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Comment by giu | Hacker News Reader

I started using Firefox again the day I heard about the 4.0 Release Candidate, and thought I could give it a another try after it failed to convince me the few times I tried to use it in the past.

I was pleasently surprised. The browser's way faster; launching it doesn't take that much time; the UI is way more responsive; and all the add-ons I've been using in the past are compatible with 4.0 (Web Developer, Firebug, Colorzilla, etc.).

I'm currently using it as my primary browser again, and it looks like it will stay on that podest for awhile.

It's awesome to see a browser resurecting with that many improvements, despite the fact that some people have almost written it off due to some annoying issues in past versions, the most prominent one being performance.

I'd really recommend you to give it a try.

Disclaimer: I've been using Opera 11 as my primary browser before I decided to give FF 4.0 a try

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Disclaimer: I am a Firefox Fanboi

At work I can only use Firefox or IE so no brainer there - I use Firefox. At home I use Firefox but generally have Chrome open to play the odd Facebook game. The thing that puzzles me is I really don't notice any difference in performance between Chrome and Firefox and never have. I have a 4mb internet connection at the moment but noticed nothing different when I had 8.

The only reason I use Chrome is to play around with any HTML5 stuff and simple curiosity. With Firefox's huge add on libraries, Firebug, Tab controls etc I honestly cannot see why so much fuss is made about Chrome!

If flash crashes, it only crashes out one tab. That's the killer feature for me with chrome.

Firefox has had plugin isolation for Flash since 3.6.4 on Windows, and Firefox 4 brings that to all platforms.

In firefox, if flash crashes, it doesn't crash any tab; just the flash element (e.g. the youtube video box becomes gray)

I noticed that and it was a very welcome addition.

The only problem is I don't remember Flash or FF crashing before, except some rare occasion. Now I see Flash crashes somewhat often.

Do you maybe have a Flash blocker installed? Flash is responsible for 100% of my browser crashes.

> just the flash element (e.g. the youtube video box becomes gray)

In every tab, all flash elements become gray. I'd rather just one tab crash that parts of many tabs crashing.

The same thing happens in Chrome as in Firefox. Whenever the Flash plugin crashes for me in Chrome all Flash elements in every tag crash.

Note: Firefox used to crash the entire browser when Flash crashed so the method that Chrome and Firefox now use is an improvement.

Ah, so it's just Flash that sucks then. I'm a firefox user myself, just can't stand how Chrome looks or losing all the plugins I'm accustomed to in firefox. I just really like the idea of one process per tab for managing memory and safety.

I was a FF user until I found out Chrome was much faster with the webkit, but I'll always give Firefox a shot again if they manage to beat Chrome's speed.

It's the same for Chrome.

Is that something new? When flash shockwave crashes (on Windows 7 at least) it takes down all instances of flash in Chrome (for me anyway). Please tell me I'm wrong or that this has changed.

Disclaimer: FF user turned chromite

I enjoy the speed and simplicity of chrome. For development work, I actually prefer the webkit DOM inspector to firebug. I was never a heavy plugin user to begin with, so firefox never tempted me much there. I think that if you're not planning on using plugins, the core browser features of chrome are more polished (again, this is just my opinion). If you're a heavy plugin user though, ff or opera is the way to go.

For me it was the speed of Chrome that made me switch. On Windows, Chrome opens faster than notepad. It's literally the fastest starting app I have.

Firefox is quite the opposite.

The difference was enough for me to forgo the whole list of extensions that I used in Firefox (this was before Chrome even had extensions)

I switched about a couple of years ago - maybe things have improved since.

Why is title bar there? I was hoping they'd push the tabs up into the title bar like Chrome and give us more screen space.

View->Toolbars->Menu Bar

That gives you an Opera-style widget on the left side for menu functions and moves tabs to the top.

edit: And Alt will bring the normal menu into view if you need something not on the widget.

Maximize. It puts the tabs in the title bar when you maximize.

Where is this "maximize"? Is it an add-on? A button I'm not seeing?

edit: why the downvotes? I'm at work on my rickety WinXP corporate box, and FF4 definitely does not behave as described above. (Do really think I didn't try that?!)

F11

Maximize as in what your OS allows you to do.

edit: Oh, Windows XP. You'll have to disable the menu bar to get it to work there, I think.

check. That works, thanks!

this should be shipped on be default.

edit: "this" appears to be as yet undefined. Unless ... can someone point me to whatever "maximize" is?

edit: FF4 does not behave as you describe on my WinXP box at work.

Press the little button in the titlebar that makes any window fill the screen.

Note that tabs will appear in the titlebar when maximized on Windows only, for Firefox 4, and only if you have the menu bar hidden. (It's hidden by default in Windows Vista and 7.) Tabs in the titlebar are planned for Mac and Linux too, but weren't ready for this release.

For whatever reason, the voters seem to think I didn't try that before commenting. FF4 does not behave as described on my WinXP box at work.

Hm, don't know what to say. Perhaps disable the menu bar. That did it for me.

Here's what firefox 4 looks like running on windows XP: http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/460/20110322144851800x600...

they probably don't have xp anymore. works fine on 7.

To make it easier to grab the window and move it. You can maximize the window, and since you can't move it anymore once it's maximized, the tabs will move to the right of the Firefox button.

This doesn't work on Linux, due to window manager issues. Perhaps Firefox can do something like Chrome does as a workaround, although Chrome's workaround is awfully heavyweight (it basically reimplements all the functions of the WM).

I like having a title bar, I park collapsed Trillian chat windows up there and I HATE that Chrome doesn't give me space to do that. It's a UI deal breaker for Chrome for me.

It's indeed odd.

The 'title' is the meta element, that is incredibly useful! It deserves attention. Not to be lost.

That's not to say tat I don't like slim tool bars.

I also prefer uniformity across the desktop and this feels like a deviation. Much in the way that a tabbing interface was alien when opera introduced it.

I like tabs, but I'd rather my window manager work with them. But that's just me.

I'm running minefield, and I've noticed some issues in Gmail, with dragging selected text - I think the browser assumes I'm dragging and dropping. Firefox still doesn't squeeze the tab size to fit the window width, which irritates the hell out of me.

Having said that there doesn't seem to be a radical UI overhaul - which is a shame.

Not sure if they work on FF4 (yet), but there are add-ons for that, of course.

I don't mind losing the title bar, since I've long been in the habit of alt+dragging to move windows anyway.

(This is a linux-ism, but well worth installing 3rd party software on OSX/Windows for -- particularly for alt + middle/right-button resizing: no need to screw around landing your mouse on a corner of the window.)

Maximize the window AND disable the menu bar. If you don't disable the menu bar, you don't see the Firefox menu or the tabs in the title bar space.

On my little netbook this is a deal-breaker. It wastes about 1/10 of the screen.

I assume you mean you'd rather the title bar wasn't there - for your net book. Which is a fair comment.

I guess you could run the browser in full screen mode. Though full screen doesn't suit everyone.

Seems like all my previous addons that were used to improve firefox UI have been incorporated into 4.0. Very glad that Vimperator works, the main reason I use firefox. I wouldn't have upgraded if it did not.

You might want to look into https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pentadactyl/ . The description says it's "the next generation of Vimperator by its primary developers". Sounds like Vimperator will stop working sometime soon.

Ive been looking into the addons and both of them have the same update date, whats the difference? they look the same to me (I havent installed both of them since vimperator works well :P )

What did you prefer from FF that wasn't in Opera?

  > The browser's way faster;

That's awesome. Maybe I can go back to using firefox instead of chrome.

The beta 4 was almost faster than chrome in fact.

>Disclaimer: I've been using Opera 11 as my primary browser before I decided to give FF 4.0 a try

The top menu left button in FF now looks exactly like Opera's menu button. Of course, now all browsers look basically the same with almost all UI chrome gone.

Actually it looks quite like Opera in a lot of ways. Even the shading on the buttons on the toolbar. (Windows only, in Linux looks dramatically different.)

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