Comment by Samuel_Michon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Samuel_Michon | Hacker News Reader

I'm used to Firefox 3.6 on Win7. There are a few reasons why it's my go-to browser when I'm using Windows:

1) Plug-ins like Firebug, web dev toolbar, greasemonkey, and resizeable textarea

2) Tabs are well-placed and readable, and you can simply double-click next to tabs to open a new tab

3) A proper status bar that's always visible

4) A full menu bar

5) No Adobe Flash built-in

I've installed Firefox 4 RC. The colors are loud. Tabs are on top, tab text is illegible, and double-clicking next to tabs doesn't create a new tab (it simply resizes the browser window). The status bar and the menu bar are gone. I couldn't even find Firebug and Greasemonkey.

Luckily, a few of these unfortunate decisions can be reversed. Apparently, you can turn on an "add-on bar" to show the controls for Firebug and Greasemonkey. You can also opt for a top menu bar, which has the added benefit that it re-enables the "double-click to create new tab" behavior.

IMHO, the new UI sucks balls. If Mozilla wanted to copy Chrome/Safari's UI, they've succeeded.

EDIT: After viewing some of my websites in Firefox 4, I must say that CSS3 and text rendering is a lot better than in FF 3.6. From what I can tell, it's on par with Chrome. I just wish it didn't have its UI as well.

You can reenable the status bar with the Status-4-Evar extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/status-4-evar...

The status bar can be turned on (and off) with Ctrl+/ (Ctrl+Slash). This takes care for the main issue for me.

The other issue I see is the the styling of the status bar, which seems incomplete. I added some additional styling to my userChrome.css and the bar now looks decent. (In Windows 7 with the Classic Windows theme.)

    #browser-bottombox {
        border-top-color:   #808080 !important;
        border-top-style:   solid !important;
        border-top-width:   1px !important;
        padding-right:      16px !important;
    }

I just tested on Mac and Windows 7 and even with tabs on top, double clicking in empty space next to tabs will open a new tab. If that doesn't work for you, I would recommend considering it a bug and filing it on bugzilla. It might be an incompatibility with an add-on or a preference setting, but there is no harm in reporting it.

> No Adobe Flash built-in

How is that a reason not to use Firefox over Chrome? Plugins can always be disabled, and if it's the principle of having proprietary stuff in your browser that you dislike, you can always choose Chromium, which doesn't include Adobe Flash or the PDF viewer, among other things.

I'm fine with proprietary tech, but Adobe Flash and Acrobat are unsafe, buggy and drive my CPU mad.

After reading your comment, I have once again searched for a setting within Chrome to remove the built-in Flash, but I can't find it. That leaves Chromium and Iron.

I'm not sure that you can remove it, but you should be able to disable it through the about:plugins page. The long way around is through Options->Under the Hood->Plugin-ins->Disable individual plugins.

The same goes for any Acrobat plugin you may have, though I think Chrome's built-in PDF viewer supersedes Adobe's.

Even better, turn on "click to enable". It's a blast not having Flash ever run unless I specifically allow it.

"Under the Hood" is replaced by "Under the Bonnet" for UK users, which to my mind shows remarkable attention to detail. (I wonder what else differs between en-gb and en-us...)

> If Mozilla wanted to copy Chrome/Safari's UI, they've succeeded

They haven't succeeded because they still see the need for both a search box and an address box and the tabs don't close right under where the last close button was (my biggest gripes).

the tabs don't close right under where the last close button was

It's not really a fix, but as a less-aggravating workaround, you can use ctl-w or ctl-F4 to close tabs. That way you don't have to reposition the mouse every time you want to close a tab. And I can hit ctl-w with my left hand, so I still don't have to take my right hand off the mouse to use the keyboard shortcut.

Don't forget middle-click tabs to close.

Yeah, I'm disappointed that our fix for the latter [1] didn't end up landing in time for Firefox 4. I'm hoping to release it as an add-on, and it has a very good chance of making it for the next release 3 months down the road.

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086

The nice thing about the separate search box is the corresponding list of available search engines.

I much prefer Chrome's approach, where it remembers sites you've visited that have a search bar (IMDB for example). If I start typing 'im' and press tab it changes into a search box for that site.

Can you explain what's nice about that (compared to alternatives)?

1. I can drop-down the list of available search engines and see what's available, without having to remember any key-words to do the searches.

2. (and this is the killer feature for me) If a particular search engine is selected (say, IMDB), I can right-click on any word on a page, and one of the context menu options is "Search IMDB for <selection>..."

Also, horizontal real-estate is not much of a concern on a wide-screen monitor - how much of the URL would I really want to see..?

Firefox keyword search is better and doesn't take up real estate.

I remove the close buttons from tabs as they waste space. Use middle-click to close instead and there is no need to worry about their location. Ctrl-W works too.

The need is simple: The search box sends what you type in it to your search provider immediately. So if they're combined, there's no way to type a url without your search provider knowing what URL you typed.

Now maybe you're OK with that. But a lot of users are not (including non-technical users who don't even realize this behavior exists; once you explain what the unified bar does to them they become _very_ unhappy).

That is interesting, but most people I know type "facebook" in google to get a link to facebook, so I don't know if that's the case.

Double-click tabbar new tab seems to have been broken, however oddly I can get it to work with middle-click.

Right click on a UI button and disable tabs on top + enable the menu bar. Firefox isn't Chrome -- it doesn't force you into its workflow or mode of thought.

Thanks for the tip, it does help. I've since edited my comment.

>Firefox isn't Chrome -- it doesn't force you into its workflow or mode of thought.

Yes, it does, it's just a different mode of thought. Chrome is far less configurable than Firefox, and has some features than drive me mad - like the position of a newly opened tab.

I don't think we're disagreeing :)

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