16 ms·

Firefox 4 is here

670 points by potomak 16y ago

d0m 16y ago
Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?
- Dobbs 16y ago
  The Tab Candy (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/ http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/) feature is pretty cool. The big thing about Firefox is the Addons: FireBug, NoScript, Adblock Plus, and Pentadactyl (was known as Vimperator) all add up to a fantastic experience. With Firefox 4 I get the fantastic experience with something much closer to Chrome's speed and tab usability. I don't know if I would say Firefox 4 is quite there yet but it is much much closer.
  - eftpotrm 16y ago
    I'm curious; in what way do you prefer Chrome's tab handling? For me it's one of the worst things about Chrome; this window currently has ten tabs open and that's at the _very_ low end for me. With Firefox I can see what I've got open no matter how many I've got because of the pop-down list and the scrolling bar, while Chrome just mashes the list into invisibility.
    - darklajid 16y ago
      Also - Tree Style Tab [1] is a must have for me (on 3.x for now, just checking if I'll upgrade now or wait for some of my plugins to migrate first) 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
      - eapen 16y ago
        I just plugged this in another reply. The latest and greatest can be found at the author's site. btw... TabCandy is now called Panorama.
      - dairem 16y ago
        Yes, I'm using Tree Style Tabs on FF4 now, it's fantastic once you go over 20 or so tabs.
        mistermann 16y ago
        Do you have no issues with it on 4? Mine is very buggy, won't open child (or any other) tabs properly, they open non-visible.
      - holygoat 16y ago
        Give Vertical Tabs a shot. It's faster, albeit no tree handling. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...
    - rufugee 16y ago
      Here here. Chrome's tab handling is a nightmare. I hope FF4 will give me a reason to switch back and get access to what should be simple things (vertical tab lists) but appear to be difficult to provide in Chrome.
      - philikon 16y ago
        For a fast and simple vertical tabs implementation, see https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/
    - Dobbs 16y ago
      The big thing is just the smoothness of handling tabs. Closing a group of tabs in Chrome is a pleasure because of how it moves the tabs when you close one. Also grabbing a tab and moving it into a new window is a very clean/smooth operation. Firefox has improved a lot. 4 is a fantastic piece of software but it isn't quite as polished as Chrome is. Despite these issues I greatly prefer Firefox over Chrome. Chrome might be more polished but Firefox is (imho) a much more powerful piece of software and at the end of the day I care much more for power than polish.
      - planckscnst 16y ago
        I use Multiple Tab Handler. Closing a group of tabs in FF is a simple as selecting them (click, shift+click) and closing them. This is an example of why I love Firefox - it is way more permissive with what extensions can do.
  - Tomek_ 16y ago
    Maybe it's only me but TabCandy/Panorama feels slow and clumsy, and there's too much mouse clicking/moving involved in operating it (or so it seems after 5 minute of trying it, maybe a matter of getting used to/discovering keyboard shortcuts). I like Opera's solution more (is less revolutionary, and thus easier to adapt to probably). But other than that first impressions are good: feels faster and more responsive (at last!). Maybe I will give it some more tries to see if it will survive a stress test of a normal day-to-day use with tons of tabs opened, etc.
  - jfager 16y ago
    Pentadactyl is not the new name for Vimperator, it's the name of a fork of Vimperator. Both projects still exist and are both still being actively developed. In my experience, at least as of last Friday, you have to use a nightly to get a working version of Pentadactyl, while the version of Vimperator up on the Mozilla add-ons site is fine. I'm personally using Vimperator, just b/c I haven't yet had an itch that it doesn't scratch, and I'm not really clear on what Pentadactyl actually does better (because I'm too lazy to figure it out myself and haven't been able to find a current bullet-pointed list that tells me).
- eapen 16y ago
  Worth a try? Yes. Better Tab handling and has the ability to hold tabs in "groups" and a "panorama" view which allows you to view all tabs across groups. The awesome bar has also improved significantly and has some smart features (like the option of tab switching instead of opening a new tab when you already have a URL open). Better Add-ons management interface and some add-ons work without a restart of the browser. Websockets disabled (for security) I still prefer Chrome though. PS. I've been using the FF 4 beta version for a 3-4 months now and probably dont remember the other significant changes.
  - icegreentea 16y ago
    I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.
    - sid0 16y ago
      It is invaluable when I'm doing research or development and I want to "swap out" something that I'm working on to focus on something else. Since that takes up the vast majority of my time -- yeah, I use it a lot.
    - mziulu 16y ago
      I do - kind of. Since I don't have Firefox set to reopen the last batch of tabs I had opened the last time I was using it, Panorama is kind of useless in my case, since I would mainly use it to keep tabs grouped by content, and it would be a chore to redo the grouping at each restart. Still, it comes in handy to keep reddit/hn on one group and work related stuff on another groups and quickly switch between the two by doing Ctrl - Shift - ~. A big optimization was to set browser.panorama.animate_zoom to false in about:config. That animation was killing the flow in my case.
      - sid0 16y ago
        Session restore saves your tab groups.
- RossM 16y ago
  Different (Chrome-inspired) UI; faster (rendering speed) compared to previous versions and some techy-things like hardware acceleration. They also have synchronisation built-in now. I'm also a Chrome user but I'd quite like to switch back if they've sorted out the chronic lag issues I've always had. Update: In ff4 now, looks and feels great, if a little sluggish with page scrolling. I don't know, Chrome just feels slicker. Update 2: Just froze up loading a flash game, shame.
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    I have been using chrome on a Mac and it felt so sluggish that I looked at ff4 betas to improve it. The ff betas feel much more responsive and the rc was even more so. It might have something to do with my mbp having trouble with the high res external monitor but anecdotally that's what I have seen.
    - tvon 16y ago
      It's not my main browser but I don't seem to have issues with Chrome on OSX, I'd suggest maybe purging your install (or at least it seems you're experiencing something unusual).
      - weaksauce 16y ago
        It was working ok until I got a 30" monitor. Then it became a choppy scroll and sluggish. Sluggish I can handle more than the scrolling.
        ephemient 16y ago
        Are you on OS X Leopard? My understanding is that the out-of-process rendering used by Chrome forces blitting the whole page from the child process to the parent chrome on systems predating Snow Leopard.
        weaksauce 16y ago
- sktrdie 16y ago
  The startup time of Chrome is hard to beat - I'll stick with Chrome for now.
  - joebananas 16y ago
    Just how often do you start your browser?
    - michaelcampbell 16y ago
      chuckle This is the exact same thread I used to see years ago, except it was the startup time of vi vs. emacs. Being an emacs guy, I would generally remark something like, "yeah, I remember the ONE time a few months ago I started emacs when the sparc had to be rebooted for new memory."
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - u48998 16y ago
    There is no startup time in Chrome, it is always running even if you close it.
  - melling 16y ago
    According to LifeHacker, Firefox 4 is on par with Chrome. http://lifehacker.com/#!5784396/browser-speed-tests-firefox-4-internet-explorer-9-chrome-11-and-more http://lifehacker.com/#!5784396/browser-speed-tests-firefox-... If startup speed is your main criteria, you want Opera.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  * Faster startup, more responsive, faster JavaScript with the new Jaegermonkey JIT. * New, less cluttered UI. * Built-in sync of bookmarks/tabs/history/passwords, fully encrypted on the client (unlike Chrome's sync which encrypts passwords only). * Sync your bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and form data to Firefox for Android! See also this thread for answers from various members of the Firefox team: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the_firefox_development_team_and/c1k6dex http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the...
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    Maybe it's just me but every FF UI I've seen looks slightly clunky and this one while better is still the ugliest of the next generation browsers (though Safari gives it a run for it's money). And the menu the Firefox button in the top left brings up is simply horrible. It's like someone said "I like the fact that the Windows Start button looks and acts differently to every other menu or dialog anywhere, but wouldn't it be good if it looked a bit more like a menu to make it more confusing and was generally a bit uglier and more amateurish".
  - bretthoerner 16y ago
    But aren't those all features of Chrome? Wouldn't a happy Chrome user want to know about something FF4 does that Chrome doesn't? It's very clear that 4 > 3.6, the features you listed are awesome ... they just aren't very appealing to a current Chrome user.
    - grayrest 16y ago
      The primary reason to use FF is that you like a particular addon, you like FF's expose over Chrome's, or you like how FF does the location bar (which is why I use FF). There's not a ton of differentiation between the two any more.
    - mbrubeck 16y ago
      I was answering the question from above "what are the differences from the current version?" As for the differences from Chrome, those are mostly the same as they've always been: Deeper extensibility, more customization points, and made by a non-profit organization dedicated to openness.
- hasenj 16y ago
  * Real ad blocking (more generally: real extensions). Other points (not so major for most): * Audio api (allows you to synthesize audio) * Better language support (Chrome on Linux has tons of issues with non-latin languages)
  - drzaiusapelord 16y ago
    I find that Chrome's extensions are quite real, feature rich, and stable. The last time I used FF, massive memory leaks were blamed on "your extensions." Not to mention I'm not even sure which IETab extension is real anymore. One is dead, the new one is nagware, etc. Oh, and I like that flash is sandboxed and autoupdated. I like a built-in PDF reader. I can't imagine going back to the stone age of browsers with FF or IE and downloading all the various readers and plugins for a basic web experience (Adobe reader, flash, etc). I'm sure FF4 is good by Firefox standards, but Google is doing something very new with Chrome. The out of the box experience is stellar and end users are secure because they really have no idea how to update flash or adobe reader on their own.
    - hasenj 16y ago
      Well, AdBlocking in chrome is really weak. Also, I actually don't like the built-in PDF reader in Chrome. Scrolling was weird in it last time I checked.
      - metageek 16y ago
        Yeah, personally, I'd rather stick with evince, and have the same PDF viewer whether I open a document from the browser or from the command line.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      I find that Chrome's extensions are quite real, feature rich, and stable. For a lot of basic stuff, yes. GMail checker, Adblocking (afaik), simple stuff that just requires the equivalent of a Greasemonkey userscript or a button. However, for deeper stuff that really changes the UI of the browser, Chrome is no where near Firefox. Take a look at TreeStyleTab, DownThemAll, Pentadactyl, and similar feature rich extensions. Those simply cannot be done in Chrome as is. There are some weak alternatives, but they don't do half of what Firefox's do. Vimium has issues with focus and nothing like Pentadactyl's customization; Vertical tabs doesn't allow proper grouping, UI, or options; I don't think DownThemAll's separate window is even possible on Chrome but I could be wrong. This isn't to score points for Firefox; it's a serious weakness in Chrome that's the main thing that's kept me from switching. I don't know if Google intends to allow this kind of extensibility, but damn I hope they do.
- ootachi 16y ago
  IMHO the biggest thing that Firefox 4 has over Chrome is graphics acceleration via Direct2D on Windows and GL retained layers on the Mac. Chrome has neither in stable builds. Graphics acceleration helps scrolling performance in particular and is what allows things like the Panorama zoom animation to look smooth.
  - m3koval 16y ago
    I am not sure if it is in the stable builds, but Chrome dev builds have had an option to enable GPU accelerated compositing in chrome://flags for some time. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed any performance with it on or off. You can read more about it here: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/desig...
- bgray 16y ago
  Right. Is it just me or does it seem that most (if not all) of the new features in this release were inspired by Chrome? What is Firefox doing to move the web browsing experience forward?
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    Some of the best features in Firefox 4 are new web technologies like HTTP Strict Transport Security, WebGL, hardware acceleration, CSS3 calc() and any(), the HTML5 parser, and IndexedDB. Many of these are not yet in Chrome. See http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/technology/ http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/technology/ for a longer list.
    - bgray 16y ago
      Upvoted. Thanks for the link!
- csel 16y ago
  For me, search on the address bar is the most important feature that I love about Chrome. IE9 has the same thing now. I am not sure why Firefox 4 did not put search on the address bar. So for a Chrome user, you will greatly miss that feature. :( Until FF integrates that, I am back to using Chrome.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    You can search from the address bar in Firefox 4, but you won't get search suggestions as you type. If you want to change this, try: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ (And you can use the "Customize toolbars" window to remove the search bar if you want.) Firefox intentionally does not show suggestions in the address bar by default, because we don't want to send everything you type there to a third party.
    - csel 16y ago
      thanks man - I just don't understand why FF didn't just integrate that as a default feature.
dlokshin 16y ago
Will Firefox 3.x auto update to 4?
- jrnkntl 16y ago
  Just checked, and it doesn't (Mac)
- unwind 16y ago
  Mine didn't seem to (Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit). The first thing I did after manually downloading and installing was to re-visit http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/ http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/, posted here a few days ago. Amazing.
- user9756 16y ago
  win7, I tried update (using the menu) with no luck, but the install process was easy (installed it in my old ff folder and it upgraded everything) and all my settings were kept. Some of my plug-ins are no longer compatible though...
- nhoss2 16y ago
  IT works!! go to help -> check for updates
- sid0 16y ago
  Historically major updates have been offered only after a minor release or two.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Yes, but not yet. We won't start pushing advertised updates to Firefox 3.x users until a bit after the launch, to give time for any late-breaking issues to shake out.
- makecheck 16y ago
  It updated to 4 for me (on Mac), although it goes in sequential order; e.g. if there's any 3.x you didn't get it seems to update that first, then on relaunch another update-check gets version 4.
bryanlarsen 16y ago
Awesome timing. The latest version of chrome (10.0.648.15, Linux x86_64) hangs on Google Reader and doesn't work with Flash for me. That gives me an excuse to play with FF4 rather than futzing around downgrading chrome.
codejoust 16y ago
I've been using the betas over chrome for a few months now. They've redone the UI, it's stabler, less memory intensive, and the UI is completely redone. It's definitely worth checking out even if you enjoy chrome.
stianan 16y ago
Why is text aliased and ugly in Firefox 4?
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  This is usually a graphics driver problem. Try updating your drivers or disable hardware acceleration in the Firefox preferences (under Advanced: General: Browsing).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - henrikschroder 16y ago
    Disabling hardware acceleration worked for me. I'm on Windows 7, and now, with it disabled, it looks like Cleartype is working as it should. With hardware acceleration enabled, it looks like Cleartype isn't working, but Firefox doing its own anti-aliasing, and doing a worse job of it. Does that sound reasonable?
    - stianan 16y ago
      I don't understand why getting anti-aliasing right is so hard. Just render text a few times bigger, use some kind of low-pass filter (box filter will do) and down-sample it. It's what every graphics program does. That would put an end to using Photoshop or Flash for headlines just to make them look decent.
      - wladimir 16y ago
        Because that's a very CPU and memory inefficient way of doing it. If you value performance, you don't want to render something "a few times bigger" filter it and then scale it down. You want to render the text and anti-alias it at the same time. And that's not a trivial thing.
      - henrikschroder 16y ago
        Cleartype uses subpixel rendering as well, I'm not so sure you can achieve that by simply down-sampling a larger render.
nickolai 16y ago
I find javascript refreshingly faster compared to 3.5 . I no longer even get the "unresponsive script" messages when using the usual lot of JS-abusing pages our "tools support" team has cooked up.
- code_duck 16y ago
  I've observed a major improvement along those lines as well. Sites like news.yahoo.com don't make the browser freak out anymore, hurrah!
torsy 16y ago
For the devs, you can now run Firebug in FF 4. http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jim_h 16y ago
I hope the addons also get updated for FF4. I upgraded to FF4, but I miss having the CS Lite addon. 'CS Lite' lets me manage cookie permissions for current site without having to go into the preference and go through the long process. Very useful since I usually block cookies and only turn on when needed. The reviews for CS Monster doesn't seem as good.
- JustinSeriously 16y ago
  Sometimes you can work around this. Find the install.rdf file for the plugin, and change the maxVersion variable to "4.*". It doesn't always work, but I've had good luck with it.
  - jim_h 16y ago
    Thanks. I'll give it a try later tonight.
cryptoz 16y ago
I'm a web dev and need to keep 3.x around. Can I easily install these two side-by-side or is that going to cause trouble for me? I'd love to use FF4 as my main browser at work (well, in competition with Chrome anyway) but I can't risk messing up 3.
- ksdsh 16y ago
  You may use the portable version of firefox from portableapps.com.
- sid0 16y ago
  Yes, just install it to a different folder. The only thing you need to make sure is to use different profiles for 3 and 4. You should edit the 3 shortcut to point to a dedicated web dev profile.
- harph 16y ago
  I have Pale Moon (http://www.palemoon.org http://www.palemoon.org) installed for this reason - it is completely separate from the standard Firefox.
MichaelStubbs 16y ago
After having some serious problems with the beta, I'm actually very impressed with this release. Even on my parents' old ex-council computer (1ghz P4, 512mb RAM, integrated graphics) this release is lightning fast!
- cpach 16y ago
  Neat! Seems like a leap in performance then.
techsavys 16y ago
You can download the Firefox 4 Final from here : http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final-downloads-available-though-its-not-officially-launched-configure-your-latest-firefox-to-run-older-add-ons.html http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final-downloads-...
- mtogo 16y ago
  Or you could download it right from mozilla's own website, http://firefox.com http://firefox.com and bypass the blogspam.
tutanosh 16y ago
Hopefully we won't have to wait long for Firefox 5 cause Chrome is not sitting still :)
- holygoat 16y ago
  Three months.
  - bryanlarsen 16y ago
    We'll believe it when we see it, but we're definitely rooting for you.
famousactress 16y ago
I've been on the FF4 beta for some time (the web app we work on is currently only supported on firefox). My honest assessment? FF4 is a huge improvement over FF3, specifically in terms of performance. It's still not Chrome though. Firebug works great in it (better than it does in FF3). So yeah, if you've been using FF3 for web-dev or to browse, you're about to get a major upgrade. If you're a Chrome user I don't know of anything that would make FF4 especially attractive.
- rufugee 16y ago
  I don't know about you, but using Chrome has always given me this unsettling feeling that somewhere in Google's server farm, a machine is collecting everything I do and linking it to my other activity (gmail, gdocs, etc). It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. I just don't like giving a behemoth like Google access to my complete internet history, even though the most harmful thing it could collect on me is how many HN tabs I have open during the work day.
  - holygoat 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's the case :D Chrome's location bar provides everything you _type_ to Google, and using its sync feature gives them all of your bookmarks and history.
    - slig 16y ago
      > Chrome's location bar provides everything you _type_ to Google That can be changed on about:flags > sync feature gives them all of your bookmarks and history. Unless you don't use Gmail and do all your websearch using Incognito, I don't see that as a problem.
      - code_duck 16y ago
        You can just turn off suggestions in the preferences. I don't think you need to go to the about: settings.
DzHiBaS 16y ago
tab key in form elements is not working. or it's just for me ?
- holygoat 16y ago
  Probably just you. There could be a Flash embed in the page that's capturing the keystroke...
DarkShikari 16y ago
The new "menu in the upper left" seems to be rather badly designed. It's missing the "View" menu entirely, which makes it impossible for me to view non-ASCII/Unicode websites. It took me about 5 minutes of searching and frantically right-clicking to re-enable the old menu, which of course still had the View menu. On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running off of an 8-inch floppy to a Core 2 on an SSD.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Character encoding options are now in the "Web Developer" sub-menu of the Firefox menu. (Weird, I know.) UPDATE: This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this. You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.
  - DarkShikari 16y ago
    This may confuse the few hundred million users whose languages don't use Roman letters and weren't told about this move...
    - hasenj 16y ago
      I'm a user of such a language (Arabic) and by now all websites I care about use utf8, so the character encoding is a problem from the past as far as I'm concerned. I'd be really surprised if there are still sites that don't use utf8.
      - DarkShikari 16y ago
        Japan still uses Shift-JIS for practically everything, much to the chagrin of anyone else in the world looking to use their applications.
        16y ago
lordlarm 16y ago
Am I the only one that does not understand why Firefox still has a 'Google search' field at the left? Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them - at least give me the possibility to hide it. (And I am aware of the possibility so search in other sites than google, but I 'never' want to do that.)
- regularfry 16y ago
  Mozilla made the decision that it was better to make it absolutely clear to the user when they were making an ordinary web request, and when they were sending trackable information to a third party.
- gulbrandr 16y ago
  > Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them I've been asking myself this question many, many times. You can hide the search field: right-click on the toolbar > customize > drag/drop the search inside the window > done.
- narag 16y ago
  You're not the only one. I use Seamonkey instead because this and other similar annoyances.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Why not just remove it through "Customize"? You can just right click on any empty spot in the tool bar, click Customize, and then remove the search box. Wouldn't that be easier?
    - narag 16y ago
      The annoyance is the lack of search functionality in the address bar, not the presence of the search bar.
- holygoat 16y ago
  Everything you type in Chrome's location bar is sent to Google, most likely unencrypted. Every single character. If you want to turn this behavior on in Firefox, you can do so with a simple add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ but it's off by default because of the MASSIVE privacy implications.
giu 16y ago
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
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  >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.
  - train_robber 16y ago
    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.)
- pldpld 16y ago
  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.
  - jamii 16y ago
    On my little netbook this is a deal-breaker. It wastes about 1/10 of the screen.
huhtenberg 16y ago
And to mark the occasion FF4 RC2 just crashed on me twice in a row. Are there any crashing issues fixed in the production release compared to RC2? Also, the IE-style reload button (at the right end of the address field) is too small and awkwardly positioned. I never realized how often it is actually used.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  RC2 is bit-for-bit identical to the final release - we did not make any changes after RC2. You can right-click the reload button and choose "Customize" and drag it to a different location if you want. (It will become a full-sized button.) You can actually rearrange/remove/add any of the toolbar items this way.
  - huhtenberg 16y ago
    Thanks for the hint. FF3 had a problem with gradually slowing down to a crawl. Clicking on the link would take few seconds to register, switching between tabs or from another app to FF would also cause FF to appear frozen for several seconds, etc. Submitted a ticket regarding this, got multiple follow-up comments from other users, but never from a dev. I realize you have a volume to deal with, but on my end it looks like noone cares. FF4 still has a milder version of the problem, but in a sub-second range. It now crashes though, so not sure what's worse. Also, unrelated to the above, for some reason Alt-PrtSc does not work, it's FF4 on XP. It is supposed to make a screenshot of a focused window and put it on a clipboard, and it worked with FF3... which is weird, because it's Windows' native function, not Firefox's.
    - mbrubeck 16y ago
      You might want to try running in a fresh profile, to see if anything in your old profile is causing the problem: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/ http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/ Sorry about your unanswered bug - it's pretty hard for us to address general performance bugs that don't have specific steps to reproduce. We have to focus on fixing what we can see or measure, and hope that it fixes what users are seeing too.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- makecheck 16y ago
  Are you sure it "started" your current version, or did you have an old window open somewhere? By default, Firefox sends a new-window message to any running Firefox instead of spawning a new one. Try killing all existing Firefox windows (e.g. "killall firefox" or "pkill firefox") and run it again.
  - retube 16y ago
    Aha, genius yes that was it. I thought I had closed everything but obviously not. Cheers.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
brown9-2 16y ago
Does anyone have JavaScript performance benchmarks yet against Chrome?
- anonymous1234 16y ago
  http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/
diptanu 16y ago
More importantly: Is FireBug available yet for FireFox 4?
- holygoat 16y ago
  Yes! http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/
eftpotrm 16y ago
I'm hopeful for the speed improvements; I was having issues with 3.6.x in that and so far 4 seems good but I've not really stressed it. Otherwise, confess first impressions are less happy. Moving the tab bar has left it stranded adjacent to neither the edge of the window nor the page which makes it less easy to quickly grab sight of for me, and I seem to have lost the shortcut for the search box which I actually _used_ - if this replicated the old suite's behaviour of location bar searching outside the history I'd mind less, but it doesn't. Having to grab the pointer every time I want to search instead of Ctrl-E doesn't seem a win to me :-(
- Iris 16y ago
  Ctrl-K seems to work for selecting the search bar in the v.4.0.
  - eftpotrm 16y ago
    Thanks; I wonder why they changed it but didn't put a tooltip on the component advertising the new shortcut? I'm sure that used to be there on at least some older versions of Firefox.
    - starwed 16y ago
      Ctrl+k has always worked, it is not new. (And as long as I can remember has been the "primary" short-cut.) They wanted Ctrl+e to be available for tab group functionality: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592183 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592183 We can kill old keyboard shortcuts. There are two for focusing the search box (ctrl/cmd + e, ctrl/cmd + k) and technically only one is needed. Many of these things are here for legacy reasons supporting users of IE5 and Netscape 3. That can, thankfully, go away.
joakin 16y ago
Please help and advice your friends and family to update :) Lets help mozilla!
- aw3c2 16y ago
  No, I will push that moment into the future as far as possible. Developers underestimate the trouble of "normal people" to adjust to GUIs and then even more to drastic changes in those. At least half of my "customers" for pc support will be rendered helpless once this upgrade comes.
jmcnevin 16y ago
I'm a little conflicted about the Firefox Sync feature. On the one hand: yay! On the other... it's a lot more difficult to set up sync in Firefox than in Chrome. I got to work today and was dismayed to discover that I couldn't simply login to Mozilla's server and sync up my bookmarks from home, but that I needed the sync key from my computer at home to get this working. Boo. That, or you need to have the devices you want to sync in the same place and use a Netflix-like "Add Device" feature. I get it. Encrypting locally is more secure, but they've made this system SO secure that it's actually irritating. I wish I at least had the option of foregoing this sync key business. Anyway, now I know to put my sync key on Dropbox so this doesn't happen again.
- holygoat 16y ago
  Yes, it's a little more complex than Chrome's sync... but Chrome's sync keeps most of your data in cleartext on Google's servers, and even their optional encryption is relatively weak (low-entropy key derived from your password). I don't like that. Mozilla can't see your data if we tried -- at that includes if we get a subpoena. Firefox Sync's 128-bit secret key has to be transferred somehow. I think that's worth the extra effort, and you only need to do the setup once. (If you don't trust Mozilla, you can even run your own Sync server.) Please don't _keep_ your sync key on Dropbox. It's important!
u48998 16y ago
Two things: 1. Sync is totally not up to par. It doesn't inform what it does in the background and there is no place to check on the web what it uploads. I am not sure why FF even bothered to release this feature when it is not even ready (there are several people complaining about many things of Sync at the Add-on review). 2. The bookmark/history manager can use upgrade/better features. Ever since the Delicious fiasco, FF could possibly play a better role in adding modern bells and whistles to its bookmarks manager. Other than above two, I'm not complaining.
- holygoat 16y ago
  Sync intentionally doesn't allow you to see your data on the web: it's encrypted. If you could view it through a webpage, it could be stolen or subpoenaed, and we're not willing to take that risk with your passwords and history. If you want to see what Sync is doing, you can add the Sync icon to the Add-on toolbar. If you really want to see what it's doing, turn on logging and look in about:sync-log!
  - u48998 16y ago
    Okay, I'll give these two suggestions a try. Sync worked the first time for me but then it just stopped. It no longer brings my stuff over to new profile/install, so I was curious to see if my data is even there or not (which is not a big deal as I have backup and I was just testing). It would help to have an activity monitor somewhere or a way to check the percentage of syncing done.
  - u48998 16y ago
    Speaking of private data and encryption, do you know which FF file is responsible for History data? I know the Bookmarks json file but I'm looking to keep my history file as a backup too (which I believe FF doesn't backup like it does bookmarks). I hope it isn't places.sqlite file because it gets ridiculously huge even after you wipe your data clean. I wish to rely on my own backup system for both bookmarks and history data as both of them are important on continuous basis and both of them should be user's own responsibility (unlike what delicious or many other bookmarks syncing services may tell you).
Duff 16y ago
Have they improved the ability to manage Firefox settings in an enterprise environment?
ck2 16y ago
Congrats to the team and thank you to everyone who contributed (even the smallest bugfix) to help us all.
rostayob 16y ago
The new vimperator is out as well, and it's great. this is way better than crome now.
nixy 16y ago
Using FF4 on Hacker News main page gives me a popup saying TypeError: a.textContent is undefined.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  I'm not seeing that. Do you have any add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts installed? Try safe mode: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode
joel_liu 16y ago
FF4 add on collection selected by Mozilla https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/mozilla/firefox-4/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/mozilla...
mirkules 16y ago
I am so glad they got rid of the link preview in the URL bar (like they had in the RCs) and instead put in on the bottom left. Usually, I have tabs open that change their title when something happens (e.g. Gmail Inbox(1), or Facebook), and those catch my attention from the corner of my eye. However, having the URL preview when hovering over a link go into the URL bar on top also catches my attention, and distracts me from my current workflow.
jlongster 16y ago
Feel free to watch our launch party here: http://air.mozilla.com/ http://air.mozilla.com/
- ciupicri 16y ago
  Too bad you're using Flash.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    air.mozilla.com normally uses HTML5 video, but the back-end that drives that was not ready for Firefox 4 launch day traffic.
kawera 16y ago
For those with old ppc Macs, there is a port of FF4 Final at http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ Works great for me and is way faster than Safari 5.04 on a iMac G5 and a Powerbook G4 (10.5.8 in both).
roadnottaken 16y ago
Meh. One of the smoothest features of Chrome (that won a lot of adherents) was how you could close lots of tabs quickly without moving the mouse (i.e. the tabs only re-size after you move the mouse away). Same for opening tabs. How did FF4 not copy this? It looks just like Chrome only crappier.
- jlongster 16y ago
  That small of a nicety overshadows all of the other great things about Firefox 4? Also, the Firefox team is implementing that but it didn't make it into this release. You can find out all sorts of things they are working on at http://wiki.mozilla.org http://wiki.mozilla.org.
  - roadnottaken 16y ago
    Down-vote, really? I was just giving my first impression, which was 'not better than Chrome' and 'looks clunky'. Also, Chrome has had that feature for over a year and in that time it's won a lot of praise from a lot of places. Granted, it's just one little feature that doesn't matter that much... but that's what people refer to when they speak of "polish" and "user experience" and I think that stuff matters more to people than you might think.
    - SkyMarshal 16y ago
      It's probably for the "only crappier". Makes you sound like an annoying Digg refugee. Read the guidelines at the bottom of HN, it covers both tone/language and complaining about getting downvoted.
- ootachi 16y ago
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 There is a patch there, it just didn't get reviewed in time for Firefox 4.
- 51Cards 16y ago
  I alter FF to put the close button at the end of the tab bar in one fixed location. (it's an about:config option) I like that it doesn't move, mimics the OS Window-close mouse movement (in Windows) but MOST importantly, I think it's a complete waste of space to have an X on every tab.
gue5t 16y ago
Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI. There have been improvements in a couple extensions, as far as font colors using GTK themes go, but the menubar is still too tall and has the wrong font color (on basically every GTK theme and theme engine I can find) and keyboard shortcuts for several things (e.g. space to toggle menu items without closing the menu) are removed from GTK. Using RGBA with the murrine GTK engine, alpha transparency leaves "ghosts" on hovered menu options in Firefox, and buttons occasionally completely change their look pre- and post-hover (firebug had a drop-down that would "segment" itself when hovered, for example). Add this to the completely non-native tabs and toolbar, and the lack of a status bar, and the UI is simply unusable imo. A native UI using an established toolkit, or a custom-built UI with usability in mind would both be preferable to the current halfway kludge.
- shortlived 16y ago
  Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI Does that mean that other platforms do not use XUL for UI?
  - gue5t 16y ago
    The XUL "backends" for Windows and Mac OS seems to work much better in my experience. For one thing these platforms often have less variance in system theming so things like fixed font colors (though as I mentioned these are fixed in some areas, but not all) are harder to detect and aren't really problematic in most usage.
ch0wn 16y ago
I couldn't find any PPAs or packages for Ubuntu, yet. Did anyone else?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jcastro 16y ago
  It's in the firefox-stable PPA now for 10.04 and 10.10: Instructions here: http://askubuntu.com/q/6339/235 http://askubuntu.com/q/6339/235
  - snagage 16y ago
    Does anyone know if they're doing one for 9.10? Googled around, can't find anything on it
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Firefox user here since phoenix, switched to Chrome and never looked back. You can't come to par with Chrome to make me switch back, you have to make me shit my pants to do so, and Chrome did when they were the first to bring websockets to the browser. They kept bringing good stuff like web inspector, so no need to download firebug or any other extension. And joining the search bar with the address bar is just genius. In short, I prefer my browser naked, and Chrome is the best without clothes.
bsmith 16y ago
I really would like to see a built-in PDF viewer–that's one of my favorite features in Chrome because it keeps the download folder clean and lets me reference several PDFs/pages without leaving the window.
tristanperry 16y ago
I'm impressed with it. Its UI is clear and responsive, and overall is seems quicker. Plus it uses up around 40% less RAM (in my experiences).
kristiandupont 16y ago
To everybody asking what Firefox has that Chrome lacks: The Awesomebar. I haven't seen it mentioned here but it's by far the thing I miss the most from FF (along with FireBug and TreeStyle Tabs). It practically replaces bookmarks for me because because it searches through the history. In Chrome it feels like I have to re-google everything unless I remember the exact url.
- IChrisI 16y ago
  Personally, I like Chrome's address bar better than Firefox 4's. In Chrome, I can type g-m-<enter> to go to Gmail. In Firefox, it's g-m-<down>-<enter>. It's a little thing, but it makes a difference to me. Can't live without Tree Style Tabs though. Firefox is my "heavy lifting" browser.
  - DEinspanjer 16y ago
    I greatly prefer being able to hit enter on the first result too. Here is the addon I use to enable that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-prospector-speak-/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-...
    - bad_user 16y ago
      You don't need an addon -- the option is in about:config.
      - waterhouse 16y ago
        Specifically, browser.urlbar.autoFill. (Found that out just now.)
  - falcolas 16y ago
    You can use tab instead of the down arrow - pretty much identical to tab completion in the linux command line.
  - thinkalone 16y ago
orionlogic 16y ago
Still my Pareto principle usage of FF: Firebug + Web dev. Toolbar. If only those extentions functions exactly the same with webkit browsers.If only...Does anybody hearing me?
stevejohnson 16y ago
I've been a Chrome user (OS X) for a while, but switched to FF4RC to see if it used less memory than Chrome (not a difficult feat). It was mostly great, except the UI would stop responding at random for minutes at a time. So I'm back on Chrome.
barrkel 16y ago
Text rendering in Windows is significantly worse - sometimes it's blotchy (random characters seem to have more weight than others) - particularly here on HN, and inter-character spacing is inconsistent; at others, the anti-aliasing looks overdone, and text looks blurry and over-smoothed. I had Firefox 3 configured such that the main menu, URL box, navigation buttons etc. were all on the same toolbar - the menu bar. In that same configuration, Firefox 4 looks somewhat ugly - there's little space between the bottom of the menu bar and the page content (I also use tree-style tabs). Apart from how it looks, and how it renders text, it's nice. The resizable gripper on multi-line text boxes is nice - that works well here on HN. Edit: after disabling hardware acceleration, the text at least is much nicer. I don't notice any loss in performance in simple scrolling etc. with it disabled either.
- huntero 16y ago
  I also had issues with blurry text while hardware acceleration is enabled. I assume it is due to the Direct Draw, but I don't see the same issue in IE9 w/ hardware acceleration enabled.
  - jamesr 16y ago
    In IE9 h/w acceleration and Direct Write are controlled by the document's rendering mode. Hacker News renders in quirks modes and thus uses GDI. Try forcing the document to render in IE9 mode (open the F12 developer tools, hit Alt-9) and the text will look much closer to Firefox 4's. The page layout will also break a bit.
Mafana0 16y ago
Count me impressed. I use netbooks a lot and FF4 gave me the best browsing experience I've ever tried on a 10"-screen, Atom-CPU powered PC. Performance improvements and the amount of space it saves on a small screen for my usage are pretty amazing. Kudos Mozilla for another great release! EDIT: Just noticed that FF4 allows me to resize text-fields that render quite small because of the small screen. Small, relative-sized text-fields can be easily resized to a convenient size.
- mgcross 16y ago
  I'm on a netbook too (old one: 901), and FF is my preferred desktop/dev browser, but Runfield is unplayably slow in FF4(2-3fps maybe) on my netbook, whereas Chrome (10.0.6b) feels like it's hitting 15-20fps.
pistoriusp 16y ago
Has anyone else noticed that you can't drag the window from one space to another under OS X?
- wolfhumble 16y ago
  I thought so too, but it actually works (on 10.6 at least). You must only know where the other spaces are located: North, South,East or West. Or you can type F8 (default) and drag windows between them that way . . .
jmcnevin 16y ago
I just noticed that FF4 also has shiny new javascript confirm and alert popups, complete with a lightbox effect. Nice!
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  And not only are they shiny... they no longer prevent you from switching to other tabs!
- twodayslate 16y ago
  This is one of the features I wished Chrome has. It is really nice!
bad_user 16y ago
I have been using Chrome for 6 months now. What I liked about Chrome: optimized usage of vertical space and speed. But what I really disliked about it -- Chrome add-ons are useless. Chrome would never allow something like Firebug without being built-in. And I couldn't find a plugin with proper Delicious integration either. Also, searching the history in the address bar works a lot better in Firefox -- probably has something to do with the way Chrome encourages you to use Google. And speaking of History -- Chrome still doesn't let you search and delete items in the search results page. What's up with that? Now Firefox 4 has it all -- the interface is still not as vertical-space efficient as in Chrome, but as I understand it on Windows tabs do move in the title bar, and that little change is coming for Linux too. I love Firefox 4. They did an awesome job.
- mushtar 16y ago
  Why do you say that Firefox 4 is not as vertical-space efficient as Chrome? Right click on your tabs, and select 'Tabs on top'. Right click on the Menu bar and uncheck 'Menu bar'. Done--looks like Chrome!
  - bad_user 16y ago
    I'm on Linux and I can't find the "tabs on top" option. EDIT: oh, found it, but my tabs were already on top. Problem is, Chrome also does away with the title bar.
  - rorrr 16y ago
    No, it doesn't look like Chrome. There's still a title bar that Chrome hides in the maximized mode.
    - gimpf 16y ago
      It works without problems on WinXP, there is no difference; throughout the beta-versions Firefox incrementally used some minor tweaks of Chrome (for instance, where the link-bar on mouse-hover or the status-information on loading the web-page was displayed). Sad to hear that it does not work on all OSs -- for me it is one of the most important improvements.
jlouis 16y ago
Doesn't work with my loved Quake Live plugin yet... uninstall :)
dpcan 16y ago
Uhg. Had to roll back to 3.6 The new one looks great and seems to run fast, but my most important add-ons weren't supported. I hate being held back by my add-ons, but I have no choice.
discipline 16y ago
Damn them - damn them to hell. The thing that Firefox 3 did in Winidows (XP anyway) that was so useful was that when you deleted trash or spam, it automatically put the pointer on the OK button. Not the OS preference, but a Firefox feature. It didn't work in OS X, but it worked in XP. They took that feature away - I saw it in the beta, but was hoping they really hadn't deleted it. Damn them. OK, other than that, I like FF4! Just had to vent.
- lazugod 16y ago
  Firefox is a browser; how do you delete spam from a browser?
va1en0k 16y ago
I'd like to try to switch a browser, if I see a simple and cool sync-from-chrome (google account) feature. maybe I don't really need one, and maybe I can use some XML thingy for it, but I'm too lazy
davidhollander 16y ago
For anyone upgrading firefox on ubuntu: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
xtacy 16y ago
FF4 is really fast and responsive, as advertised! Awesome work guys! Pardon me if this is a silly question, but I really love the tab UI feeling that I get in Chromium (the looks, the curves, etc.) Given that other projects like Kod.app already copy that feature, is it possible for Firefox to incorporate it as well?
Casis 16y ago
Very nice, the UI is well designed, more screen estate. Just 2 complaints: - The colors's arrows for previous/next are not really visible - When on a laptop, I used to open a link in a new tab by right click + open in a new tab. This option was the second one in the previous firefox's version, now it's the first, so I end up opening a lot of links in new window instead of new tab, guess it's only a matter of time till I get the habit :)
- rcurses 16y ago
  There's an extension called "Menu Editor" that allows you to edit the context menus in Firefox. It works, but it can be confusing to use, because the context menus are... so contextual. In your case though, you could just swap the places of the "New Window" and "New Tab" menu items. Edit: here's a link to the extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/
  - Casis 16y ago
    Thanks for the info and the link!
diamondhead 16y ago
Addons manager looks nice and useful compared to previous one but still I know many people who would prefer to use package managers for managing addons
arturnt 16y ago
Firefox market share is going to continue to shrink as Chrome takes over. They've just been way too slow to respond. It is a shame since feature wise Firefox is a superior browser.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Not necessarily. The two are about at market share parity now, and FF4 allows Mozilla to push updates and version numbers more continuously, like Chrome/ium. From this point on it should be a neck-and-neck horse race, but frankly as long as they're both leaving IE in the dust I'm cheering for, and using/developing to/supporting both.
juiceandjuice 16y ago
Three finger scroll up and down for home/end in OS X is really nice... I wish this worked in chrome.
khatarnaak 16y ago
Its very fast compared to firefox 3.6.
khatarnaak 16y ago
Great new browser...Heads off firefox guys..
willheim 16y ago
I was REALLY hopeful for FF to make a comeback with 4. I had been a convert in the 2.X days and watched as it got bloated and slower throughout 3. Switched to Chrome in version 9 and never looked back. Then IE9 came out and was so much faster than before so I had hope for FF. Well, that hope has been quickly dashed. How? By mozilla's own demo page, the web'o'wonder. On my three year old machine it says my video drivers don't support WebGL and won't play nice with many things. What it does play nice with was not very wonderful. The "Letterheads" were choppy with a framerate probably approaching 8 or 9 fps. The 360 video refused to load. Same with Remixing Reality. IE9 wouldn't work with those and neither would Safari. Then I tried them in Chrome. Huh. Go figure. They all worked marvelously. Yup... this new web era could be a Web o' Wonders... but it looks like it won't be featuring FF4 or IE9. Now, can anyone tell me why FF4 has issues with WebGL but Chrome 11.0696 doesn't? And it's not just a webkit thing because Safari 5.04 isn't liking them either.
- sid0 16y ago
  Old graphics drivers usually have severe stability issues, so Mozilla blacklists them. You need to update to more recent ones -- anything after around June 2010 should do. Check out about:support for more information. (Note that if you're on Linux Mozilla only whitelists the proprietary nvidia driver IIRC, since all the open source drivers have issues.) I don't think chrome has blacklisted anything yet, but from what I hear Google's looking at doing it. In general, the problem is with your computer, and not with your browser or the demos.
  - willheim 16y ago
    When one browser (in this case, Chrome) works beautifully and the other browser (in this case FF4) refuses to operate in some capacity then that is most certainly not a problem with my computer. Do you know how many people out there have the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family for their laptops... a staggering number, I'm sure.
    - sid0 16y ago
      All you need to do is update to newer drivers. You can also force enable stuff via about:config if you wish, and at your own risk. The blacklisting is simply risk aversion -- I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. A slow browser's better than a crashing one, and old drivers were crashing too frequently. I repeat: the problem is not with Firefox -- the problem is with your drivers. Chrome might be taking more chances with the stability of your drivers, but that's Chrome's problem.
zachcb 16y ago
I still like Opera the most. Easily the most innovative browser and much more enjoyable to use.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Just installed it on my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04. Motherfucking beautiful, guys, it feels like Christmas morning. Great work, keep it up. (And I'm so stoked the Vimperator plugin works on launch, kudos to that team too!). Just working out the best way to install it side-by-side with 3.6 on my workstation, which I'll need to keep a while for web dev testing.
nickolai 16y ago
Aw... i just wish they didnt swap "new tab" and "new window" in the right-click on link menu. I understand the decision, but im so used to the previous setup that I get owned every time :/ Apart from that, im really happy with this new version!
veidr 16y ago
Here's a mirror, just in case there are others for whom the main download site is estimating nine hrs to go. (Mac OS X version) http://www.macupdate.com/download/10700/Firefox%204.0.dmg
al_james 16y ago
Wow. Is it me, or do those 'monster characters' on the landing page so really, really amateurish?
cubicle67 16y ago
just ticked over 6,000,000 downloads (in < 22 hours). well done guys Edit: USA has top spot at the moment with 1.2 million, followed by Germany with almost 550 thousand
ern 16y ago
I am surprised that they got rid of the padlock icon. I had to Google before I realized that they now use a colored section with the site name in the address bar to show a secure connection. Not very obvious when you first start using it. I wonder if this change is going to be disruptive for users who are trained to look for a padlock icon.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  This is an intentional change because we believe the padlock icon is misleading and potentially harmful. Users were being told to "look for the padlock" as a sign that a transaction was secure, when really it means no such thing. It's important that users actually verify the identity of the site -- a "secure" (encrypted) transaction is no good if it's a secure connection to a malicious site. The new security UI in Firefox is designed to emphasize identity, rather than just encryption.
pragmatic 16y ago
Is Flash not installed by default? Downloaded FF4 and several sites won't display. Ex: Youtube says "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video." Other sites just don't work. Maybe I'm out of loop and need to update my desktop flash. Man, chrome has ruined me with its auto-updating.

670 points by potomak 16y ago

d0m 16y ago

Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?

Dobbs 16y ago
The Tab Candy (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/ http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/) feature is pretty cool. The big thing about Firefox is the Addons: FireBug, NoScript, Adblock Plus, and Pentadactyl (was known as Vimperator) all add up to a fantastic experience. With Firefox 4 I get the fantastic experience with something much closer to Chrome's speed and tab usability. I don't know if I would say Firefox 4 is quite there yet but it is much much closer.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  I'm curious; in what way do you prefer Chrome's tab handling? For me it's one of the worst things about Chrome; this window currently has ten tabs open and that's at the _very_ low end for me. With Firefox I can see what I've got open no matter how many I've got because of the pop-down list and the scrolling bar, while Chrome just mashes the list into invisibility.
  - darklajid 16y ago
    Also - Tree Style Tab [1] is a must have for me (on 3.x for now, just checking if I'll upgrade now or wait for some of my plugins to migrate first) 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
    - eapen 16y ago
      I just plugged this in another reply. The latest and greatest can be found at the author's site. btw... TabCandy is now called Panorama.
    - dairem 16y ago
      Yes, I'm using Tree Style Tabs on FF4 now, it's fantastic once you go over 20 or so tabs.
      - mistermann 16y ago
        Do you have no issues with it on 4? Mine is very buggy, won't open child (or any other) tabs properly, they open non-visible.
    - holygoat 16y ago
      Give Vertical Tabs a shot. It's faster, albeit no tree handling. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...
  - rufugee 16y ago
    Here here. Chrome's tab handling is a nightmare. I hope FF4 will give me a reason to switch back and get access to what should be simple things (vertical tab lists) but appear to be difficult to provide in Chrome.
    - philikon 16y ago
      For a fast and simple vertical tabs implementation, see https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/
  - Dobbs 16y ago
    The big thing is just the smoothness of handling tabs. Closing a group of tabs in Chrome is a pleasure because of how it moves the tabs when you close one. Also grabbing a tab and moving it into a new window is a very clean/smooth operation. Firefox has improved a lot. 4 is a fantastic piece of software but it isn't quite as polished as Chrome is. Despite these issues I greatly prefer Firefox over Chrome. Chrome might be more polished but Firefox is (imho) a much more powerful piece of software and at the end of the day I care much more for power than polish.
    - planckscnst 16y ago
      I use Multiple Tab Handler. Closing a group of tabs in FF is a simple as selecting them (click, shift+click) and closing them. This is an example of why I love Firefox - it is way more permissive with what extensions can do.
- Tomek_ 16y ago
  Maybe it's only me but TabCandy/Panorama feels slow and clumsy, and there's too much mouse clicking/moving involved in operating it (or so it seems after 5 minute of trying it, maybe a matter of getting used to/discovering keyboard shortcuts). I like Opera's solution more (is less revolutionary, and thus easier to adapt to probably). But other than that first impressions are good: feels faster and more responsive (at last!). Maybe I will give it some more tries to see if it will survive a stress test of a normal day-to-day use with tons of tabs opened, etc.
- jfager 16y ago
  Pentadactyl is not the new name for Vimperator, it's the name of a fork of Vimperator. Both projects still exist and are both still being actively developed. In my experience, at least as of last Friday, you have to use a nightly to get a working version of Pentadactyl, while the version of Vimperator up on the Mozilla add-ons site is fine. I'm personally using Vimperator, just b/c I haven't yet had an itch that it doesn't scratch, and I'm not really clear on what Pentadactyl actually does better (because I'm too lazy to figure it out myself and haven't been able to find a current bullet-pointed list that tells me).
eapen 16y ago
Worth a try? Yes. Better Tab handling and has the ability to hold tabs in "groups" and a "panorama" view which allows you to view all tabs across groups. The awesome bar has also improved significantly and has some smart features (like the option of tab switching instead of opening a new tab when you already have a URL open). Better Add-ons management interface and some add-ons work without a restart of the browser. Websockets disabled (for security) I still prefer Chrome though. PS. I've been using the FF 4 beta version for a 3-4 months now and probably dont remember the other significant changes.
- icegreentea 16y ago
  I've been using FF4 beta since B3... does anyone actually use the panorama/tab grouping thing? I find its performance really poor and kinda frustrating, especially since I've been using add-ons that provide similar functionality for a while.
  - sid0 16y ago
    It is invaluable when I'm doing research or development and I want to "swap out" something that I'm working on to focus on something else. Since that takes up the vast majority of my time -- yeah, I use it a lot.
  - mziulu 16y ago
    I do - kind of. Since I don't have Firefox set to reopen the last batch of tabs I had opened the last time I was using it, Panorama is kind of useless in my case, since I would mainly use it to keep tabs grouped by content, and it would be a chore to redo the grouping at each restart. Still, it comes in handy to keep reddit/hn on one group and work related stuff on another groups and quickly switch between the two by doing Ctrl - Shift - ~. A big optimization was to set browser.panorama.animate_zoom to false in about:config. That animation was killing the flow in my case.
    - sid0 16y ago
      Session restore saves your tab groups.
RossM 16y ago
Different (Chrome-inspired) UI; faster (rendering speed) compared to previous versions and some techy-things like hardware acceleration. They also have synchronisation built-in now. I'm also a Chrome user but I'd quite like to switch back if they've sorted out the chronic lag issues I've always had. Update: In ff4 now, looks and feels great, if a little sluggish with page scrolling. I don't know, Chrome just feels slicker. Update 2: Just froze up loading a flash game, shame.
- weaksauce 16y ago
  I have been using chrome on a Mac and it felt so sluggish that I looked at ff4 betas to improve it. The ff betas feel much more responsive and the rc was even more so. It might have something to do with my mbp having trouble with the high res external monitor but anecdotally that's what I have seen.
  - tvon 16y ago
    It's not my main browser but I don't seem to have issues with Chrome on OSX, I'd suggest maybe purging your install (or at least it seems you're experiencing something unusual).
    - weaksauce 16y ago
      It was working ok until I got a 30" monitor. Then it became a choppy scroll and sluggish. Sluggish I can handle more than the scrolling.
      - ephemient 16y ago
        Are you on OS X Leopard? My understanding is that the out-of-process rendering used by Chrome forces blitting the whole page from the child process to the parent chrome on systems predating Snow Leopard.
        weaksauce 16y ago
sktrdie 16y ago
The startup time of Chrome is hard to beat - I'll stick with Chrome for now.
- joebananas 16y ago
  Just how often do you start your browser?
  - michaelcampbell 16y ago
    chuckle This is the exact same thread I used to see years ago, except it was the startup time of vi vs. emacs. Being an emacs guy, I would generally remark something like, "yeah, I remember the ONE time a few months ago I started emacs when the sparc had to be rebooted for new memory."
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- u48998 16y ago
  There is no startup time in Chrome, it is always running even if you close it.
- melling 16y ago
  According to LifeHacker, Firefox 4 is on par with Chrome. http://lifehacker.com/#!5784396/browser-speed-tests-firefox-4-internet-explorer-9-chrome-11-and-more http://lifehacker.com/#!5784396/browser-speed-tests-firefox-... If startup speed is your main criteria, you want Opera.
mbrubeck 16y ago
* Faster startup, more responsive, faster JavaScript with the new Jaegermonkey JIT. * New, less cluttered UI. * Built-in sync of bookmarks/tabs/history/passwords, fully encrypted on the client (unlike Chrome's sync which encrypts passwords only). * Sync your bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and form data to Firefox for Android! See also this thread for answers from various members of the Firefox team: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the_firefox_development_team_and/c1k6dex http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the...
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  Maybe it's just me but every FF UI I've seen looks slightly clunky and this one while better is still the ugliest of the next generation browsers (though Safari gives it a run for it's money). And the menu the Firefox button in the top left brings up is simply horrible. It's like someone said "I like the fact that the Windows Start button looks and acts differently to every other menu or dialog anywhere, but wouldn't it be good if it looked a bit more like a menu to make it more confusing and was generally a bit uglier and more amateurish".
- bretthoerner 16y ago
  But aren't those all features of Chrome? Wouldn't a happy Chrome user want to know about something FF4 does that Chrome doesn't? It's very clear that 4 > 3.6, the features you listed are awesome ... they just aren't very appealing to a current Chrome user.
  - grayrest 16y ago
    The primary reason to use FF is that you like a particular addon, you like FF's expose over Chrome's, or you like how FF does the location bar (which is why I use FF). There's not a ton of differentiation between the two any more.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    I was answering the question from above "what are the differences from the current version?" As for the differences from Chrome, those are mostly the same as they've always been: Deeper extensibility, more customization points, and made by a non-profit organization dedicated to openness.
hasenj 16y ago
* Real ad blocking (more generally: real extensions). Other points (not so major for most): * Audio api (allows you to synthesize audio) * Better language support (Chrome on Linux has tons of issues with non-latin languages)
- drzaiusapelord 16y ago
  I find that Chrome's extensions are quite real, feature rich, and stable. The last time I used FF, massive memory leaks were blamed on "your extensions." Not to mention I'm not even sure which IETab extension is real anymore. One is dead, the new one is nagware, etc. Oh, and I like that flash is sandboxed and autoupdated. I like a built-in PDF reader. I can't imagine going back to the stone age of browsers with FF or IE and downloading all the various readers and plugins for a basic web experience (Adobe reader, flash, etc). I'm sure FF4 is good by Firefox standards, but Google is doing something very new with Chrome. The out of the box experience is stellar and end users are secure because they really have no idea how to update flash or adobe reader on their own.
  - hasenj 16y ago
    Well, AdBlocking in chrome is really weak. Also, I actually don't like the built-in PDF reader in Chrome. Scrolling was weird in it last time I checked.
    - metageek 16y ago
      Yeah, personally, I'd rather stick with evince, and have the same PDF viewer whether I open a document from the browser or from the command line.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    I find that Chrome's extensions are quite real, feature rich, and stable. For a lot of basic stuff, yes. GMail checker, Adblocking (afaik), simple stuff that just requires the equivalent of a Greasemonkey userscript or a button. However, for deeper stuff that really changes the UI of the browser, Chrome is no where near Firefox. Take a look at TreeStyleTab, DownThemAll, Pentadactyl, and similar feature rich extensions. Those simply cannot be done in Chrome as is. There are some weak alternatives, but they don't do half of what Firefox's do. Vimium has issues with focus and nothing like Pentadactyl's customization; Vertical tabs doesn't allow proper grouping, UI, or options; I don't think DownThemAll's separate window is even possible on Chrome but I could be wrong. This isn't to score points for Firefox; it's a serious weakness in Chrome that's the main thing that's kept me from switching. I don't know if Google intends to allow this kind of extensibility, but damn I hope they do.
ootachi 16y ago
IMHO the biggest thing that Firefox 4 has over Chrome is graphics acceleration via Direct2D on Windows and GL retained layers on the Mac. Chrome has neither in stable builds. Graphics acceleration helps scrolling performance in particular and is what allows things like the Panorama zoom animation to look smooth.
- m3koval 16y ago
  I am not sure if it is in the stable builds, but Chrome dev builds have had an option to enable GPU accelerated compositing in chrome://flags for some time. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed any performance with it on or off. You can read more about it here: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/desig...
bgray 16y ago
Right. Is it just me or does it seem that most (if not all) of the new features in this release were inspired by Chrome? What is Firefox doing to move the web browsing experience forward?
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Some of the best features in Firefox 4 are new web technologies like HTTP Strict Transport Security, WebGL, hardware acceleration, CSS3 calc() and any(), the HTML5 parser, and IndexedDB. Many of these are not yet in Chrome. See http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/technology/ http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/technology/ for a longer list.
  - bgray 16y ago
    Upvoted. Thanks for the link!
csel 16y ago
For me, search on the address bar is the most important feature that I love about Chrome. IE9 has the same thing now. I am not sure why Firefox 4 did not put search on the address bar. So for a Chrome user, you will greatly miss that feature. :( Until FF integrates that, I am back to using Chrome.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  You can search from the address bar in Firefox 4, but you won't get search suggestions as you type. If you want to change this, try: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ (And you can use the "Customize toolbars" window to remove the search bar if you want.) Firefox intentionally does not show suggestions in the address bar by default, because we don't want to send everything you type there to a third party.
  - csel 16y ago
    thanks man - I just don't understand why FF didn't just integrate that as a default feature.

dlokshin 16y ago

Will Firefox 3.x auto update to 4?

jrnkntl 16y ago
Just checked, and it doesn't (Mac)
unwind 16y ago
Mine didn't seem to (Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit). The first thing I did after manually downloading and installing was to re-visit http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/ http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/, posted here a few days ago. Amazing.
user9756 16y ago
win7, I tried update (using the menu) with no luck, but the install process was easy (installed it in my old ff folder and it upgraded everything) and all my settings were kept. Some of my plug-ins are no longer compatible though...
nhoss2 16y ago
IT works!! go to help -> check for updates
sid0 16y ago
Historically major updates have been offered only after a minor release or two.
mbrubeck 16y ago
Yes, but not yet. We won't start pushing advertised updates to Firefox 3.x users until a bit after the launch, to give time for any late-breaking issues to shake out.
makecheck 16y ago
It updated to 4 for me (on Mac), although it goes in sequential order; e.g. if there's any 3.x you didn't get it seems to update that first, then on relaunch another update-check gets version 4.

bryanlarsen 16y ago

Awesome timing. The latest version of chrome (10.0.648.15, Linux x86_64) hangs on Google Reader and doesn't work with Flash for me. That gives me an excuse to play with FF4 rather than futzing around downgrading chrome.

codejoust 16y ago

I've been using the betas over chrome for a few months now. They've redone the UI, it's stabler, less memory intensive, and the UI is completely redone. It's definitely worth checking out even if you enjoy chrome.

stianan 16y ago

Why is text aliased and ugly in Firefox 4?

mbrubeck 16y ago
This is usually a graphics driver problem. Try updating your drivers or disable hardware acceleration in the Firefox preferences (under Advanced: General: Browsing).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  Disabling hardware acceleration worked for me. I'm on Windows 7, and now, with it disabled, it looks like Cleartype is working as it should. With hardware acceleration enabled, it looks like Cleartype isn't working, but Firefox doing its own anti-aliasing, and doing a worse job of it. Does that sound reasonable?
  - stianan 16y ago
    I don't understand why getting anti-aliasing right is so hard. Just render text a few times bigger, use some kind of low-pass filter (box filter will do) and down-sample it. It's what every graphics program does. That would put an end to using Photoshop or Flash for headlines just to make them look decent.
    - wladimir 16y ago
      Because that's a very CPU and memory inefficient way of doing it. If you value performance, you don't want to render something "a few times bigger" filter it and then scale it down. You want to render the text and anti-alias it at the same time. And that's not a trivial thing.
    - henrikschroder 16y ago
      Cleartype uses subpixel rendering as well, I'm not so sure you can achieve that by simply down-sampling a larger render.

nickolai 16y ago

I find javascript refreshingly faster compared to 3.5 . I no longer even get the "unresponsive script" messages when using the usual lot of JS-abusing pages our "tools support" team has cooked up.

code_duck 16y ago
I've observed a major improvement along those lines as well. Sites like news.yahoo.com don't make the browser freak out anymore, hurrah!

torsy 16y ago

For the devs, you can now run Firebug in FF 4. http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jim_h 16y ago

I hope the addons also get updated for FF4. I upgraded to FF4, but I miss having the CS Lite addon. 'CS Lite' lets me manage cookie permissions for current site without having to go into the preference and go through the long process. Very useful since I usually block cookies and only turn on when needed. The reviews for CS Monster doesn't seem as good.

JustinSeriously 16y ago
Sometimes you can work around this. Find the install.rdf file for the plugin, and change the maxVersion variable to "4.*". It doesn't always work, but I've had good luck with it.
- jim_h 16y ago
  Thanks. I'll give it a try later tonight.

cryptoz 16y ago

I'm a web dev and need to keep 3.x around. Can I easily install these two side-by-side or is that going to cause trouble for me? I'd love to use FF4 as my main browser at work (well, in competition with Chrome anyway) but I can't risk messing up 3.

ksdsh 16y ago
You may use the portable version of firefox from portableapps.com.
sid0 16y ago
Yes, just install it to a different folder. The only thing you need to make sure is to use different profiles for 3 and 4. You should edit the 3 shortcut to point to a dedicated web dev profile.
harph 16y ago
I have Pale Moon (http://www.palemoon.org http://www.palemoon.org) installed for this reason - it is completely separate from the standard Firefox.

MichaelStubbs 16y ago

After having some serious problems with the beta, I'm actually very impressed with this release. Even on my parents' old ex-council computer (1ghz P4, 512mb RAM, integrated graphics) this release is lightning fast!

cpach 16y ago
Neat! Seems like a leap in performance then.

techsavys 16y ago

You can download the Firefox 4 Final from here : http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final-downloads-available-though-its-not-officially-launched-configure-your-latest-firefox-to-run-older-add-ons.html http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final-downloads-...

mtogo 16y ago
Or you could download it right from mozilla's own website, http://firefox.com http://firefox.com and bypass the blogspam.

tutanosh 16y ago

Hopefully we won't have to wait long for Firefox 5 cause Chrome is not sitting still :)

holygoat 16y ago
Three months.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  We'll believe it when we see it, but we're definitely rooting for you.

famousactress 16y ago

I've been on the FF4 beta for some time (the web app we work on is currently only supported on firefox). My honest assessment? FF4 is a huge improvement over FF3, specifically in terms of performance. It's still not Chrome though. Firebug works great in it (better than it does in FF3). So yeah, if you've been using FF3 for web-dev or to browse, you're about to get a major upgrade. If you're a Chrome user I don't know of anything that would make FF4 especially attractive.

rufugee 16y ago
I don't know about you, but using Chrome has always given me this unsettling feeling that somewhere in Google's server farm, a machine is collecting everything I do and linking it to my other activity (gmail, gdocs, etc). It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. I just don't like giving a behemoth like Google access to my complete internet history, even though the most harmful thing it could collect on me is how many HN tabs I have open during the work day.
- holygoat 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's the case :D Chrome's location bar provides everything you _type_ to Google, and using its sync feature gives them all of your bookmarks and history.
  - slig 16y ago
    > Chrome's location bar provides everything you _type_ to Google That can be changed on about:flags > sync feature gives them all of your bookmarks and history. Unless you don't use Gmail and do all your websearch using Incognito, I don't see that as a problem.
    - code_duck 16y ago
      You can just turn off suggestions in the preferences. I don't think you need to go to the about: settings.

DzHiBaS 16y ago

tab key in form elements is not working. or it's just for me ?

holygoat 16y ago
Probably just you. There could be a Flash embed in the page that's capturing the keystroke...

DarkShikari 16y ago

The new "menu in the upper left" seems to be rather badly designed. It's missing the "View" menu entirely, which makes it impossible for me to view non-ASCII/Unicode websites. It took me about 5 minutes of searching and frantically right-clicking to re-enable the old menu, which of course still had the View menu. On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running off of an 8-inch floppy to a Core 2 on an SSD.

mbrubeck 16y ago
Character encoding options are now in the "Web Developer" sub-menu of the Firefox menu. (Weird, I know.) UPDATE: This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this. You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.
- DarkShikari 16y ago
  This may confuse the few hundred million users whose languages don't use Roman letters and weren't told about this move...
  - hasenj 16y ago
    I'm a user of such a language (Arabic) and by now all websites I care about use utf8, so the character encoding is a problem from the past as far as I'm concerned. I'd be really surprised if there are still sites that don't use utf8.
    - DarkShikari 16y ago
      Japan still uses Shift-JIS for practically everything, much to the chagrin of anyone else in the world looking to use their applications.
      - 16y ago

lordlarm 16y ago

Am I the only one that does not understand why Firefox still has a 'Google search' field at the left? Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them - at least give me the possibility to hide it. (And I am aware of the possibility so search in other sites than google, but I 'never' want to do that.)

regularfry 16y ago
Mozilla made the decision that it was better to make it absolutely clear to the user when they were making an ordinary web request, and when they were sending trackable information to a third party.
gulbrandr 16y ago
> Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them I've been asking myself this question many, many times. You can hide the search field: right-click on the toolbar > customize > drag/drop the search inside the window > done.
narag 16y ago
You're not the only one. I use Seamonkey instead because this and other similar annoyances.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  Why not just remove it through "Customize"? You can just right click on any empty spot in the tool bar, click Customize, and then remove the search box. Wouldn't that be easier?
  - narag 16y ago
    The annoyance is the lack of search functionality in the address bar, not the presence of the search bar.
holygoat 16y ago
Everything you type in Chrome's location bar is sent to Google, most likely unencrypted. Every single character. If you want to turn this behavior on in Firefox, you can do so with a simple add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/ but it's off by default because of the MASSIVE privacy implications.

giu 16y ago

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

recoiledsnake 16y ago
>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.
- train_robber 16y ago
  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.)
pldpld 16y ago
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.
- jamii 16y ago
  On my little netbook this is a deal-breaker. It wastes about 1/10 of the screen.

huhtenberg 16y ago

And to mark the occasion FF4 RC2 just crashed on me twice in a row. Are there any crashing issues fixed in the production release compared to RC2? Also, the IE-style reload button (at the right end of the address field) is too small and awkwardly positioned. I never realized how often it is actually used.

mbrubeck 16y ago
RC2 is bit-for-bit identical to the final release - we did not make any changes after RC2. You can right-click the reload button and choose "Customize" and drag it to a different location if you want. (It will become a full-sized button.) You can actually rearrange/remove/add any of the toolbar items this way.
- huhtenberg 16y ago
  Thanks for the hint. FF3 had a problem with gradually slowing down to a crawl. Clicking on the link would take few seconds to register, switching between tabs or from another app to FF would also cause FF to appear frozen for several seconds, etc. Submitted a ticket regarding this, got multiple follow-up comments from other users, but never from a dev. I realize you have a volume to deal with, but on my end it looks like noone cares. FF4 still has a milder version of the problem, but in a sub-second range. It now crashes though, so not sure what's worse. Also, unrelated to the above, for some reason Alt-PrtSc does not work, it's FF4 on XP. It is supposed to make a screenshot of a focused window and put it on a clipboard, and it worked with FF3... which is weird, because it's Windows' native function, not Firefox's.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    You might want to try running in a fresh profile, to see if anything in your old profile is causing the problem: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/ http://limi.net/articles/firefox-preferences/ Sorry about your unanswered bug - it's pretty hard for us to address general performance bugs that don't have specific steps to reproduce. We have to focus on fixing what we can see or measure, and hope that it fixes what users are seeing too.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

makecheck 16y ago
Are you sure it "started" your current version, or did you have an old window open somewhere? By default, Firefox sends a new-window message to any running Firefox instead of spawning a new one. Try killing all existing Firefox windows (e.g. "killall firefox" or "pkill firefox") and run it again.
- retube 16y ago
  Aha, genius yes that was it. I thought I had closed everything but obviously not. Cheers.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

brown9-2 16y ago

Does anyone have JavaScript performance benchmarks yet against Chrome?

anonymous1234 16y ago
http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/

diptanu 16y ago

More importantly: Is FireBug available yet for FireFox 4?

holygoat 16y ago
Yes! http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/ http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/

eftpotrm 16y ago

I'm hopeful for the speed improvements; I was having issues with 3.6.x in that and so far 4 seems good but I've not really stressed it. Otherwise, confess first impressions are less happy. Moving the tab bar has left it stranded adjacent to neither the edge of the window nor the page which makes it less easy to quickly grab sight of for me, and I seem to have lost the shortcut for the search box which I actually _used_ - if this replicated the old suite's behaviour of location bar searching outside the history I'd mind less, but it doesn't. Having to grab the pointer every time I want to search instead of Ctrl-E doesn't seem a win to me :-(

Iris 16y ago
Ctrl-K seems to work for selecting the search bar in the v.4.0.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  Thanks; I wonder why they changed it but didn't put a tooltip on the component advertising the new shortcut? I'm sure that used to be there on at least some older versions of Firefox.
  - starwed 16y ago
    Ctrl+k has always worked, it is not new. (And as long as I can remember has been the "primary" short-cut.) They wanted Ctrl+e to be available for tab group functionality: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592183 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592183 We can kill old keyboard shortcuts. There are two for focusing the search box (ctrl/cmd + e, ctrl/cmd + k) and technically only one is needed. Many of these things are here for legacy reasons supporting users of IE5 and Netscape 3. That can, thankfully, go away.

joakin 16y ago

Please help and advice your friends and family to update :) Lets help mozilla!

aw3c2 16y ago
No, I will push that moment into the future as far as possible. Developers underestimate the trouble of "normal people" to adjust to GUIs and then even more to drastic changes in those. At least half of my "customers" for pc support will be rendered helpless once this upgrade comes.

jmcnevin 16y ago

I'm a little conflicted about the Firefox Sync feature. On the one hand: yay! On the other... it's a lot more difficult to set up sync in Firefox than in Chrome. I got to work today and was dismayed to discover that I couldn't simply login to Mozilla's server and sync up my bookmarks from home, but that I needed the sync key from my computer at home to get this working. Boo. That, or you need to have the devices you want to sync in the same place and use a Netflix-like "Add Device" feature. I get it. Encrypting locally is more secure, but they've made this system SO secure that it's actually irritating. I wish I at least had the option of foregoing this sync key business. Anyway, now I know to put my sync key on Dropbox so this doesn't happen again.

holygoat 16y ago
Yes, it's a little more complex than Chrome's sync... but Chrome's sync keeps most of your data in cleartext on Google's servers, and even their optional encryption is relatively weak (low-entropy key derived from your password). I don't like that. Mozilla can't see your data if we tried -- at that includes if we get a subpoena. Firefox Sync's 128-bit secret key has to be transferred somehow. I think that's worth the extra effort, and you only need to do the setup once. (If you don't trust Mozilla, you can even run your own Sync server.) Please don't _keep_ your sync key on Dropbox. It's important!

u48998 16y ago

Two things: 1. Sync is totally not up to par. It doesn't inform what it does in the background and there is no place to check on the web what it uploads. I am not sure why FF even bothered to release this feature when it is not even ready (there are several people complaining about many things of Sync at the Add-on review). 2. The bookmark/history manager can use upgrade/better features. Ever since the Delicious fiasco, FF could possibly play a better role in adding modern bells and whistles to its bookmarks manager. Other than above two, I'm not complaining.

holygoat 16y ago
Sync intentionally doesn't allow you to see your data on the web: it's encrypted. If you could view it through a webpage, it could be stolen or subpoenaed, and we're not willing to take that risk with your passwords and history. If you want to see what Sync is doing, you can add the Sync icon to the Add-on toolbar. If you really want to see what it's doing, turn on logging and look in about:sync-log!
- u48998 16y ago
  Okay, I'll give these two suggestions a try. Sync worked the first time for me but then it just stopped. It no longer brings my stuff over to new profile/install, so I was curious to see if my data is even there or not (which is not a big deal as I have backup and I was just testing). It would help to have an activity monitor somewhere or a way to check the percentage of syncing done.
- u48998 16y ago
  Speaking of private data and encryption, do you know which FF file is responsible for History data? I know the Bookmarks json file but I'm looking to keep my history file as a backup too (which I believe FF doesn't backup like it does bookmarks). I hope it isn't places.sqlite file because it gets ridiculously huge even after you wipe your data clean. I wish to rely on my own backup system for both bookmarks and history data as both of them are important on continuous basis and both of them should be user's own responsibility (unlike what delicious or many other bookmarks syncing services may tell you).

Duff 16y ago

Have they improved the ability to manage Firefox settings in an enterprise environment?

ck2 16y ago

Congrats to the team and thank you to everyone who contributed (even the smallest bugfix) to help us all.

rostayob 16y ago

The new vimperator is out as well, and it's great. this is way better than crome now.

nixy 16y ago

Using FF4 on Hacker News main page gives me a popup saying TypeError: a.textContent is undefined.

mbrubeck 16y ago
I'm not seeing that. Do you have any add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts installed? Try safe mode: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode

joel_liu 16y ago

FF4 add on collection selected by Mozilla https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/mozilla/firefox-4/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/mozilla...

mirkules 16y ago

I am so glad they got rid of the link preview in the URL bar (like they had in the RCs) and instead put in on the bottom left. Usually, I have tabs open that change their title when something happens (e.g. Gmail Inbox(1), or Facebook), and those catch my attention from the corner of my eye. However, having the URL preview when hovering over a link go into the URL bar on top also catches my attention, and distracts me from my current workflow.

jlongster 16y ago

Feel free to watch our launch party here: http://air.mozilla.com/ http://air.mozilla.com/

ciupicri 16y ago
Too bad you're using Flash.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  air.mozilla.com normally uses HTML5 video, but the back-end that drives that was not ready for Firefox 4 launch day traffic.

kawera 16y ago

For those with old ppc Macs, there is a port of FF4 Final at http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ Works great for me and is way faster than Safari 5.04 on a iMac G5 and a Powerbook G4 (10.5.8 in both).

roadnottaken 16y ago

Meh. One of the smoothest features of Chrome (that won a lot of adherents) was how you could close lots of tabs quickly without moving the mouse (i.e. the tabs only re-size after you move the mouse away). Same for opening tabs. How did FF4 not copy this? It looks just like Chrome only crappier.

jlongster 16y ago
That small of a nicety overshadows all of the other great things about Firefox 4? Also, the Firefox team is implementing that but it didn't make it into this release. You can find out all sorts of things they are working on at http://wiki.mozilla.org http://wiki.mozilla.org.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  Down-vote, really? I was just giving my first impression, which was 'not better than Chrome' and 'looks clunky'. Also, Chrome has had that feature for over a year and in that time it's won a lot of praise from a lot of places. Granted, it's just one little feature that doesn't matter that much... but that's what people refer to when they speak of "polish" and "user experience" and I think that stuff matters more to people than you might think.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    It's probably for the "only crappier". Makes you sound like an annoying Digg refugee. Read the guidelines at the bottom of HN, it covers both tone/language and complaining about getting downvoted.
ootachi 16y ago
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 There is a patch there, it just didn't get reviewed in time for Firefox 4.
51Cards 16y ago
I alter FF to put the close button at the end of the tab bar in one fixed location. (it's an about:config option) I like that it doesn't move, mimics the OS Window-close mouse movement (in Windows) but MOST importantly, I think it's a complete waste of space to have an X on every tab.

gue5t 16y ago

Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI. There have been improvements in a couple extensions, as far as font colors using GTK themes go, but the menubar is still too tall and has the wrong font color (on basically every GTK theme and theme engine I can find) and keyboard shortcuts for several things (e.g. space to toggle menu items without closing the menu) are removed from GTK. Using RGBA with the murrine GTK engine, alpha transparency leaves "ghosts" on hovered menu options in Firefox, and buttons occasionally completely change their look pre- and post-hover (firebug had a drop-down that would "segment" itself when hovered, for example). Add this to the completely non-native tabs and toolbar, and the lack of a status bar, and the UI is simply unusable imo. A native UI using an established toolkit, or a custom-built UI with usability in mind would both be preferable to the current halfway kludge.

shortlived 16y ago
Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI Does that mean that other platforms do not use XUL for UI?
- gue5t 16y ago
  The XUL "backends" for Windows and Mac OS seems to work much better in my experience. For one thing these platforms often have less variance in system theming so things like fixed font colors (though as I mentioned these are fixed in some areas, but not all) are harder to detect and aren't really problematic in most usage.

ch0wn 16y ago

I couldn't find any PPAs or packages for Ubuntu, yet. Did anyone else?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jcastro 16y ago
It's in the firefox-stable PPA now for 10.04 and 10.10: Instructions here: http://askubuntu.com/q/6339/235 http://askubuntu.com/q/6339/235
- snagage 16y ago
  Does anyone know if they're doing one for 9.10? Googled around, can't find anything on it

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Firefox user here since phoenix, switched to Chrome and never looked back. You can't come to par with Chrome to make me switch back, you have to make me shit my pants to do so, and Chrome did when they were the first to bring websockets to the browser. They kept bringing good stuff like web inspector, so no need to download firebug or any other extension. And joining the search bar with the address bar is just genius. In short, I prefer my browser naked, and Chrome is the best without clothes.

bsmith 16y ago

I really would like to see a built-in PDF viewer–that's one of my favorite features in Chrome because it keeps the download folder clean and lets me reference several PDFs/pages without leaving the window.

tristanperry 16y ago

I'm impressed with it. Its UI is clear and responsive, and overall is seems quicker. Plus it uses up around 40% less RAM (in my experiences).

kristiandupont 16y ago

To everybody asking what Firefox has that Chrome lacks: The Awesomebar. I haven't seen it mentioned here but it's by far the thing I miss the most from FF (along with FireBug and TreeStyle Tabs). It practically replaces bookmarks for me because because it searches through the history. In Chrome it feels like I have to re-google everything unless I remember the exact url.

IChrisI 16y ago
Personally, I like Chrome's address bar better than Firefox 4's. In Chrome, I can type g-m-<enter> to go to Gmail. In Firefox, it's g-m-<down>-<enter>. It's a little thing, but it makes a difference to me. Can't live without Tree Style Tabs though. Firefox is my "heavy lifting" browser.
- DEinspanjer 16y ago
  I greatly prefer being able to hit enter on the first result too. Here is the addon I use to enable that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-prospector-speak-/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-...
  - bad_user 16y ago
    You don't need an addon -- the option is in about:config.
    - waterhouse 16y ago
      Specifically, browser.urlbar.autoFill. (Found that out just now.)
- falcolas 16y ago
  You can use tab instead of the down arrow - pretty much identical to tab completion in the linux command line.
- thinkalone 16y ago

orionlogic 16y ago

Still my Pareto principle usage of FF: Firebug + Web dev. Toolbar. If only those extentions functions exactly the same with webkit browsers.If only...Does anybody hearing me?

stevejohnson 16y ago

I've been a Chrome user (OS X) for a while, but switched to FF4RC to see if it used less memory than Chrome (not a difficult feat). It was mostly great, except the UI would stop responding at random for minutes at a time. So I'm back on Chrome.

barrkel 16y ago

Text rendering in Windows is significantly worse - sometimes it's blotchy (random characters seem to have more weight than others) - particularly here on HN, and inter-character spacing is inconsistent; at others, the anti-aliasing looks overdone, and text looks blurry and over-smoothed. I had Firefox 3 configured such that the main menu, URL box, navigation buttons etc. were all on the same toolbar - the menu bar. In that same configuration, Firefox 4 looks somewhat ugly - there's little space between the bottom of the menu bar and the page content (I also use tree-style tabs). Apart from how it looks, and how it renders text, it's nice. The resizable gripper on multi-line text boxes is nice - that works well here on HN. Edit: after disabling hardware acceleration, the text at least is much nicer. I don't notice any loss in performance in simple scrolling etc. with it disabled either.

huntero 16y ago
I also had issues with blurry text while hardware acceleration is enabled. I assume it is due to the Direct Draw, but I don't see the same issue in IE9 w/ hardware acceleration enabled.
- jamesr 16y ago
  In IE9 h/w acceleration and Direct Write are controlled by the document's rendering mode. Hacker News renders in quirks modes and thus uses GDI. Try forcing the document to render in IE9 mode (open the F12 developer tools, hit Alt-9) and the text will look much closer to Firefox 4's. The page layout will also break a bit.

Mafana0 16y ago

Count me impressed. I use netbooks a lot and FF4 gave me the best browsing experience I've ever tried on a 10"-screen, Atom-CPU powered PC. Performance improvements and the amount of space it saves on a small screen for my usage are pretty amazing. Kudos Mozilla for another great release! EDIT: Just noticed that FF4 allows me to resize text-fields that render quite small because of the small screen. Small, relative-sized text-fields can be easily resized to a convenient size.

mgcross 16y ago
I'm on a netbook too (old one: 901), and FF is my preferred desktop/dev browser, but Runfield is unplayably slow in FF4(2-3fps maybe) on my netbook, whereas Chrome (10.0.6b) feels like it's hitting 15-20fps.

pistoriusp 16y ago

Has anyone else noticed that you can't drag the window from one space to another under OS X?

wolfhumble 16y ago
I thought so too, but it actually works (on 10.6 at least). You must only know where the other spaces are located: North, South,East or West. Or you can type F8 (default) and drag windows between them that way . . .

jmcnevin 16y ago

I just noticed that FF4 also has shiny new javascript confirm and alert popups, complete with a lightbox effect. Nice!

mbrubeck 16y ago
And not only are they shiny... they no longer prevent you from switching to other tabs!
twodayslate 16y ago
This is one of the features I wished Chrome has. It is really nice!

bad_user 16y ago

I have been using Chrome for 6 months now. What I liked about Chrome: optimized usage of vertical space and speed. But what I really disliked about it -- Chrome add-ons are useless. Chrome would never allow something like Firebug without being built-in. And I couldn't find a plugin with proper Delicious integration either. Also, searching the history in the address bar works a lot better in Firefox -- probably has something to do with the way Chrome encourages you to use Google. And speaking of History -- Chrome still doesn't let you search and delete items in the search results page. What's up with that? Now Firefox 4 has it all -- the interface is still not as vertical-space efficient as in Chrome, but as I understand it on Windows tabs do move in the title bar, and that little change is coming for Linux too. I love Firefox 4. They did an awesome job.

mushtar 16y ago
Why do you say that Firefox 4 is not as vertical-space efficient as Chrome? Right click on your tabs, and select 'Tabs on top'. Right click on the Menu bar and uncheck 'Menu bar'. Done--looks like Chrome!
- bad_user 16y ago
  I'm on Linux and I can't find the "tabs on top" option. EDIT: oh, found it, but my tabs were already on top. Problem is, Chrome also does away with the title bar.
- rorrr 16y ago
  No, it doesn't look like Chrome. There's still a title bar that Chrome hides in the maximized mode.
  - gimpf 16y ago
    It works without problems on WinXP, there is no difference; throughout the beta-versions Firefox incrementally used some minor tweaks of Chrome (for instance, where the link-bar on mouse-hover or the status-information on loading the web-page was displayed). Sad to hear that it does not work on all OSs -- for me it is one of the most important improvements.

jlouis 16y ago

Doesn't work with my loved Quake Live plugin yet... uninstall :)

dpcan 16y ago

Uhg. Had to roll back to 3.6 The new one looks great and seems to run fast, but my most important add-ons weren't supported. I hate being held back by my add-ons, but I have no choice.

discipline 16y ago

Damn them - damn them to hell. The thing that Firefox 3 did in Winidows (XP anyway) that was so useful was that when you deleted trash or spam, it automatically put the pointer on the OK button. Not the OS preference, but a Firefox feature. It didn't work in OS X, but it worked in XP. They took that feature away - I saw it in the beta, but was hoping they really hadn't deleted it. Damn them. OK, other than that, I like FF4! Just had to vent.

lazugod 16y ago
Firefox is a browser; how do you delete spam from a browser?

va1en0k 16y ago

I'd like to try to switch a browser, if I see a simple and cool sync-from-chrome (google account) feature. maybe I don't really need one, and maybe I can use some XML thingy for it, but I'm too lazy

davidhollander 16y ago

For anyone upgrading firefox on ubuntu: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

xtacy 16y ago

FF4 is really fast and responsive, as advertised! Awesome work guys! Pardon me if this is a silly question, but I really love the tab UI feeling that I get in Chromium (the looks, the curves, etc.) Given that other projects like Kod.app already copy that feature, is it possible for Firefox to incorporate it as well?

Casis 16y ago

Very nice, the UI is well designed, more screen estate. Just 2 complaints: - The colors's arrows for previous/next are not really visible - When on a laptop, I used to open a link in a new tab by right click + open in a new tab. This option was the second one in the previous firefox's version, now it's the first, so I end up opening a lot of links in new window instead of new tab, guess it's only a matter of time till I get the habit :)

rcurses 16y ago
There's an extension called "Menu Editor" that allows you to edit the context menus in Firefox. It works, but it can be confusing to use, because the context menus are... so contextual. In your case though, you could just swap the places of the "New Window" and "New Tab" menu items. Edit: here's a link to the extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/
- Casis 16y ago
  Thanks for the info and the link!

diamondhead 16y ago

Addons manager looks nice and useful compared to previous one but still I know many people who would prefer to use package managers for managing addons

arturnt 16y ago

Firefox market share is going to continue to shrink as Chrome takes over. They've just been way too slow to respond. It is a shame since feature wise Firefox is a superior browser.

SkyMarshal 16y ago
Not necessarily. The two are about at market share parity now, and FF4 allows Mozilla to push updates and version numbers more continuously, like Chrome/ium. From this point on it should be a neck-and-neck horse race, but frankly as long as they're both leaving IE in the dust I'm cheering for, and using/developing to/supporting both.

juiceandjuice 16y ago

Three finger scroll up and down for home/end in OS X is really nice... I wish this worked in chrome.

khatarnaak 16y ago

Its very fast compared to firefox 3.6.

khatarnaak 16y ago

Great new browser...Heads off firefox guys..

willheim 16y ago

I was REALLY hopeful for FF to make a comeback with 4. I had been a convert in the 2.X days and watched as it got bloated and slower throughout 3. Switched to Chrome in version 9 and never looked back. Then IE9 came out and was so much faster than before so I had hope for FF. Well, that hope has been quickly dashed. How? By mozilla's own demo page, the web'o'wonder. On my three year old machine it says my video drivers don't support WebGL and won't play nice with many things. What it does play nice with was not very wonderful. The "Letterheads" were choppy with a framerate probably approaching 8 or 9 fps. The 360 video refused to load. Same with Remixing Reality. IE9 wouldn't work with those and neither would Safari. Then I tried them in Chrome. Huh. Go figure. They all worked marvelously. Yup... this new web era could be a Web o' Wonders... but it looks like it won't be featuring FF4 or IE9. Now, can anyone tell me why FF4 has issues with WebGL but Chrome 11.0696 doesn't? And it's not just a webkit thing because Safari 5.04 isn't liking them either.

sid0 16y ago
Old graphics drivers usually have severe stability issues, so Mozilla blacklists them. You need to update to more recent ones -- anything after around June 2010 should do. Check out about:support for more information. (Note that if you're on Linux Mozilla only whitelists the proprietary nvidia driver IIRC, since all the open source drivers have issues.) I don't think chrome has blacklisted anything yet, but from what I hear Google's looking at doing it. In general, the problem is with your computer, and not with your browser or the demos.
- willheim 16y ago
  When one browser (in this case, Chrome) works beautifully and the other browser (in this case FF4) refuses to operate in some capacity then that is most certainly not a problem with my computer. Do you know how many people out there have the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family for their laptops... a staggering number, I'm sure.
  - sid0 16y ago
    All you need to do is update to newer drivers. You can also force enable stuff via about:config if you wish, and at your own risk. The blacklisting is simply risk aversion -- I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. A slow browser's better than a crashing one, and old drivers were crashing too frequently. I repeat: the problem is not with Firefox -- the problem is with your drivers. Chrome might be taking more chances with the stability of your drivers, but that's Chrome's problem.

zachcb 16y ago

I still like Opera the most. Easily the most innovative browser and much more enjoyable to use.

SkyMarshal 16y ago

Just installed it on my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04. Motherfucking beautiful, guys, it feels like Christmas morning. Great work, keep it up. (And I'm so stoked the Vimperator plugin works on launch, kudos to that team too!). Just working out the best way to install it side-by-side with 3.6 on my workstation, which I'll need to keep a while for web dev testing.

nickolai 16y ago

Aw... i just wish they didnt swap "new tab" and "new window" in the right-click on link menu. I understand the decision, but im so used to the previous setup that I get owned every time :/ Apart from that, im really happy with this new version!

veidr 16y ago

Here's a mirror, just in case there are others for whom the main download site is estimating nine hrs to go. (Mac OS X version) http://www.macupdate.com/download/10700/Firefox%204.0.dmg

al_james 16y ago

Wow. Is it me, or do those 'monster characters' on the landing page so really, really amateurish?

cubicle67 16y ago

just ticked over 6,000,000 downloads (in < 22 hours). well done guys Edit: USA has top spot at the moment with 1.2 million, followed by Germany with almost 550 thousand

ern 16y ago

I am surprised that they got rid of the padlock icon. I had to Google before I realized that they now use a colored section with the site name in the address bar to show a secure connection. Not very obvious when you first start using it. I wonder if this change is going to be disruptive for users who are trained to look for a padlock icon.

mbrubeck 16y ago
This is an intentional change because we believe the padlock icon is misleading and potentially harmful. Users were being told to "look for the padlock" as a sign that a transaction was secure, when really it means no such thing. It's important that users actually verify the identity of the site -- a "secure" (encrypted) transaction is no good if it's a secure connection to a malicious site. The new security UI in Firefox is designed to emphasize identity, rather than just encryption.

pragmatic 16y ago

Is Flash not installed by default? Downloaded FF4 and several sites won't display. Ex: Youtube says "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video." Other sites just don't work. Maybe I'm out of loop and need to update my desktop flash. Man, chrome has ruined me with its auto-updating.