Firefox: Not A Good Citizen on OS X Lion | Hacker News Reader

Firefox: Not A Good Citizen on OS X Lion

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45 pointsalexknight57 comments

Firefox is not a good citizen on any OS other than Windows.

In Linux, the Firefox button becomes an awkward-looking upside-down tab in the tab bar, because you're apparently not supposed to intrude into the sacrosanct title bar. (What about Chrome?) It also takes quite a bit of tweaking on the distributor's part to make Firefox look and behave like the rest of the OS (e.g. icon theme and font anti-aliasing), though this has gotten better in recent releases.

But most Apple apps like Safari and iTunes aren't good citizens on Windows, either.

Anyway, I think we should have a bit of leniency on web browsers. Part of the reason for the perceived incompatibility is that a web browser is not an ordinary app. A web browser is an environment in which most people spend most of their time. It's almost like an OS in itself, with its own UI paradigms such as tabs and add-on bars. Therefore browser designers put in a lot of effort trying to polish their UI exactly the way they want, and it's not easy to reconcile that with the native UI of several different OSes. It'll take time, especially since all the OSes are in the process of revolutionizing their own UIs.

> Firefox is not a good citizen on any OS other than Windows.

It's not a good citizen on Windows either.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574973

Every instance of a nonnative UI framework ends up being merely tolerated by users. They don't love it because they can tell something is slightly off from native UI. Whether it is a less-than snappy menu dropdown, or imitation fonts, it ends up feeling cheap. So, stop aiming so low and make something that users will love - right to the smallest detail.

I'm not surprised Mozilla took this route, though. They are more focused on openness and freedom on the web, which are also admirable goals.

The Linux problem is a limitation of Linux. (I worked on some similar code in Chrome, which only works 90% and is full of workarounds and hacks.)

For what it's worth,

1. Lion/iOS-style scrollbars are currently enabled on the nightly builds of the "UX" branch, and will hopefully be merged into the mainstream release soon.

2. Lion-native fullscreen landed in Firefox 14, which is the current "Aurora" build. It will enter Beta in 6 weeks, or Stable in 12 weeks.

Yes, all of the above is true as well as smooth scrolling will be enabled by default in Firefox 13.

I'd just like to say that I'm very thankful Firefox has neither invisible scrollbars nor inertial scrolling. F11 is full-screen in Firefox.

Why? You can turn those off globally if you don't like them.

Indeed, and there is no excuse for jerky scrolling and a broken full screen mode.

> there is no excuse for jerky scrolling

Unless those jerks have a 1:1 correspondence to actual user input events

> broken full screen mode

Multiwindow, multiscreen OS supporting only a single maximized window on a single screen, with totally uninformative, pretentious >500ms mandatory transition animation. "Broken"

That’s not how it works. A single app should never try to singlehandedly change the OS. That's just stupid and doesn’t work. Please, self-important developers, don't force me to deal with your personal stupid version of how the OS should work. It's hard enough to deal with the shit that comes out of Apple from time to time.

It’s kinda irrelevant in this case because Mozilla doesn’t actually care about any of this. They are just slow like a snail and incompetent when it come to writing apps for OS X. They don’t want to improve it.

Not that I care.

> a broken full screen mode.

The only broken full screen mode is Lion's. If anything, I am saddened Firefox is switching to that POS.

Agreed. I wish Mozilla would have left an option to retain the current behavior, even if buried in about:config. Lions native fullscreen mode is so much fail it's almost unbelievable that it ever past any internal testing let alone be released to actual customers.

Only in multiple-monitor setups, and for applications that don't support it well, or at all. It's clearly designed for a single display and trackpad gestures, where it works nicely in most cases.

This doesn't excuse applications (e.g., VMware Fusion, sorta-kinda, and then only in some cases, and apparently now Firefox) that are replacing their existing full-screen support that works better in other situations, alas.

Trouble I see is figuring out what a "universally applicable full-screen mode" should even look like in the possible presence of one or more displays arranged arbitrarily, each with one or more virtual desktops. For instance, on my single 27" 16:9 display, I'd prefer browser and e-reader full screen modes with configurable left and right margins, and PDF readers that force portrait documents ONLY into 2-up, non-"continuous" mode, in all these cases with no chrome whatsoever (even when browsing with tabs), while in VMware, I'd prefer an option to choose either Lion-style or "classic" full screen, as I like both for different applications. But, on the whole, imperfect as it remains, I prefer the Lion set-up to Snow Leopard's in most cases. If I ever have room on my desktop for TWO 27" displays, I might say the opposite (and did, in fact, when I had two smaller screens rather than my current set-up).

And both are better than the Windows 8 preview's "full-screen only for crippled, tablet-style applications" model, because, e.g., I WANT Remote Desktop to stay connected in the background (to be fair, though, Windows 7 and 8 do have better built-in "fullish screen" window management features than any OS X version, but this is very easy to fix in OS X with either AppleScript or third-party tools).

Short of writing my own window manager, Web browser, etc., I'd personally be very, very hard to please all the time. Case in point: should Apple support TWO multi-touch trackpads with independent, configurable gestures? Probably not, but that didn't stop me from finding a workaround (hint: Wacom's latest tablets have gesture support).

Heck, I've seriously considered wiring up a MIDI pedal controller as a hyper key in Emacs, but I certainly don't expect any OS to support this out-of-the-box...

People actually use full screen mode on a browser? I thought we were past only being able to see one application at a time, with multiple monitors and higher-resolution screens, I don't understand why you would want to full screen most applications.

The only application I ever full screen is iTerm2, and that's only so I can get enough screen room to open 10 split windows in vim.

My primary machine is an 11" MacBook Air. Its resolution is 1366x768. Full-screen windows are still quite valuable in that form factor, especially so when using mail clients, office software, etc.

Adding to that, I've no problem whatsoever with Mozilla's choice to not implement these (braindamaged without exception, IMHO) features, as these choices are partially what drives me to use Firefox, and the only feedback Apple might ever listen to with regard to drunk scrolling and suchlike is user uptake.

Here Firefox enables me to vote with my feet.

Friend, using terms like "braindamaged" is really not that constructive. I've seen an uptake in these kinds of posts lately on HN, and I wish you would all tone it down.

Just be polite, rational, constructive and helpful. Only lazy people turn to these spiteful remarks.

Telling the hacker community not to use the term "braindamaged" is one of the most braindamaged things I can think of.

It is sad that a large percentage of people who seek common interests can be so dark to each other. Why does disrespect and self pride seem, at least in the nerd culture today, to be tolerated by so many? I have been in environments where it was cool to be a bully but where the stereotypical computer scientist are known to have been bullied at some point in his/her own life, I am surprised to find such negativity here. I know I shoot myself in the foot when I decide to read the comments from the feeds but maybe I am just looking for a bit of chat and thoughts from fellow people who share my eagerness. I look for guidance and influence from people like the regular viewers on HN.

You do not know it all. You started from somewhere. Your opinion is an opinion. If you are more fortunate in your experience or knowledge then the contributor above you, do good with it. These logical statements above should be a mantra before submitting a comment anywhere online. The web can not be dictated or controlled but a common culture and mass influence can make it a happier place within its communities.

You are making many faulty assumptions, attacking a culture you clearly do not understand in the least. To call something braindamaged in hacker culture is well understood as a personal value judgement with certain connotations. It has absolutely nothing to do with bullying, "darkness", or negativity.

If anything, it is you who is being a bully, barging in and telling us how we should behave without even grasping who we are and how we are behaving now.

Hmm, I humbly admit I was ignorant with the terminology. Obviously I am not deep in the culture you speak of. I am sorry that I pushed my opinion under your comment. These thoughts have been building from other situations. I should have seen this coming.

Maybe I "do not understand in the least". I personally still feel what I said has some merit and was not hard to see that I meant to inspire positivity more so then to come across as judgmental. I think you and me both know I was not bullying you to be something you all are not. I say "all" because you spoke of "we". If you are justified in saying "we" and can't relate/respect what I am saying, then I don't think I want to be part of your circle.

I don't know about this particular series of comments, but I second him on the idea that often some comments on HN smell like "If I troll harder I'm gonna look cooler". It somewhat degrades the overall quality IMO.

But among friends, more flamey rhetoric is acceptable.

Inertia scrolling and auto-hide scrollbars are both features that are easily disabled system-wide in the Lion System Preferences (General for scrollbar visibility, Universal Access -> Mouse & Trackpad -> Trackpad Options for inertia scrolling).

Inertial scrolling felt bad to me at first, but I've come to enjoy it after giving it a fair shot. This is often the case with UI / design changes.

(I also remember being convinced that Win9x-style aliased font rendering was the pinnacle and shunned ClearType and co. for a few years)

Haha, ClearType did suck one some monitors - it looked horrible on some CRTs and earlier LCDs (I clearly remember the pain in my eyes :-)...

Amen to that. Unless I'm on a tiny screen where every pixel counts (i.e. mobile), don't make me guess WTF I should click in a vast empty white area to make the scrollbar appear (I'm looking at you, new gmail).

Firefox was never the best Cocoa (i.e. OSX) implementation of Gecko, Firefox aims to be the best CROSS PLATFORM implementation of Gecko. Camino has always been the OSX optimised browser, but unfortunately they don't have the same level of support and they can't do as much as they would like.

While I have more then enough gripes about the mozilla project, this just comes off whiney. Have you checked Bugzilla? Have you discussed on the Mailing list? Is there a Request for enhancement? Is their code in the repo that is about to drop in an upcoming release?

From memory the firefox UI is coded in XUL, so the actual changes are to the XUL controls, which have to be made as close to identical between all supported platforms. Not in the case of look, but in the scroll gradiant and event chain.

While its easier to take pot shots from your blog and HN you could actually help the situation by advocating it as a priority to the developers by talking to them, by testing code and even contributing. People have already pointed out that most of your complaints are already coming in later versions.

Wow, it seems like he read the release notes for Firefox 13 (now in beta) and wrote a rant about how those features aren't in 12. See http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0beta/releasenotes/.

That the UI additions are missing is a deal breaker for the author is fair enough, we each like to use our machines our own way, but Lion is less than a year old, and Firefox is not a small product, so it seems a bit harsh to call out missing UI candy that is completely unrelated to the softwares core purpose, displaying web pages well, after pointing out the amount of effort that has just been put in to improving that core functionality.

Personally I went back to Snow Leopard as I think these very Lion features was a step backward in usability for my tastes. I don't like the disappearing scroll bars, and mission control is a poor replacement for spaces/expose.

An aside: Lion's fullscreen support is awful. I have my TV hooked up to my computer and can't fullscreen anything that uses Lion's fullscreen API.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17941/how-do-i-run-...

Lion's fullscreen support is a security hazard as well. Leave something full screen, close your laptop, and come back to it hours later, and you can open up your laptop without it asking for a password.

Pretty sure that's not intended.

Isn't that handled by a different setting? I don't have a laptop to test with.

I've never seen that. I use lion fullscreen mode all the time and i am very certain that my macbook still asks for a password after waking up.

I've had it happen to me several times. It's always been jarring. Last time it happened, it was Preview that had been full screen.

I have to say, while Chrome has a few issues on OSX, I was really impressed with how quickly they added full screening, Lion-style scrollbars, elastic scrolling, and surprisingly polished two-finger swipe gestures. Hopefully Firefox will get up to speed soon.

I mostly agree, but I find Chrome's two-finger swipe gestures to be terrible. It's really hard to "cancel" a swipe if you've already (accidentally) started swiping.

That doesn't really make any sense. The two finger swipe in chrome is the only implementation of the two finger swipe I know of that gives you ANY opportunity to cancel the swipe once it has started. You can also completely control the swipe by not removing your fingers from the trackpad, unlike the 3 finger swipe, which is instantaneous.

I see that they've updated it since I last used Chrome. It's better but not perfect, although that might just be a matter of getting used to it. I expect to have to swipe longer before it goes back and I expect the same momentum effect that is all over Lion.

I don't understand why they don't simply use Safari's default behavior, it's not like Apple has a patent on physics and smooth animations.

The two-finger swipe gesture is horrobile on chrome. The swipe occurs way too fast and I wish there would be an option to adjust the sensibility in chrome.

Chrome's biggest issue on OS X is that it's ugly. Its UI looks like Chrome on Windows and Linux, but not like OS X. The tabs are the wrong shape, the wrong color, and use the wrong font size. The latter two complaints apply equally to the bookmarks bar. At least on my machine (Chrome 18.0.1025 on Mountain Lion), the URL bar is hideous. It's too high, and there is more padding underneath the text than above it, and the focus ring is wrong. While Safari's panels are neutral gray with translucency, Chrome's panels are opaque and stark white. I have tried to use it, but it makes my eyes hurt.

While Mozilla may be slow to implement Apple's new UI features, at least they can paint the UI widgets properly.

I find Firefox has much smoother scrolling for me on OS X, compared to Chrome. The rubber band effect for me normally is quite a slowdown.

The rubber band is terrible, I wish it would stay out of the desktop OS.

That's generally the problem when multi-platform software wants to "feel" the same on every platform. It just doesn't work. Mac users are used to a different UI, so even if you think that you approach is better, just don't do it. When it comes to usability, try to do it how everyone else developing for the platform is doing it.

It's an opensource project run by a nonprofit.... nothing is stopping you from contributing ... did you even file a bug report or look one up regarding this issue?

not even apple has updated all of it's software to support these new features.. hell they can't even get xcode to stop crashing constantly yet...

Oh to be young and think (or project that you think) you know everything!

(..says the old curmudgeon who realizes that despite all efforts to the contrary, he's getting increasingly less knowledgeable percentage-wise of what's out there. However you can't fault the kid for trying!)

For what it's worth, the rubber band thing having a patent on it, I am not sure shipping it in Firefox is only about implementing it. I do know sometimes patches wait in bugzilla for legal approval, and I do know implementing native-like features often involve much more work than most people think. It makes me a bit sad to see that people judge the entire browsing experience in term of how native it feels rather than how well standards are implemented and what actual features are provided (not the look of a scrollbar, which is a matter of taste and generates debates that don't interest me much). There is some work in progress for more UI smoothness in firefox. Using xul instead of native UI has its pros and cons, but reducing the dependencies between UI code and the OS-specific APIS enables Firefox to be available to many platforms which is valuable in my opinion. It looks to me like people in general prefer to complain on blogs and comments rather than doing the same on bug trackers were it is actually useful and where one can get feedback from the guys that actually know about the stuff.

Since fullscreen and disappearing scroll bars both suck, and inertial scrolling appears to work fine for me, this article is moot.

Amen brother. Preach it.

A parallel article could be written on how Firefox is the best browser because careful attention has been paid not not ruining the user experience by implementing widely acknowledged design errors in Lion.

Unless I'm mistaking inertial scrolling has nothing to do with it bouncing back specifically, it's inertial meaning having inertia, the tendency for something in motion in this case tr window to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Bouncing when you reach the end would be a simulation of elasticity not enertial

I've followed Mozilla.org since the project was first announced in 1998, and I've been a Mac OS X user since 2004.

Unfortunately, they've routinely shipped OS X versions of Firefox with show stoppingly-bad performance and UI bugs, and they've been far too conservative in addressing such issues. For years I rolled my own builds of Firefox just to include patches for important bugs that had been left languishing in bugzilla. (I see they finally fixed horizontal scrolling, only 7 years after two-finger scrolling was first introduced. Nice.)

As soon as Safari was able to match Firefox's performance, which was about 5 years ago, I left Firefox behind for good. Firefox was always, and probably still is, a fine browser on Windows, but the OS X version of Firefox is second class and really only suitable for Firefox superfans.

I'm curious if there are any statistics on what percentage of Firefox users are on OSX.

Perhaps we can approximate. Here's Firefox's user feedback dashboard:

http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?q=&product=firefox&v...

According to this, it looks like 5% of Firefox users are on OSX (or at least 5% of the users who care enough to submit feedback). I've heard (anecdotally) that Mozilla is planning on supporting the features mentioned in the OP, but perhaps it's just not a high priority due to the percentage of their total users that it would benefit (of course, this is a circular argument).

As much as I hate to say it, Firefox is not that good on Windows either - I'm kind of tired of it using 1.5 GB of RAM and lagging most of the time. If not for the awesome Adblock and NoScript plugin and the AwesomeBar, I'd use Chrome all the time...

wow, this page sets 20 cookies, loads 16 external javascripts, and has a 280kB image file in the banner. Just to deliver 7 paragraphs of text.

What bothers me most is that if I'm using multiple desktops in OS X, Firefox is in all of them. There's no defence of this as a UX decision.

The only good browser for mac is chrome.

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