Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 30th Oct 2009 22:42 UTC
Mozilla & Gecko clones Mozilla has released the first beta release of Firefox 3.6, which comes with some nice Windows 7 integration features. More specifically, the Firefox 3.6 beta integrates with the new taskbar in Windows 7.
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RE: This just proves my point
by bousozoku on Sat 31st Oct 2009 17:18 UTC in reply to "This just proves my point"
bousozoku
Member since:
2006-01-23

I've been saying for a long time that Firefox is basically a Windows-only browser. And this just strengthens my convictions. Sure, there are versions of Firefox for other platforms, but their integration is lousy compared to the Windows counterpart.

The two main things that bother me about Firefox on the Mac, for instance, are CPU usage and interference with power management. Given the same idle state (no animated images, no flash, blocked ads), Safari will use 0-1% CPU, while Firefox will use 5-15% (depending on how many documents are open). Also, there is a bug in Firefox that's been known for YEARS that prevents a Mac from going to sleep after a period of inactivity. Both of these are hostile to notebook users especially, wasting energy and shortening battery time.

It just amazes me how QUICK they are to add features for Windows but how totally disinterested they are in every other platform. On the one hand, they want to come off as though they're all about Free Software and multi-platform. But when it comes down to looking at their actions, it's clear that all they care about is displacing IE on Windows. That's is. Everything else is merely tolerated.


They're putting effort into the majority, but the priority lists seem to indicate that they've put less emphasis on Windows with 3.5.x.

After using Adobe software, an idle CPU usage of 1.x % would be nice. For so long, software with any legacy has been using the old loop and poll for a message structure. As far as I know, only the NeXT vendors like OmniGroup are doing it really well, as third parties go.

Many people seem to complain on Mac OS X about a native look, but what they really mean is that it has to look like Safari and that's just not right. If Apple had never created a browser, would Firefox and Opera have to look like OmniWeb?

My only serious complaint is about the pages and the combo/list boxes. The people behind Firefox have admitted to doing a bad imitation and while Opera has a better imitation, Chromium seems to use the native widget.

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RE[2]: This just proves my point
by Erunno on Sat 31st Oct 2009 17:22 in reply to "RE: This just proves my point"
Erunno Member since:
2007-06-22

Chromium seems to use the native widget.


AFAIK even Safari Webkit only emulates native Cocoa widgets in a web page for performance reasons. It's just that Google seems to put a lot more effort into getting Mac Chrome right from the start.

Edited 2009-10-31 17:23 UTC

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bousozoku Member since:
2006-01-23


AFAIK even Safari Webkit only emulates native Cocoa widgets in a web page for performance reasons. It's just that Google seems to put a lot more effort into getting Mac Chrome right from the start.


I'm sure that has something to do with Chrome being the platform for Google's office applications and their desire to make things as simple and seamless as possible for users.

I just wish some of that thinking would make its way back to Firefox.

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