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I'm away from my desktop for another week: my only question is if they've put any thought into speeding up startup times and/or improving the UX and design on Macs. Firefox used to be great, but it's really fallen behind in terms of speed and usability. I hope this changes that.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies! I'll be giving it a try again. It's good to have choices.

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Here are the design mockups for how Firefox 4 should eventually look by default on Mac OS X: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Mac_Theme_Mockups

These designs are not fully implemented in current nightly builds, and are subject to change. Also, here are the Windows and Linux mockups:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Windows_Theme_Mockups

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4.0_Linux_Theme_Mockups

There are quite a few performance improvements going into Firefox 4, with a strong focus on startup time. See http://autonome.wordpress.com/tag/startup/ for detailed tracking of Firefox startup improvements.

I wish there were a version with less chrome and more web real estate - I've thinned my current version down as much as I can really (Cool Menu 2 FTW) but the tab height is about twice the font height and the menubar (in which I have my location and search bars) is twice the icon height. Why waste all this space - I understand negative space but really this seems to be too much form not enough function, browser chrome should be as slim as possible but still usable IMO; if I use a small font it should be smaller.

Even the latest stable release (3.6.6) starts just as fast as Chrome for me (I use an ad blocker, bookmark sync and firebug in both browsers). Firefox has been painfully slow in the past, but it seems okay now, although its UI is still rather clunky.

The chrome of Firefox is better now: the line between the bookmarks bar and the navigation bar is no longer here and the buttons are squared. It really looks like Safari, wich is good for minimalism and Apple-compliance, but sad for diversity and innovation.

I really enjoy this update, BUT do not enable the "tab on top" feature. It's not fully implemented yet and it's really ugly.

(I have also the two icons issue.)

Another detail who moves Firefox closer to Safari : text in the bookmark toolbar now turns to white when hovered.

The default 3.6 theme is pretty ugly, but there are some great replacements. I'm using one called Camifox.

http://imgur.com/Sm3Ld.png

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7527/versions...

The Mac UI _looks_ better; for some reason, though, I'm getting two icons in my dock, occasionally.

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