger) Comments RE[2]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279222 http://osnews.com/thread?279222

Yeah, I wish there were screenshots for KDE, as this one is more difficult to integrate, as Firefox is a Gtk application.

Actually no. Firefox is a XUL application and if Mozilla wouldn't contantly block any attempt of contributing a Qt based implementations, they would have intergration there as well. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments RE[3]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279230 http://osnews.com/thread?279230 Hum, then it shouldn't be that difficult? I remember Zack Rusin trying to port Firefox to Qt, then he abandoned the project...

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/976
http://dot.kde.org/1094924433/
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/6059.html?thread=46507

I remember having tested Firefox-Qt when Firefox reached 1.0, it was buggy. Then we didn't have any new versions. Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments RE: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279241 http://osnews.com/thread?279241 Gone are the days of the ugly Windows 95 looking buttons, check boxes, text fields etc from Firefox 2. 8-)

Actually, first thing I always did on Windows XP was to switch to Windows Classic theme. I prefer it that way. Plain, simple, quick.. (and possibly ugly for some people, but not for me).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gonzo) Comments RE: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279250 http://osnews.com/thread?279250 Its not just the GUI that is a problem. I stopped using firefox a month or so bad because it had become bloated and did not intergrate with the desktop environment of preference (KDE).

What bothers me the most is the file dialogs and the like. With KDE I can customize what appears in the side-bar on a system-wide and / or application-specific level. I also have found the Gtk file-selector to be awkward and mangled hugh pile of steaming proverbial.

So now at a loss for choice, I have stuck to konqueror even if lacking extensions. At least flash works now.

Cheers Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pointfivezero) Comments It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279254 http://osnews.com/thread?279254 MacOS and GNOME already have Gecko-based browsers (Camino and Epiphany, respectively) built with the native toolkit and fully integrated.

KDE also has Konqueror available with the Gecko rendering engine.

BTW: I far prefer Epiphany on Gnome over Firefox. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bloodandsoil) Comments Good idea http://osnews.com/thread?279258 http://osnews.com/thread?279258 Finally!

All these themes do only the part of the job.

It is the best browser on the market IMHO, so
this is really welcome addition.

Great job guys ( no sarcasm! ) Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (_mikk) Comments native? http://osnews.com/thread?279266 http://osnews.com/thread?279266 does that mean if the reason you use firefox is because the way it looks on that otherwise really crappy looking OS, you will now have to use it with the crappy look as the crappy looking OS? Fri, 19 Oct 2007 03:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zhulien) Comments Uhmmm? http://osnews.com/thread?279271 http://osnews.com/thread?279271 "look of the operating system"

As far as I know, most operating systems don't have a look. Linux doesn't have a look, neither does Windows, unless you count the shell part of the operating system. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gogglesguy) Comments OS X http://osnews.com/thread?279277 http://osnews.com/thread?279277 I hope they carry it off.

I've just switched from Windows to OS X. I love Firefox and on Windows I used it since version 0.2. I love the extensions (had more than 10 installed).

But I can't use Firefox on OS X, because of 2 things:

1. The buttons are really ugly.
2. The radioboxes are even more ugly.

It really hurts to click on one of those ugly controls. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fbarns) Comments If only Opera adopted the same idea http://osnews.com/thread?279279 http://osnews.com/thread?279279 My bigger gripe with Opera is that it is very hard to get the application to blend in with the OS theme Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments RE[2]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279280 http://osnews.com/thread?279280

"Yeah, I wish there were screenshots for KDE, as this one is more difficult to integrate, as Firefox is a Gtk application. Firefox is very well integrated in my WinXP and openSUSE Gnome OSes. I thought Firefox was already as integrated as on the screenshots of the article."

GTK-Qt Theme Engine is your friend:
http://gtk-qt.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Taken from their website:

The GTK-Qt Theme Engine is a plugin for GTK that allows GTK applications to use Qt widget styles.
Aimed primarily at KDE users, this plugin provides a way to unify the look and feel of the Linux desktop.

Edited 2007-10-19 07:15 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments yay http://osnews.com/thread?279281 http://osnews.com/thread?279281 This reminds me of Why Mozilla Doesn't Use Native Widgets ( http://ocallahan.org/mozilla/why-no-native-widgets.html ), which I read several years ago and with which I was generally unimpressed. Unfortunately the page is long gone so I can't read it again to remind myself of the reasoning. And some jerk decided to prevent it from being stored in archive.org with a robots.txt. Ashamed of whatever it was that it said, in light of new developments? Just a new owner who wants to block his current content? No idea.

If anyone has the text of that page I'd be very interested. Bit of history and all. And I'm glad it's history.

(edit: redid sentence not to end with a preposition, 'cause it bothered me. Being pedantic with myself is surely a sign of something.)Edited 2007-10-19 07:21 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MamiyaOtaru) Comments RE[2]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279283 http://osnews.com/thread?279283 Same here but I really don't want to see it in Linux.

This is a very nice improvment. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments RE: native? http://osnews.com/thread?279284 http://osnews.com/thread?279284 Yes. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments RE[2]: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279286 http://osnews.com/thread?279286 What bothers me the most is the file dialogs and the like. With KDE I can ...

Check out kgtk: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=36077
I'm using it to get KDE dialogs with Firefox (when I'm not using Konqueror).

Though it works well, it's a bit of a hack. I wish the Portland Project would actually make something other than pie (in the sky) and command line utils. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MamiyaOtaru) Comments RE[3]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279288 http://osnews.com/thread?279288 The radio buttons and checkboxes looked like (and I quote) "they have been drawn in the dark with a broken pencil".

Thanks Mozilla! Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hornett) Comments RE[3]: Distros don't look different http://osnews.com/thread?279291 http://osnews.com/thread?279291 It's already (mostly) GTK so making it integrate with Gnome should be much easier than making it integrate with Vista or OSX.

iirc, the gui of firefox uses xul, not the gtk-widgets.
and native ports of gtk do exist both for windows and for osx. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (puenktchen) Comments RE: native? http://osnews.com/thread?279293 http://osnews.com/thread?279293 an what " Crappy OS " would that be? Windows Vista perhaps? Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabz) Comments RE: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279295 http://osnews.com/thread?279295 I also have found the Gtk file-selector to be awkward and mangled hugh pile of steaming proverbial.

Agreed with that. You can get a decent theme for firefox that makes it match your KDE desktop, but the GTK file-selector is a huge problem.

I really hate it. It looks bad and it works in a totally different way to the KDE file dialog.
The same is true about the GIMP as well though.

Pity that there isn't a way for GTK apps to detect they are running on KDE and use the KDE file-selector. The rest is color schemes and icons which can be corrected with a decent theme anyway. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (theARE) Comments This is nice but... http://osnews.com/thread?279301 http://osnews.com/thread?279301 I would like them to spend time fixing MathML and SVG rendering and adding feature to it....

That way, I'll be at last able to create beautiful maths and Japanese courses in xhtml+mathml+unicode+SVG.

Yet, for that, I guess that they still have to wait for the Stix Font project to deliver their open source math font with 4807 glyphs... Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Lakedaemon) Comments Firefox is too bloated http://osnews.com/thread?279303 http://osnews.com/thread?279303 Firefox is too bloated Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (casuto) Comments RE: It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279309 http://osnews.com/thread?279309 No they don't. Epiphany just uses the XUL engine right now. What they're talking about here are the drop down menus on actual websites. The UI part of Epiphany fits very well into Gnome, but any sort of buttons or drop down menus within the website itself look horrible.

I tested out Epiphany with the webkit backend that is currently in Debian Sid and the difference in look is huge. Though I couldn't really use it for long, since webkit for gtk is still very unstable. But the buttons looked fantastic. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leech) Comments RE[2]: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279313 http://osnews.com/thread?279313

Pity that there isn't a way for GTK apps to detect they are running on KDE...

That one is pretty easy, basically

if (getenv("KDE_FULL_SESSION") != 0) // KDE

One could also query the respectice X property on the root window, in case the application developer wants to support DE detection in an application running on one machine, but displaying on an X server of another.

Pretty much the same applies for GNOME as well and XFCE also has a specific root window property IIRC

EDIT: fixed typoEdited 2007-10-19 11:36 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments RE[3]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279319 http://osnews.com/thread?279319 No it's not. It does a terrible job of emulating the Qt themes and I have always turned it off. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments RE: It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279324 http://osnews.com/thread?279324 I really wish Camino could use Firefox plugins and search engines (although maybe this has changed since the last version of Camino I tried).

- chrish Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chrish) Comments typical http://osnews.com/thread?279325 http://osnews.com/thread?279325 Stop screwing around with minor things (with the zillions of "OS Integration" themes, Firefox already has a "native" UI almost everywhere) and fix the bugs.

I know it's more fun to add new features and rewrite things that already work, but there are lots of bugs in Bugzilla that need fixing. There are over 1900 "critical" and "major" bugs outstanding as of today.

- chrish Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chrish) Comments RE: typical http://osnews.com/thread?279330 http://osnews.com/thread?279330 Argh!

The problem is not themes.
You can always theme firefox to make it look like your OS' DE.
The problem is -form widgets-. [1]

Fire up google.com in firefox. Do you see the "Google search" and "I feel lucky" buttons? Look at the the posting window in osnews.com (Preview, Submit)? Don't they look like Windows 95 on downers? *

Making firefox 1.x/2.0 look anything close to normal requires manual edit/replacement of a number files in your res directory... and even then it doesn't look right.

- Gilboa
* Unless you're using Window XP or Vista.
[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+form+widgets Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments RE: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279331 http://osnews.com/thread?279331

Gone are the days of the ugly Windows 95 looking buttons, check boxes, text fields etc

Sorry dude, but this is BS, complete BS!

I've been using Firefox under KDE for quite some time and it integrates very well with the KDE themes and color schemes. Beside that there are still a bunch of "themes" available and ChrystalSVG is one of them.

So please explain what on earth is Firefox 3's INNOVA~1

I really prefer FF 2.x over 1.x and even used the beta versions, because 2.x had some damn cool innovation, like the inline spell checker.

Now my worst concern is that Mozilla corp tries to compete with this ugly company from Redmond and we all know how this will end.

If Mozilla, doesn't use its creativity and innovation, it's a dead men's hand. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ml2mst) Comments RE: Firefox is too bloated http://osnews.com/thread?279341 http://osnews.com/thread?279341 Well, nobody is denying that AFAIK. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments RE[2]: typical http://osnews.com/thread?279361 http://osnews.com/thread?279361 Ah yes, got it now. I have no idea why that isn't handled by the built-in theme system, it seems like the same problem to me.

Those buttons are Motif-style, I think, which was horrible already when Motif was released back at the dawn of time.

- chrish Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chrish) Comments Firefox 3 on Linux improved a lot http://osnews.com/thread?279362 http://osnews.com/thread?279362 I been using Firefox 2 on Linux and it used to crash a lot, now Firefox 3 feels rock solid and is much better on responsiveness... I really like this, it also uses less ram... it crashes sometimes too but just rare times but I'm using Alpha 8 and crashes in alpha software is reasonable, I'm happy that Mozilla developers finally fixed some if not all the issues with Firefox.

Firefox 3 will be a great release and thanks for the hard work Mozilla developers

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diego) Comments RE[2]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279365 http://osnews.com/thread?279365 Sorry dude, but this is BS, complete BS!

I've been using Firefox under KDE for quite some time and it integrates very well with the KDE themes and color schemes. Beside that there are still a bunch of "themes" available and ChrystalSVG is one of them.

So please explain what on earth is Firefox 3's INNOVA~1

Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nxsty) Comments Chameleons http://osnews.com/thread?279366 http://osnews.com/thread?279366 Chameleons can produce a wide range of colors and patterns on their skin, but they do this primarily to express mood, not to blend in with different environments.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/animal-camouflage2.htm
I'm sorry I couldn't stand it :-).

Now on the real subject: I think that new feature should have been in Firefox from the beginning.

I use Epiphany (its a GNOME browser for UNIX, Linux, etc.)- its simple, "blends with its surroundings" (mostly GNOME apps :-)) and has just enough functionality for me. Of course since its Gecko based it has the same level of capability for displaying pages and even has some of its plug-ins. I do use Firefox on Windows. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dimitar) Comments Bad design decision http://osnews.com/thread?279378 http://osnews.com/thread?279378 The popularity of FF is based on two factors (there are more, but these two are there as well):
1. The same look and experience on any OS.
2. People choose FF, because they want an alternative.

So I use FF in Windows, OsX and Linux, and I know it well and I feel home everywhere, reading the same set of web-sites using the same extensions and experiencing the same look and feel.

The whole point of having the same style is because it is based on usability, not on something which is popular in this season. If I do not like native IE, I choose FF, which looks different, more conservative, selecting the best from all worlds.

If it will be too different everywhere, I'll look for something else, Opera, for example.

And I think, there is no problem here. What we are trying to achive? It is quite Ok. There are a lot of other problems, but it seems nobody is interested to solve them. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vtolkov) Comments RE[3]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279379 http://osnews.com/thread?279379 > Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
> http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg

Sorry, folks, but this is not a big deal. I need glasses to spot the difference. What about fixing bugs? What about adding garbage collector to javascript? What about accelerating javascript to JIT native code internally? What about optimizing it for mobile devices, N800/N810, for example? What about touch interface? What about kinetic scrolling? Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vtolkov) Comments RE[2]: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279387 http://osnews.com/thread?279387 Yes we know this, so there's even more a reason to let the skinners get to work whilst the 'real' developers work on 'real' problems within Firefox. Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (flanque) Comments RE: Firefox is too bloated http://osnews.com/thread?279404 http://osnews.com/thread?279404 """

Firefox is too bloated

"""

Maybe. But if there were *one* thing I would like to see fixed, it is FF's exponential increase in table rendering times as table size increases. FF's horrid rendering times for huge tables, necessary for business reporting apps, make FF a no go for these applications.

Moaning about FF memory requirements is passe. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[3]: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279410 http://osnews.com/thread?279410 What are you even trying to say? Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sappyvcv) Comments RE[4]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279411 http://osnews.com/thread?279411 Maybe you can't read, but did you not see that someone already addressed this concern? Different developers specialize in different areas of the application. A large portion of the work anyway is design. Designers can't program. Another large part is XUL stuff, which is just an off-shoot of HTML.

Jesus christ, you're like the people that wonder why all 50,000+ Microsoft employees arent working on optimizing Windows. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sappyvcv) Comments RE[4]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279423 http://osnews.com/thread?279423 > Here you go! Firefox 3 to the left and 2 to the right:
> http://home.student.uu.se/sist8525/ff2vsff3.jpg
Sorry, folks, but this is not a big deal. I need glasses to spot the difference.

What exactly were you expecting to see when shown the same Google site? For it to magically appear in 3D? A flashing neon ad? If a simple site like google didn't look the same we'd all know there was something seriously wrong with the new build.

What about fixing bugs?

Maybe you should take a look at their bug tracker, because tons and tons of bugs have been fixed.

What about adding garbage collector to javascript?

They actually did that. Or at least parts of it, search for cycle collector.

What about accelerating javascript to JIT native code internally?

Planned for FF4, IRC. That's a pretty major change, and you can't expect them to do it while also making all the others - integrating adobes javascript framework, the switch to cairo, adding the gc, the new layout framework, reworking text rendering, places, etc.

What about optimizing it for mobile devices, N800/N810, for example? What about touch interface? What about kinetic scrolling?

All needed, and since they just announced a major mobile push, I expect they will be coming soon enough. I have a tough time getting too excited about these things, though, since I'm too old fashioned to use my phone for anything more than talking.Edited 2007-10-20 07:23 Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments RE: Bad design decision http://osnews.com/thread?279427 http://osnews.com/thread?279427 The popularity of FF is based on two factors (there are more, but these two are there as well):
1. The same look and experience on any OS.

I'm not sure that is the case, have you seen any studies on this? I would have guessed that the main factor was the same functionality on all platforms. At least this is why I like it.

If you don't like the look and feel of your desktop environment, why not let whatever theme engine your desktope DE:s offers you to change it. That way you can get the concistency you want in all applications not just firefox.

As for opera, I hsvn't used it for a while so I might be wrong, but isnm't that built on QT and wouldn't that mean that it will pick up whatever theme qt uses on each platform, so it wouldn't look the same anyway? Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments RE: It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279428 http://osnews.com/thread?279428 The probelm with thes DE centric browsers is that they get too small userbases. This means that things like plugins may be developed to work with them. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments RE: OS X http://osnews.com/thread?279431 http://osnews.com/thread?279431 I'm on MacOS X (Intel) and have found that Camino 1.5.2 is definitely a good replacement for Firefox. I'd like to see more 'support' for the extensions, but at the end, its weighing up between nice widgets or a extensible browser. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[2]: Bad design decision http://osnews.com/thread?279433 http://osnews.com/thread?279433 Opera uses Qt for things like menus. It has it's own theme engine though. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sappyvcv) Comments RE[5]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279455 http://osnews.com/thread?279455 > Jesus christ, you're like the people that wonder why all 50,000+ Microsoft employees arent working on optimizing Windows.

But if none of them are working... How do I know? Well, I do not see results.

So, if the article is saying that the biggest feature of FF is "native appearence"... Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vtolkov) Comments RE[5]: No linux screenshots but it has improved there too http://osnews.com/thread?279458 http://osnews.com/thread?279458 This is a pleasure to read. This means that FF is not dead and someone is working on real issues.

About mobile devices. I'm a bit conservative too. But after I got N800 (this is internet tablet, not phone, BTW), I've found that I do most of web browsing with it. I do not turn on desktop or notebook at home, unless I need to type something. It takes about 60% of entire Web experience.

There are two engines: Opera-based and Mozilla-based. The first one has problems with different sites, but it is fast. The second one works better, but too slow to be used most of time.

I can guess, that it is slow, because it is based on COM-based technology, which is known to be slow with all its virtual AddRef/Release staff, instead of using native C++ classes with optimizeable reference counting. This is another thing worths to work on. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vtolkov) Comments RE[2]: Bad design decision http://osnews.com/thread?279459 http://osnews.com/thread?279459 > 1. The same look and experience on any OS.
>> I'm not sure that is the case, have you seen any studies on this? I would have guessed that the main factor was the same functionality on all platforms.

I'm not saying this is the most important thing. This is important enough for me, and, I guess, for others who do not feel familiar with all different OSs, but have to use them from time to time.

"Look" is not as important as "Feel" here. I do not worry about control's borders and gradients, but rather about functionality, so I can use address bar or favorites in exactly the same way and I do not need to search for a menu item in all different menus. Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vtolkov) Comments RE[3]: Distros don't look different http://osnews.com/thread?279485 http://osnews.com/thread?279485

2: It's already (mostly) GTK so making it integrate with Gnome should be much easier than making it integrate with Vista or OSX.

Popular misconception, right up there with OOo being a GTK app. FF uses it's own toolkit, so it is as foreign to Gnome as it is to KDE. It does hook into GTK to give the appearance of being an integrated app for the purposes of things like file dialogs, in much the same way that Opera will utilize Qt without really being a true Qt app. Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments RE[3]: I think there's better things to work on http://osnews.com/thread?279486 http://osnews.com/thread?279486

Though it works well, it's a bit of a hack. I wish the Portland Project would actually make something other than pie (in the sky) and command line utils.

Portland is only as effective as the ISV's that choose to utilize it... Last I heard Mozilla has declined to participate, though maybe that has changed for future consideration ? Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments RE[2]: It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279487 http://osnews.com/thread?279487

No they don't. Epiphany just uses the XUL engine right now. What they're talking about here are the drop down menus on actual websites. The UI part of Epiphany fits very well into Gnome, but any sort of buttons or drop down menus within the website itself look horrible.

You're confusing elements. Firefox uses a XUL interface around the Gecko web rendering engine. Epiphany uses a Gnome-GTK wrapper (the UI part you referred to) around the Gecko web rendering engine. If you're seeing issues with buttons or drop-downs in Epiphany, that's Gnome/GTK issue, not a Firefox issue. The whole point is that by utilizing native rendering styles, Firefox would being rendering the same way Epiphany does. You may want to reconsider the theme you're using, if that's the issue.

The basic problem with XUL (and hence Firefox) is that it is hideously inefficient, at least in that it draws outrageously far more resources to utilize than a native toolkit would, though it is also it's biggest strength because it encourages the extensions that make FF so popular. Gecko itself is effective, but a bit bloated, which is why there has been a move towards webkit by companies like Apple, Adobe and Nokia, a fact that has been admitted by Mozilla and planned to address, though that remains to be seen. Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments RE: Bad design decision http://osnews.com/thread?279488 http://osnews.com/thread?279488

The popularity of FF is based on two factors (there are more, but these two are there as well):
1. The same look and experience on any OS.
2. People choose FF, because they want an alternative.

1. is bollocks. Despite it's success, FF represents a small segment of the market, and the number of alternative-OS users is an even smaller segment of that. Prior to FF, Netscape/Mozilla was the standard for *nix, FF was a natural progression, it had nothing to do with ease-of-transition. FF is an also-ran to Safari on OSX, and really, a browser is browser. I suspect people are less concerned about consistency between platforms, and more with how well it works on the platform.

2. is much closer to reality. Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments RE[3]: It's already been done http://osnews.com/thread?279717 http://osnews.com/thread?279717 It's not a theme issue, it's a Gecko issue. Looks at the buttons:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Epiphanybrowser.png

Definitely not the GTK theme's buttons. Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (iain.dalton) Comments