Comments on: Firefox 3.5: The fastest fox has landed

By: danathompson

danathompson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:25:24 +0000

I must say, I like Firefox 3.5. It’s faster. Sure, not all of the add-ons load. But Billeo, Cooliris, FoxTab, Personas for Firefox are supported on Firefox 3.5. Abduction isn’t loading so I switched over to screengrab. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12715

By: andysky

andysky — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:10:24 +0000

Firefox 3.5 is significantly faster than 3.0 for me. I’ve been using the nightlies since beta3. Good job, Mozilla!

But, for my next webapp, I’d like to use contentEditable, and Firefox still has some annoying bugs with it, at least according to this article:
http://accessgarage.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/how-to-hack-your-app-to-make-contenteditable-work/

When will the Firefox team focus on contentEditable? Google considers this one of the most import technologies being standardized in HTML5 — I hope Mozilla agrees.

By: ReyBango

ReyBango — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:34:54 +0000

If you find add-ons that are incompatible, please let me know and I’ll contact the authors accordingly. You can reach me at rey at mozilla dot com.

By: study123

study123 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:33:49 +0000

I have installed 3.5 today. Mouse right click is not working on links.

By: TNO

TNO — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:00:53 +0000

@Nosredna:
Perhaps this?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8879

By: nea

nea — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:24:05 +0000

I’m using MooTools myself and I’ve yet to see any slowdowns in Firefox 3.5 compared to 3, on contrary, everything seems faster. Then again, I’m using native appendChilde instead of inject where I can, might have something to do with that…

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:26:46 +0000

Thanks for the addons. Is there one that will give me a Chrome- or Safari-like snapshots of the sites I visit most as my home page?

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:52:03 +0000

@Nosredna – There are Fx add-ons available, that make the Fx UI look like Chrome:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8782
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8790

@TNO – normally I would agree that following OS UI convention is a good idea. But, for me, Chrome is an exception to that rule. The Chrome UI improves my workflow, and I consider it to be a huge step forward in browser UI design.

By: BartekG

BartekG — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:39:25 +0000

I’m very disappointed with this release. Like Jadet said, DOM manipulation is horrendously slow. It’s really a huge step backward… and I can’t really understand how this could happen. I’ve just read it’s faster in the benchmarks, but I see something completely different in a “real-life” conditions. For example, a really simple case (in Mootools):

object.setStyle(‘display’,'block’).inject($(‘header’));

In FF3 the object was showing up in the header in a no time, in FF3.5 I can see it flicking and then, after a couple of miliseconds, moving to header.

Other things are great, but without efficient DOM engine they don’t matter much, maybe except the introduction of @font-face to Gecko family. Since the feature is now present in all major browsers web typography will, hopefully, flourish. But again: DOM! What the hell happened here? It’s slower than IE in some cases.

By: medikoo

medikoo — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:04:39 +0000

When will FF 3.0 force update to FF 3.5 – anybody knows ?

By: andysky

andysky — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:22:36 +0000

@Nosredna: re the status bar, i.e., show only when needed:
autoHideStatusbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1530

By: okonomiyaki3000

okonomiyaki3000 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:11:43 +0000

There are certainly some features I like about FF and a lot of great plug ins but at work I’m stuck on windows looking at Japanese text all day so I won’t use anything but Safari. It’s just the only thing on this idiotic operating system that will render legible Kanji. Any chance that a future version of FF will use proper Mac-like font rendering?

By: barryvan

barryvan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:10:55 +0000

@Nosredna: Well, the way I grab some extra screen real-estate is by moving all of the navigation buttons, the location bar, the search bar, and a subset of the web developer tools (if I’m using them) to the menubar — that way, I can hide all the other toolbars.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:49:45 +0000

@TNO, well, my impression when I went from Chrome to Firefox was “I feel cramped.” So I quickly went back. I still go to Firefox for debugging, but for browsing, Chrome now feels most comfortable to me. I got used to Chrome because it was the fastest, and now I’m accustomed to it.

By: daitro

daitro — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:22:07 +0000

they actually did remove from safari the tab on title bar thing, which in my opinion is great since for me sounded like a stupid idea from the start.

and who cares about the extra space the status bar takes? I mean, it’s not like i’m using a 15” screen with 640×480 resolution

actually firefox it’s pretty much a working tool for me, if i were a normal user i’d think about sacrifice firebug and the huge add-ons library for some extra speed, o wait no, then i’d miss twitterfox, yeah if i were a normal user i’d stick to firefox. :)

By: nataxia

nataxia — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:19:07 +0000

@v1 a temporary fix might be to add new boolean extensions.checkCompatibility (false) in about:config

By: TNO

TNO — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:00:44 +0000

@Nosredna:
I wouldn’t consider title tabs and the lack of a status bar and so on the best idea on Windows platforms. There are application visual design guidelines that should be followed on the native platform per OS. Not following these guidelines can and do lead to usability and/or security issues, not to mention eliminate the feel of it being some foreign entity on the desktop. (Case in point, the old safari design on windows…)

Lets take title tabs first:
- There is no longer an application icon, and its related System menu.
As a result, I can no longer close the application from that side of the screen. Good thing I’m not left handed.
- I no longer know the name of the application without having to look at the task bar (which may or may not be present). Sure, I could deduce it by the layout and color scheme of the application (assuming I’m not color blind and that I didn’t cascade my windows)
- The standard OS size title bar is now nonexistent or very small depending on the display mode, as a result it’s more difficult to move my application without accidentally re-arranging or tearing tabs. (If its Safari you also run the risk of accidentally closing a tab)
-Sizing: open enough tabs and I don’t know what I’m clicking on anymore as they seem to shrink to nonexistence and don’t scroll.

Status Bar:
-My biggest concern here is security, what’s to stop me from spoofing it for malicious purposes? Depending on site design, Chrome’s status bar can be quite difficult to see.
- As mdmadph mentioned, many Firefox users have an overloaded status bar with an assortment of plugins, so its not just some space to just hold messages.

Misc:
- Going on Chrome 3 now…where’s my Print Preview option?

Real-Estate:
Honestly, whats to stop you from pressing F11 in Firefox if you want real-estate? If that is all of a sudden “too much” real-estate, then we’re just splitting hairs.

By: Joeri

Joeri — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:00:01 +0000

I was curious to see what was left of the speed improvements on PPC mac, where the tracing feature isn’t enabled (AFAIK). Seems like there’s a decent speed bump on my G4 mini, and it feels a lot more responsive under load.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:38:54 +0000

Haha. Filled? I have several, but they only take up about 1/10th the width of my screen.

By: mdmadph

mdmadph — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:07:45 +0000

@Nosredna

I don’t know about you, but my status bar on Firefox is filled with addons. :P

Of course, you don’t have that problem with Chrome, because there’s no addons.