Submitted by Firefox 3.5RC1 has been released. “Firefox 3.5 (Release Candidate) is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past year. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use, and adding new features for users.”
… makes baby Jesus cry.
Even IE7 has a better UI layout. Make use of the sidebar please!
And bring in some nice additions from Chrome like
“Paste and Search” and “Paste and Go.” Not to mention the unified location/search text bar. Which is awesome.
It’s called 3.5 because it isn’t a major change in UI; it’s all under the hood stuff. Any major UI changes should come with Firefox 4. I agree that the UI really needs to shape up and follow Chrome’s example.
I would check the beta of Opera 10. Pretty nice browser in my opinion.
Lot’s of options these days.
IE
Firefox
Konquerer
Safari
Chrome
Opera
I’m sure that list goes on to, but none of any major importance.
I’d agree to you if you just included Camino in your list. I bet it’s even more used than Konqueror.
I’d agree to you if you just included Camino in your list. I bet it’s even more used than Konqueror.
Camino is an excellent browser indeed. I use Firefox under Linux and Windows, but Camino on my Mac. I tried Opera but didn’t quite feel at home in it. It’s not a bad browser though, quite the opposite.
That’s fine with me. That was kind of my point. Lots of fine option out there. Of course it appears that the down vote trolls are out in full effect today.
KonquerOr :-D.
I’d misspell my own name if it wasn’t tattooed on the back of my eyelids.
I actually find Firefox layout very nice. Besides Firefox layout is extremely customizable. What stops you from customizing it? You can even make it look like IE if you like, although IE layout is the ugliest of all.
My only complain is that Firefox uses only Gtk in Linux. I’d like to see a Firefox version with Qt because I use KDE.
Actually, my biggest complaint is that Firefox is *not* pure GTK… it’s XULrunner/GTK, and that wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t slow as a slug. The slimy, gooey kind. A Qt version would certainly be nice for those people who use KDE or prefer Qt applications, but I can live without it. Right now, I think speeding up the GUI is more important than porting it to another platform. It just locks up for several seconds at a time, all the time… especially when navigating the menus and opening or closing tabs.
In my experience, running Shiretoko as my main web browser for the past two or three weeks, these problems have been cured in 3.5.
Overall 3.5 is a lot faster under Linux than 3 was.
Obviously you haven’t been running Firefox 3.5 on Linux then.
I’m running it on Fedora 11 (KDE4) right now. Nice and fast (quite comparable to Chrome) and not a sign of a lockup. Way quicker than any version of IE on any version of Windows.
Having said that, a native Qt GUI frontend would be a most welcome improvement.
Edited 2009-06-20 13:10 UTC
You may be right, but what about Firefox extensions? They are in fact a mix of JavaScript – for code, and XUL – for user interface (as every Gecko-based application). So a line of thinking:
* What is the chance said Qt port would NOT break existing Firefox extensions?
* Why build Firefox atop Qt, when there is already WebKit support for rendering HTML in Qt?
It’s much harder to port existing browser like Firefox than create a new one from scratch, using existing Qt components, see: QtWeb – http://www.qtweb.net/
Perhaps a combination XULrunner (for Firefox extensions) with a Qt interface (for file dialogs, icons, toolbars and scrollbars, etc) with a webkit backend?
Best of all worlds?
Other than that, we might have to wait for Google Chrome, even if it is a pain to have to pipe it through privoxy.
Nah. GTK applications run well enough under KDE, so hang it, stick with Firefox as it is I suppose.
Edited 2009-06-20 14:51 UTC
Qt sucks. Firefox is well advised to stay the hell away from it.
How so?
Without any evidence of actual suckage in your post, and considering that both Qt and Qt Creator are licensed under LGPL3 and available for all platforms, and also given that GTK+ is difficult to work with, one suspects you of trolling here, but you may have an actual point behind your comment so … pray tell, what would it be?
Who use the default Firefox layout anyway?
It is so customizable and expandable that you can do anything with it.
And about unifier search and address bar, the default is “I am lucky” but you can change it to default Google search.
I personally dislike Chrome’s UI. And I find it far from awesome joinning URL’s and Search Engine quieries, although I understand why Google want us to think they’re the same.
Having separate URL and search boxes makes more sense if you know how they work, but it doesn’t match how most people use a web browser. They have no idea what the address bar does. Even if they know the URL of a website, they’ll open a web browser and type that URL into a Google search box.
Firefox already searches with the default search engine if you type something in the address bar that’s not a URL. The only real difference between the behaviour of Chrome and Firefox here is that Chrome’s auto-complete uses Google queries. I like Chrome’s ability to auto-complete domain names that I’ve never typed before, but in every other way Firefox’s auto-completion is better.
Chrome also detects when you use a site search, and you can access it again from typing the url and hitting tab. For example, if i type stackoverflow <Tab> ruby, I will be using stackoverflows search for ruby questions. IMO that blows the competition out of the water, and is a feature i use multiple times a day.
The other thing is even though I know what a search box, I prefer having the whole length of the address bar to type a query. Even when I am using firefox, I will still use the url bar rather then search box.
And yet, despite all of these enhancements, Firefox still prevents my Mac from going to sleep. This is a long-standing problem that they’ve basically just ignored, while focusing on things like private browsing instead.
I’d think that you’re using an Intel-based Mac then. The PowerPC-based version goes to and keeps the sleep just fine.
Today’s nightly build was delayed but consisted of not too much. The updater wasn’t on the display all that long.
As I’m typing this since writing “Today”, I’m watching the cursor move in slow motion. Hopefully, it’s just the advertising.
What version of Firefox are you using? I’ve never seen that occur on my iMac and MacBook. I’m not claiming that it doesn’t happen but it seems that your system has major issues if something like this doesn’t occur for the vast majority of end users.
Then again, I manually put my computer to sleep rather than letting the computer make that decision.
I’m using the latest nightly builds of Firefox (Shiretoko). This is actually a known problem with discussions on forums and an entry in bugzilla. It doesn’t strike everyone, and there’s a work-around that works for some people. My MacBook Pro never sleeps if I leave it open with Firefox running, regardless of the work-around, while my iMac will sleep since I implemented the work-around.
I think I have some ideas as to why they won’t fix it. They want to update the Awesome Bar in the background, 60 seconds after inactivity. Somehow, the sqlite database they use does disk activity in the background periodically, even when the update is done and nothing else is going on. The Firefox developers are just too lazy to either use something other than sqlite or fix sqlite or manage it properly. Of all of the problems I’ve encountered, this one has met with the most amount of ignoring from Firefox devs.
Not to sound rude or to excuse the programming of Firefox developers but why don’t you manually put your computer to sleep when you’ve finished using it? its only a matter of clicking on the apple menu then clicking on sleep.
Same reason other people complain about it. For desktops, we don’t want to have to think about it. It should be automatic. This is why we bought Macs. Because things that should be automatic ARE automatic. When something interferes with that, we don’t like it. With my notebook, I usually put it to sleep manually by closing it, but on those occasions when I accidentally leave it open on the kitchen table, I’d like it to save battery by automatically sleeping.
No need to resort to personal attacks – I was simply inquiring for your decision to automate the computer going to sleep; when I first bought a Mac, an eMac, it irritated me something silly when I saw my downloads die because the computer would go to sleep. So where you have a problem with your computer not going to sleep automatically, I had a problem with the computer going to sleep without be asking it to do so – why should the computer assume it is smarter than me? I never asked for it to be setup that way and yet Apple took it upon themselves to make the decision themselves.
I’m sorry. I really meant no personal attack. Anyhow, you have a point that you don’t want the sleep mechanism to be too aggressive. Apple’s gotten better, and downloads would certainly not be a problem NOW, but there are surely other things that Apple has not yet anticipated that irritate people. Nothing’s perfect. Having a background in AI, I think this is one of those things that could really benefit from some kind of simple machine learning.
Hmm…I’ve given up on that from Apple since Mac OS X was new. My PowerMac would sleep just fine and Mac OS X came along and sleep never worked correctly again. Add to that the various other machines I’ve used and none of them have slept consistently.
It just doesn’t work.
I like Firefox’s default UI and I vastly prefer to IE in any iteration. It’s not as simple as Chrome but there are things that I find very limiting about Chrome’s UI.
Plus, if I don’t like something about Firefox I can change it either through an extension, about:config, or even try my hand at coding a solution.
Firefox download site gives me the wrong file.
it still points the 3.5b4 for Linux download
You should replace that by 3.5rc1 in the link.
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.5rc1…
There’s 3.5 rc1 downloads, just choose whichever language you wish.
Firefox 3.5rc2 has just been released.
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.5rc2…
Hopefully it’ll mean that it isn’t too far away.