12 ms·

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird

by dilap 13y ago

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pretty (nit-)picky eye. * Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing * The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention of "search bars are rounded," but the inconsistency remains.) * Tapping the hamburger menu on the far right, it appears with a combined drop-and-fade-in effect, and then disappears instantly. This is jarring on the Mac, because it is exactly the opposite of native menu behavior, which is to appear instantly, and disappear with a fade. (I also believe the native behavior makes more sense: when you're tapping a menu, you want to do something, so you don't want to be slowed down by an animation -- just show the menu.) (Addition of a hamburger bar on the far right at all is suspicious; often it's a UI "dumping ground") * The "what's new" slideshow that appears at the bottom of the screen has to be controlled by clicking small <- or -> arrows, instead of just scrolling, which feels very outmoded * The scroller applies a fade effect to incoming content, but only to the text, not the image, which is jarring. * Multi-touch swipe to go back/forward shows no feedback! (Safari does this best, where the whole page slides away, revealing what's underneath; Chrome does a half-assed thing with arrows fading in, which isn't nearly as nice, but at least better than no feedback.) Pretty nitpicky, I know, but I recently read an article trumpeting this release of Firefox's incredible attention to detail. On the Mac at least, I think it still falls short.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dec0dedab0de 13y ago
Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. Exactly how I like it, I HATE getting search results when I make a type-o, or try to go to an internal site and forget to specify http:// http://
- Svip 13y ago
  Indeed. I love seeing Mozilla true to their mission. By separating them, the user knows where their input is going at all times. Only Firefox gets to see what you are typing in your address bar. Moreover, I love you can click ctrl+k in a tab, then type something you are reading on that page and then hit alt+enter to open your search result in a new tab.
  - lepht 13y ago
    I agree on the separation of input fields, but wanted to point out that the search functionality you mention exists in Chrome too (Mac equivalent in parens): ctrl(cmd)+l to focus omnibar, alt(shift)+enter to open results in a new tab
  - iamtew 13y ago
    I think for some time already you could also just select text on a page, right-click and choose "Search <search engine> for 'Lorum lipsum'" and it will open a new tab for it with your set search engine searching for that term. I use this all the time, small thing but it's awesome! I'm pretty sure it exists in other browsers as well though.
- jdc0589 13y ago
  Not sure about firefox, but in chrome you can get around it by appending a trailing / to things
  - protonfish 13y ago
    Thanks, that worked for me in Chrome for desktop, but not in my Android mobile browser which messes up intranet site addresses even if I select them from history.
    - Already__Taken 13y ago
      Android always uses googles DNS settings. See answer 1, manually set your DNS server in wifi Advances page.
danford 13y ago
>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Use the customizer. People complain when they change and complain when they don't > The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention of "search bars are rounded," but the inconsistency remains.) Maybe this is just the Mac version. On Linux they both have about a 3px border radius. >Tapping the hamburger menu on the far right, it appears with a combined drop-and-fade-in effect, and then disappears instantly. Sounds like a bug, not happening on linux though. >The scroller applies a fade effect to incoming content, but only to the text, not the image, which is jarring. Is this only on the slide show or something? That's not really much to complain about. I see web pages with different designs all over the internet. >Multi-touch swipe I have multi touch swipe set up for other things, but that sounds like something that needs work.
- nailer 13y ago
  >> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing > Use the customizer. Most users-on-street don't want to customise either. Edit: The moderation on this is baffling. Does anyone genuinely believe users want to customise to achieve reasonable defaults? HN should ban new users from moderating for a year.
  - drewblay 13y ago
    > Most users-on-street don't want to customize either. Most users on the street aren't on the hacker news forum. Also if you are going to play the "most users on the street" game, then most users on the street aren't going to install a browser that didn't come with the OS.
    - nailer 13y ago
      > Most users on the street aren't on the hacker news forum. I don't think anyone said they were. > then most users on the street aren't going to install a browser that didn't come with the OS. That's true. So it's even more important to retain them by having sensible defaults.
AndrewDucker 13y ago
Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned If you type in the search bar then it automcompletes by sending all of your keystrokes to your search provider. If you type in the address bar then it autocompletes by using your history. These are two very different use cases, and I appreciate the ability to search my history without notifying google of the name of internal servers.
- collyw 13y ago
  If you type something that is clearly not a web address, firefox send it off to a search engine as well. It sends mine to whatever search engine is selected in the search bar.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    True, but not the same as sending even things you type that are real addresses to the mothership as well. That discloses every site you ever visit (by typing its name, at least) to a third party for no particularly good reason, which is an obvious privacy issue, and it seems unlikely that most users realise this is happening, which makes the privacy issue much worse.
agapos 13y ago
* Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Customize: rip it out, install foobar(1) addon and/or use search keywords for search engines (1) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foobar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foobar/
wlesieutre 13y ago
> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Given the new gTLDs, I'm thankful that Firefox still has a separate search box. Say I'm want to know about the "asdfg.cat" file that showed up on my system. If I put that into the URL bar and hit enter, it's going to say "Oh, I know what .cat is, it's the TLD for Catalan related websites. Let's go to asdfg.cat!" Same goes for things like "mail.app", which had conventionally referred to Apple's mail client on OS X. I have no idea if they'll end up owning that domain or if someone else will. And either way, I didn't want to end up on the web site if I was trying to search for it.
- SonicSoul 13y ago
  you can put it in quotes, and it should execute it as search vs address. the only argument for having a separate box i can think of is it you wanted a separate search engine associated to address bar, vs search box.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    Chrome's solution is to have ctrl-K move focus to the address bar and fill in a ? at the start, but I'm not a huge fan. Same for having to type in quotes. Mainly I don't like that it buries the fact that searching is a separate action and that you can pick what you're doing. And I think it's even more of a problem for inexperienced users, because to them the program is saying "Doing this action will randomly either search or go to some webpage, and you don't understand which will happen." I also like keeping the search provider dropdown. It calls attention to the fact that you don't have to use google (and I don't). Google obviously has motives to prefer burying this in right click, but I think it fits Mozilla's agenda to leave it as a very visible setting.
    - SonicSoul 13y ago
      you can set which search engine used in address bar, just like you would in search bar. i never use ? or quotes, because in 99.9% cases the search is very different from an address, and it's easy to tell which is being proposed. I also love having search recommendation for 5% searches where i am not sure of exact wording. and yes, it's more of a power user feature, which is why i like it.
andreis1 13y ago
Wrt the 'omnibox vs address-and-search' conundrum: why not just let the user decide in Settings, defaulting on omnibox?
- espadrine 13y ago
  The user can decide. You can remove the search bar in the customization interface. But the default has to be to show the search bar because of contracts they have with search partners, I believe.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    No, it was always to separate search from addresses, lest search-ahead leak your data.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Letting the user decide is so old fashioned.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  There's an extension that gives you a chrome style omnibox. It works fine, except I can't use tab to search within sites like in chrome. If anyone knows how I can get this in FF, I'd be very appreciative.
  - filmgirlcw 13y ago
    On Mac OS X, you can remove the search bar from the window layout and just use the URL bar as omnibar too. Sadly, you still don't get the tab to search a page domain option.
conductor 13y ago
> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing As a user, I want separate edit bars for separate functions. I don't want Google know everything I type (or mistype) in the address bar. When I type foobar in the address bar please give me anything that returned the web server at foobar or give me an error if there is no foobar or the foobar have no web server. If I want to search foobar then I will type it in the search bar by myself.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  I encourage Chrome users to go check the search history attached to their Google account. It exposes a lot of data that you didn't realize you were sending to Google (including letter-by-letter entry of search terms/urls) and may give a newfound respect for Firefox's separation, whether you personally care enough to make the switch or not.
  - nnnnni 13y ago
    I only use Chromium because it's supposed to not have the phone-home "features" that are in Chrome. ...or at least it's that they claim. EDIT: "they" being Google. http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-google.html http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-...
    - cjhopman 13y ago
      Who's "they"? http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-google.html http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-...
    - amenod 13y ago
      Note that even Firefor has at least one kind of phone home "feature" enabled by default - malware protection. It keeps asking Google if the sites you are visiting are OK, thus sending the list of visited sites to Google. I know that they are supposed not to misuse this information, but I would feel much better if they didn't receive it at all.
pablobm 13y ago
> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. > As a user, I don't want to have to make this > distinction, and it's hard to imagine most > users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Although a UI problem, this is actually a privacy feature. As you type into the search bar, autocomplete queries are sent to the search provider. This happens even if your intention was not to search, but just to enter URL manually. In simpler terms: you are telling Google what sites you are visiting even when you don't use Google. (AndrewDucker mentions this on this thread too, but his comment emphasises the UI aspect, whereas I think the privacy aspect needs to be stressed).
- Springtime 13y ago
  Just make your own custom search keywords (right-click site's search box>Add a keyword for this search). Uses no autocomplete, and is much more time-saving than a separate search box. I have around 30 set up, from Wikipedia (w) to Google Image Search (gis), etc.
  - pablobm 13y ago
    Of course there's always ways around things, but browser vendors have to (unless in specific cases) cater for the general public who don't know about personalisation. These are the people who need safe defaults most. As power users, we tend to ignore the power of default settings. Their values have to be chosen carefully because only a small part of the public are even aware of them. Several commenters here seem to imply that they shouldn't be the ones personalising their browsers. Turns out it's the other way around: they are the ones who know how to personalise it, whereas defaults should be about users who don't know how to do it.
ghshephard 13y ago
"Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned" Chrome is almost unusable for me because I can no longer type the names of internal websites and have them come up. That single change in its behavior drives me back to Firefox.
- dermotbrennan 13y ago
  If you put '/' at the end of the internal address it will resolve it correctly. Although I switch between both browsers a lot so I don't always remember that trick.
  - UVB-76 13y ago
    If there are a few that you frequently access, you could set the URLs as 'search engines' with the hostname as the keyword, or even a shorthand keyword Even fewer keystrokes.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    That works - I can't tell you how many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of times I was frustrated by that issue with chrome, before I gave up. I can now come home again.
    - Aldo_MX 13y ago
      This is strange, where I typed localhost, Chrome prompted me if I really meant localhost/
- GyrosOfWar 13y ago
  You could try Fauxbar, which is a Chrome extension version of the Firefox Awesomebar. I really like it.
- collyw 13y ago
  yeah, it hacked me off when every time I mistyped a 127.0.0.1 address, that t would send the information to the borg when using Chrome.
mohamedattahri 13y ago
The main problem for me is how memory-hungry this browser is. How can a single tab opened on HN use 500MB?
- sp332 13y ago
  I have no idea - mine uses 184MB. It's been much slimmer than Chrome for me for about a year. Even when I use lots of extensions, it's up to 340MB which is less than Chrome's 400MB.
  - nikolak 13y ago
    Firefox uses less memory only on startup and when I have few tabs open. As soon as I start opening more tabs and browsing longer the memory usage is much larger on FF and the whole UI becomes less responsive and so do pages. Even on startup it isn't that better compared to chrome. Chrome 11 extensions 1 tab: ~300MB FF 2 extensions 1 tab: ~200MB It's not FF 29, it's 28 - but I doubt the memory management improved much in 29. But to be fair, it's a lot better now than it used to be.
    - sp332 13y ago
      That surprises me even more, since Chrome has a lot more overhead per tab (often a whole process per tab), so I expected Firefox to have a bigger advantage the more tabs you have open. Edit: I just tried opening about 24 tabs of webcomics in each, and Chrome jumped to over 1GB of RAM while FF is about 600MB.
      - nikolak 13y ago
        I don't know if it's just the tab count or longer browsing sessions/history (I usually have my browser open for days without closing it) or whatever, so don't quote me on that. But FF is definitely uses more memory than chrome and with few other resource hungry applications running it becomes practically unusable on my low end laptop.
- mccr8 13y ago
toddmorey 13y ago
I actually think this is their best effort yet. Firefox on Mac has always felt bloated and foreign to me. But this release pretty much eliminates all of that. While it's not perfect, it's the very first time I've enjoyed using Firefox more than Chrome or Safari. This is an amazing release.
ClashTheBunny 13y ago
> * Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing. The big reason I really like this is that the address bar is local to the tab, and the search box is window. If you have a topic you want to dive into on another tab, you can safely transcribe information from multiple current tabs and then create a new tab with the search. Especially when some of the information is in the current url.
newscracker 13y ago
Nitpicking on you - it's Firefox (née Phoenix) for the public, not Firefox (née Firebird). :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox Edit: Fixed typo as pointed below. :D Thanks for nitpicking the nitpicking. :)
- bshimmin 13y ago
  Skitt's Law strikes again - it's "née" (or "né" in the masculine, though that's uncommon outside of the Francophone world).
  - rosser 13y ago
    I'd always seen that as "Muphry's Law" (yes, that's deliberate), not Skitt's Law. Wikipedia confirms they're the same thing. Thanks!
- dilap 13y ago
  Ah, right you are, Phoenix (because it was a browser rising from the ashes of Netscape), then Firebird for .5 seconds, and finally Firefox. (Surprised I forgot that, since I actually lived the history. :) I think it worked out for the best -- Firefox is an excellent name and brand. It's hard now to imagine it being something else!
  - StuffMaster 13y ago
    Really it was Mozilla that rose from Netscape's ashes. Firefox rewrote the UI, but Mozilla never died, it just changed to Seamonkey. It was the best browser for years before Phoenix came along -- for UI and resource problems that I never perceived myself.
petulla 13y ago
Use customization to lose the extra search bar. Then you can have a single, clearn bar on top. If you need to access it, command-k is your friend.
elsamuko 13y ago
I just found out, that you can rotate images with the rotation gesture on OS X with Firefox.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  That's a really nice touch!
jamesbritt 13y ago
I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, Monopoly? Before Firefox/Firebird there was Netscape Navigator, which was to be the "Mosaic killer" (hence "Mozilla"). IE was never the only browser around, even on Windows.
- kemayo 13y ago
  Monopolies don't require that there be only one choice... just that one choice is vastly dominant. And at its peak, IE had something over 90% of the market. [1] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-da...
- chc 13y ago
  The IE monopoly was established by effectively killing Netscape Navigator/Communicator. Mozilla existed, but didn't become a major player until Firefox hit the scene half a decade later.
- Piskvorrr 13y ago
  Apparently, you don't remember the Dark Ages. See, there were other browsers, that much is true. What you're missing is that many, many sites were only developed for IE, and only worked at all in IE. No, not "graceful degradation," not "progressive enhancement," that all came a decade later: if you were not using IE, the sites were very broken, even unusable - and nobody cared: after all, Just Use IE Like All The Normal People Do, right?
tethis 13y ago
The address bar works as both now, it seems that the search bar is left there so that it doesn't startle all the neophobes even more.
yournemesis 13y ago
Here is why I don't use it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 This bug makes Firefox useless to me and has been around for over 5 years!
- Karunamon 13y ago
  This seems to be a recurring thing with Firefox. I really think they should leave the damned UI alone and start fixing some of the killer half decade plus old bugs! This is the third one I'm aware of that is a basic usability thing. Others include a complete failure to browse to sites that present a duplicate SSL certificate, and an odd breakage that results in downloads getting half completed but the UI saying they're complete anyways.
patrickaljord 13y ago
> * Multi-touch swipe to go back/forward shows no feedback! (Safari does this best, where the whole page slides away, revealing what's underneath; Chrome does a half-assed thing with arrows fading in, which isn't nearly as nice, but at least better than no feedback.) This is how it works on ChromeOS too. It even has a nice black and white effect on the previous page until it's fully loaded.
User7198 13y ago
Agreed with a lot of the above. The biggest concerns for me... 1. The rounded tabs are simply ugly, and remind me of web design from a decade ago. It's also weird how they go from square to round on rollover. Poor design choice in my opinion. 2. It's far more difficult to find the active tab now. For comparison, the old style (http://static.filehorse.com/screenshots/browsers-and-plugins/firefox-screenshot-01.png http://static.filehorse.com/screenshots/browsers-and-plugins...). In the new version, I have to scan the toolbar to find the active tab based on the rounded or square edges. It's a lot easier the old way to find a bright active tab on darker, faded out inactive tabs. That's UX 101. It doesn't stop there, the entire toolbar, tabs, search, etc, blends together in a blob of light grey and white right now. Very little distinction between anything. 3. I never liked the orange Firefox button in the top left, it always seemed out of place and forced. Replacing it with an icon and menu is fine, but that icon should be on the left, before the first tab. The menu opening to a grid of icons is also awful. How it transitions to the right when you click something like 'History' is extremely bizarre. I have no idea why they tried to reinvent the wheel here, a typical list menu that everyone is familiar with would work best. That's great you can customize it, but 9/10 people will never use that feature, so it's a step backwards for them. Overall, I see it as a change for the worse. It's not rocket science here, and nailing down a proper browser interface should be a walk in the park. We're talking about some tabs and a toolbar, there's no excuse for it to be anything but perfect after more than a decade. I'm 100% confident I could knock out a better design, that would be better received by people in a weekend. They have some nice features and design choices, but they got it 90% there, and keep tripping over polishing the remaining 10%.
xerophtye 13y ago
>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing umm... I don't know if this works on mac too, but at least in the windows Firefox, you actually CAN use the address bar as a search bar. So why two bars? well the search bar also lets you CHOOSE your search engine, unlike Chrome which hardwires you to google. Yes yes, you might say but why would i want to search anywhere else? Well just like you hate having to actually GO to google to search on google, people hate going to wikipedia or wolfram alpha or ask.com etc etc before searching there. So it lets them query their engine of choice right from the bar. Oh and depending on your version, the address bar automatically searches on the engine selected in the search bar. Now since you are a fairly old user of FF, i don't really understand the need to tell you all this, ut i just felt your nitpick about the searchbar saw this "feature" as a "design flaw"
insky 13y ago
On Nightly on Linux that fade in and out isn't there on the hamburger menu. Unless that's because my GFX setup doesn't support it. Perhaps it has been addressed in a further release.
pcoem 13y ago
The forced menu fade is a poor design choice in Windows too. They completely ignore the Windows appearance/performance settings, where you can disable pointless menu effects that are just a waste of time.

by dilap 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

dec0dedab0de 13y ago

Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. Exactly how I like it, I HATE getting search results when I make a type-o, or try to go to an internal site and forget to specify http:// http://

Svip 13y ago
Indeed. I love seeing Mozilla true to their mission. By separating them, the user knows where their input is going at all times. Only Firefox gets to see what you are typing in your address bar. Moreover, I love you can click ctrl+k in a tab, then type something you are reading on that page and then hit alt+enter to open your search result in a new tab.
- lepht 13y ago
  I agree on the separation of input fields, but wanted to point out that the search functionality you mention exists in Chrome too (Mac equivalent in parens): ctrl(cmd)+l to focus omnibar, alt(shift)+enter to open results in a new tab
- iamtew 13y ago
  I think for some time already you could also just select text on a page, right-click and choose "Search <search engine> for 'Lorum lipsum'" and it will open a new tab for it with your set search engine searching for that term. I use this all the time, small thing but it's awesome! I'm pretty sure it exists in other browsers as well though.
jdc0589 13y ago
Not sure about firefox, but in chrome you can get around it by appending a trailing / to things
- protonfish 13y ago
  Thanks, that worked for me in Chrome for desktop, but not in my Android mobile browser which messes up intranet site addresses even if I select them from history.
  - Already__Taken 13y ago
    Android always uses googles DNS settings. See answer 1, manually set your DNS server in wifi Advances page.

danford 13y ago

>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Use the customizer. People complain when they change and complain when they don't > The address bar is square edged while the search bar is round edged, which is displeasingly visually. (I realize this is because there's a convention of "search bars are rounded," but the inconsistency remains.) Maybe this is just the Mac version. On Linux they both have about a 3px border radius. >Tapping the hamburger menu on the far right, it appears with a combined drop-and-fade-in effect, and then disappears instantly. Sounds like a bug, not happening on linux though. >The scroller applies a fade effect to incoming content, but only to the text, not the image, which is jarring. Is this only on the slide show or something? That's not really much to complain about. I see web pages with different designs all over the internet. >Multi-touch swipe I have multi touch swipe set up for other things, but that sounds like something that needs work.

nailer 13y ago
>> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing > Use the customizer. Most users-on-street don't want to customise either. Edit: The moderation on this is baffling. Does anyone genuinely believe users want to customise to achieve reasonable defaults? HN should ban new users from moderating for a year.
- drewblay 13y ago
  > Most users-on-street don't want to customize either. Most users on the street aren't on the hacker news forum. Also if you are going to play the "most users on the street" game, then most users on the street aren't going to install a browser that didn't come with the OS.
  - nailer 13y ago
    > Most users on the street aren't on the hacker news forum. I don't think anyone said they were. > then most users on the street aren't going to install a browser that didn't come with the OS. That's true. So it's even more important to retain them by having sensible defaults.

AndrewDucker 13y ago

Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned If you type in the search bar then it automcompletes by sending all of your keystrokes to your search provider. If you type in the address bar then it autocompletes by using your history. These are two very different use cases, and I appreciate the ability to search my history without notifying google of the name of internal servers.

collyw 13y ago
If you type something that is clearly not a web address, firefox send it off to a search engine as well. It sends mine to whatever search engine is selected in the search bar.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  True, but not the same as sending even things you type that are real addresses to the mothership as well. That discloses every site you ever visit (by typing its name, at least) to a third party for no particularly good reason, which is an obvious privacy issue, and it seems unlikely that most users realise this is happening, which makes the privacy issue much worse.

agapos 13y ago

* Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Customize: rip it out, install foobar(1) addon and/or use search keywords for search engines (1) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foobar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foobar/

wlesieutre 13y ago

> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Given the new gTLDs, I'm thankful that Firefox still has a separate search box. Say I'm want to know about the "asdfg.cat" file that showed up on my system. If I put that into the URL bar and hit enter, it's going to say "Oh, I know what .cat is, it's the TLD for Catalan related websites. Let's go to asdfg.cat!" Same goes for things like "mail.app", which had conventionally referred to Apple's mail client on OS X. I have no idea if they'll end up owning that domain or if someone else will. And either way, I didn't want to end up on the web site if I was trying to search for it.

SonicSoul 13y ago
you can put it in quotes, and it should execute it as search vs address. the only argument for having a separate box i can think of is it you wanted a separate search engine associated to address bar, vs search box.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  Chrome's solution is to have ctrl-K move focus to the address bar and fill in a ? at the start, but I'm not a huge fan. Same for having to type in quotes. Mainly I don't like that it buries the fact that searching is a separate action and that you can pick what you're doing. And I think it's even more of a problem for inexperienced users, because to them the program is saying "Doing this action will randomly either search or go to some webpage, and you don't understand which will happen." I also like keeping the search provider dropdown. It calls attention to the fact that you don't have to use google (and I don't). Google obviously has motives to prefer burying this in right click, but I think it fits Mozilla's agenda to leave it as a very visible setting.
  - SonicSoul 13y ago
    you can set which search engine used in address bar, just like you would in search bar. i never use ? or quotes, because in 99.9% cases the search is very different from an address, and it's easy to tell which is being proposed. I also love having search recommendation for 5% searches where i am not sure of exact wording. and yes, it's more of a power user feature, which is why i like it.

andreis1 13y ago

Wrt the 'omnibox vs address-and-search' conundrum: why not just let the user decide in Settings, defaulting on omnibox?

espadrine 13y ago
The user can decide. You can remove the search bar in the customization interface. But the default has to be to show the search bar because of contracts they have with search partners, I believe.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  No, it was always to separate search from addresses, lest search-ahead leak your data.
pessimizer 13y ago
Letting the user decide is so old fashioned.
JonnieCache 13y ago
There's an extension that gives you a chrome style omnibox. It works fine, except I can't use tab to search within sites like in chrome. If anyone knows how I can get this in FF, I'd be very appreciative.
- filmgirlcw 13y ago
  On Mac OS X, you can remove the search bar from the window layout and just use the URL bar as omnibar too. Sadly, you still don't get the tab to search a page domain option.

conductor 13y ago

> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing As a user, I want separate edit bars for separate functions. I don't want Google know everything I type (or mistype) in the address bar. When I type foobar in the address bar please give me anything that returned the web server at foobar or give me an error if there is no foobar or the foobar have no web server. If I want to search foobar then I will type it in the search bar by myself.

cookiecaper 13y ago
I encourage Chrome users to go check the search history attached to their Google account. It exposes a lot of data that you didn't realize you were sending to Google (including letter-by-letter entry of search terms/urls) and may give a newfound respect for Firefox's separation, whether you personally care enough to make the switch or not.
- nnnnni 13y ago
  I only use Chromium because it's supposed to not have the phone-home "features" that are in Chrome. ...or at least it's that they claim. EDIT: "they" being Google. http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-google.html http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-...
  - cjhopman 13y ago
    Who's "they"? http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-google.html http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/google-chrome-chromium-and-...
  - amenod 13y ago
    Note that even Firefor has at least one kind of phone home "feature" enabled by default - malware protection. It keeps asking Google if the sites you are visiting are OK, thus sending the list of visited sites to Google. I know that they are supposed not to misuse this information, but I would feel much better if they didn't receive it at all.

pablobm 13y ago

> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. > As a user, I don't want to have to make this > distinction, and it's hard to imagine most > users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing Although a UI problem, this is actually a privacy feature. As you type into the search bar, autocomplete queries are sent to the search provider. This happens even if your intention was not to search, but just to enter URL manually. In simpler terms: you are telling Google what sites you are visiting even when you don't use Google. (AndrewDucker mentions this on this thread too, but his comment emphasises the UI aspect, whereas I think the privacy aspect needs to be stressed).

Springtime 13y ago
Just make your own custom search keywords (right-click site's search box>Add a keyword for this search). Uses no autocomplete, and is much more time-saving than a separate search box. I have around 30 set up, from Wikipedia (w) to Google Image Search (gis), etc.
- pablobm 13y ago
  Of course there's always ways around things, but browser vendors have to (unless in specific cases) cater for the general public who don't know about personalisation. These are the people who need safe defaults most. As power users, we tend to ignore the power of default settings. Their values have to be chosen carefully because only a small part of the public are even aware of them. Several commenters here seem to imply that they shouldn't be the ones personalising their browsers. Turns out it's the other way around: they are the ones who know how to personalise it, whereas defaults should be about users who don't know how to do it.

ghshephard 13y ago

"Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned" Chrome is almost unusable for me because I can no longer type the names of internal websites and have them come up. That single change in its behavior drives me back to Firefox.

dermotbrennan 13y ago
If you put '/' at the end of the internal address it will resolve it correctly. Although I switch between both browsers a lot so I don't always remember that trick.
- UVB-76 13y ago
  If there are a few that you frequently access, you could set the URLs as 'search engines' with the hostname as the keyword, or even a shorthand keyword Even fewer keystrokes.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  That works - I can't tell you how many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of times I was frustrated by that issue with chrome, before I gave up. I can now come home again.
  - Aldo_MX 13y ago
    This is strange, where I typed localhost, Chrome prompted me if I really meant localhost/
GyrosOfWar 13y ago
You could try Fauxbar, which is a Chrome extension version of the Firefox Awesomebar. I really like it.
collyw 13y ago
yeah, it hacked me off when every time I mistyped a 127.0.0.1 address, that t would send the information to the borg when using Chrome.

mohamedattahri 13y ago

The main problem for me is how memory-hungry this browser is. How can a single tab opened on HN use 500MB?

sp332 13y ago
I have no idea - mine uses 184MB. It's been much slimmer than Chrome for me for about a year. Even when I use lots of extensions, it's up to 340MB which is less than Chrome's 400MB.
- nikolak 13y ago
  Firefox uses less memory only on startup and when I have few tabs open. As soon as I start opening more tabs and browsing longer the memory usage is much larger on FF and the whole UI becomes less responsive and so do pages. Even on startup it isn't that better compared to chrome. Chrome 11 extensions 1 tab: ~300MB FF 2 extensions 1 tab: ~200MB It's not FF 29, it's 28 - but I doubt the memory management improved much in 29. But to be fair, it's a lot better now than it used to be.
  - sp332 13y ago
    That surprises me even more, since Chrome has a lot more overhead per tab (often a whole process per tab), so I expected Firefox to have a bigger advantage the more tabs you have open. Edit: I just tried opening about 24 tabs of webcomics in each, and Chrome jumped to over 1GB of RAM while FF is about 600MB.
    - nikolak 13y ago
      I don't know if it's just the tab count or longer browsing sessions/history (I usually have my browser open for days without closing it) or whatever, so don't quote me on that. But FF is definitely uses more memory than chrome and with few other resource hungry applications running it becomes practically unusable on my low end laptop.
mccr8 13y ago

toddmorey 13y ago

I actually think this is their best effort yet. Firefox on Mac has always felt bloated and foreign to me. But this release pretty much eliminates all of that. While it's not perfect, it's the very first time I've enjoyed using Firefox more than Chrome or Safari. This is an amazing release.

ClashTheBunny 13y ago

> * Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing. The big reason I really like this is that the address bar is local to the tab, and the search box is window. If you have a topic you want to dive into on another tab, you can safely transcribe information from multiple current tabs and then create a new tab with the search. Especially when some of the information is in the current url.

newscracker 13y ago

Nitpicking on you - it's Firefox (née Phoenix) for the public, not Firefox (née Firebird). :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox Edit: Fixed typo as pointed below. :D Thanks for nitpicking the nitpicking. :)

bshimmin 13y ago
Skitt's Law strikes again - it's "née" (or "né" in the masculine, though that's uncommon outside of the Francophone world).
- rosser 13y ago
  I'd always seen that as "Muphry's Law" (yes, that's deliberate), not Skitt's Law. Wikipedia confirms they're the same thing. Thanks!
dilap 13y ago
Ah, right you are, Phoenix (because it was a browser rising from the ashes of Netscape), then Firebird for .5 seconds, and finally Firefox. (Surprised I forgot that, since I actually lived the history. :) I think it worked out for the best -- Firefox is an excellent name and brand. It's hard now to imagine it being something else!
- StuffMaster 13y ago
  Really it was Mozilla that rose from Netscape's ashes. Firefox rewrote the UI, but Mozilla never died, it just changed to Seamonkey. It was the best browser for years before Phoenix came along -- for UI and resource problems that I never perceived myself.

petulla 13y ago

Use customization to lose the extra search bar. Then you can have a single, clearn bar on top. If you need to access it, command-k is your friend.

elsamuko 13y ago

I just found out, that you can rotate images with the rotation gesture on OS X with Firefox.

ZoFreX 13y ago
That's a really nice touch!

jamesbritt 13y ago

I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, Monopoly? Before Firefox/Firebird there was Netscape Navigator, which was to be the "Mosaic killer" (hence "Mozilla"). IE was never the only browser around, even on Windows.

kemayo 13y ago
Monopolies don't require that there be only one choice... just that one choice is vastly dominant. And at its peak, IE had something over 90% of the market. [1] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet-explorer-usage-da...
chc 13y ago
The IE monopoly was established by effectively killing Netscape Navigator/Communicator. Mozilla existed, but didn't become a major player until Firefox hit the scene half a decade later.
Piskvorrr 13y ago
Apparently, you don't remember the Dark Ages. See, there were other browsers, that much is true. What you're missing is that many, many sites were only developed for IE, and only worked at all in IE. No, not "graceful degradation," not "progressive enhancement," that all came a decade later: if you were not using IE, the sites were very broken, even unusable - and nobody cared: after all, Just Use IE Like All The Normal People Do, right?

tethis 13y ago

The address bar works as both now, it seems that the search bar is left there so that it doesn't startle all the neophobes even more.

yournemesis 13y ago

Here is why I don't use it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476541 This bug makes Firefox useless to me and has been around for over 5 years!

Karunamon 13y ago
This seems to be a recurring thing with Firefox. I really think they should leave the damned UI alone and start fixing some of the killer half decade plus old bugs! This is the third one I'm aware of that is a basic usability thing. Others include a complete failure to browse to sites that present a duplicate SSL certificate, and an odd breakage that results in downloads getting half completed but the UI saying they're complete anyways.

patrickaljord 13y ago

> * Multi-touch swipe to go back/forward shows no feedback! (Safari does this best, where the whole page slides away, revealing what's underneath; Chrome does a half-assed thing with arrows fading in, which isn't nearly as nice, but at least better than no feedback.) This is how it works on ChromeOS too. It even has a nice black and white effect on the previous page until it's fully loaded.

User7198 13y ago

Agreed with a lot of the above. The biggest concerns for me... 1. The rounded tabs are simply ugly, and remind me of web design from a decade ago. It's also weird how they go from square to round on rollover. Poor design choice in my opinion. 2. It's far more difficult to find the active tab now. For comparison, the old style (http://static.filehorse.com/screenshots/browsers-and-plugins/firefox-screenshot-01.png http://static.filehorse.com/screenshots/browsers-and-plugins...). In the new version, I have to scan the toolbar to find the active tab based on the rounded or square edges. It's a lot easier the old way to find a bright active tab on darker, faded out inactive tabs. That's UX 101. It doesn't stop there, the entire toolbar, tabs, search, etc, blends together in a blob of light grey and white right now. Very little distinction between anything. 3. I never liked the orange Firefox button in the top left, it always seemed out of place and forced. Replacing it with an icon and menu is fine, but that icon should be on the left, before the first tab. The menu opening to a grid of icons is also awful. How it transitions to the right when you click something like 'History' is extremely bizarre. I have no idea why they tried to reinvent the wheel here, a typical list menu that everyone is familiar with would work best. That's great you can customize it, but 9/10 people will never use that feature, so it's a step backwards for them. Overall, I see it as a change for the worse. It's not rocket science here, and nailing down a proper browser interface should be a walk in the park. We're talking about some tabs and a toolbar, there's no excuse for it to be anything but perfect after more than a decade. I'm 100% confident I could knock out a better design, that would be better received by people in a weekend. They have some nice features and design choices, but they got it 90% there, and keep tripping over polishing the remaining 10%.

xerophtye 13y ago

>Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing umm... I don't know if this works on mac too, but at least in the windows Firefox, you actually CAN use the address bar as a search bar. So why two bars? well the search bar also lets you CHOOSE your search engine, unlike Chrome which hardwires you to google. Yes yes, you might say but why would i want to search anywhere else? Well just like you hate having to actually GO to google to search on google, people hate going to wikipedia or wolfram alpha or ask.com etc etc before searching there. So it lets them query their engine of choice right from the bar. Oh and depending on your version, the address bar automatically searches on the engine selected in the search bar. Now since you are a fairly old user of FF, i don't really understand the need to tell you all this, ut i just felt your nitpick about the searchbar saw this "feature" as a "design flaw"

insky 13y ago

On Nightly on Linux that fade in and out isn't there on the hamburger menu. Unless that's because my GFX setup doesn't support it. Perhaps it has been addressed in a further release.

pcoem 13y ago

The forced menu fade is a poor design choice in Windows too. They completely ignore the Windows appearance/performance settings, where you can disable pointless menu effects that are just a waste of time.