I downloaded FF4 yesterday along with 5 million other people around the world. I wanted to see what the difference would be. Firefox is my browser of choice & has been for several years. Now the folks at Mozilla have done major changes to their browser, but is it really that much of an improvement?
Let's start with the new look, which is similar to Google Chrome. The menu bar has been hidden, I guess because they decided it takes up too much space. I disagree with that, but that's just me. It has been replaced with a Firefox button that is orange so you can't miss it. When you click on this button you find all the menus that would be on the menu bar. Bookmarks, history, the options (like font size), print, etc. Also options relating to toolbars & the now missing status bar, which you can re-enable. This is necessary because a lot of extensions have their icons on that bar, like ScribeFire which I use to do this blog.
Then there is pinned aps. This is something new & it took me a while to figure it out. You go on a website that you use a lot, like Gmail & right click it. A menu shows up with the option to pin it as an app tab. that means it appears as an icon next to the Firefox button. It is always open, meaning if you click it you don't have to wait for it to load, because it's already open. But be careful! If you go to another site while on it, the app tab will switch. So you have to go to another tab before surfing. Took me awhile to figure that one out.
And now we come to tab groups. I'm still not sure I like this & may not keep it. This means you can have a bunch of tabs open & put them in a grouping. there is an icon on the right next to next tab. Click it & it will show your current tabs. You can have a lot of tabs open & create multiple groups by dragging tabs out of the original grouping to start a new group. Fine. But if you close a tab, it goes away. No save button. Actually I think tags are better, because once you tag something you won't lose it. Close everything, & when you want to go back you open the menu & look for recent tags. This has been around since FF3.
Speed. I'm not sure. It's supposed to be many times faster than FF3.6 but I'm not sure I see it. Some sites still seem to take forever to load, & I don't notice that the original start up in the morning is any faster than 3.6 was. It's not that I have a slow machine. Mine has a 3.07 GHZ processor with 4GB of RAM. That's a lot better than my previous machine (2 GHZ, 768 MB RAM).
Add ons. Under the Firefox button you will find an add on listing. When you click it, you go to the newly re-designed AMO site. The problem is that a lot of stuff , especially themes are not compatible yet. Give it time. I lost AniWeather & StatusBar Ex. Hopefully those come back. But AdBlock Plus & No Script do work.
So this is after a day & a half of using it. There are a lot of reviews out there, so take mine as an amateur with a grain of salt. Add your own thoughts if you want to.
Let's start with the new look, which is similar to Google Chrome. The menu bar has been hidden, I guess because they decided it takes up too much space. I disagree with that, but that's just me. It has been replaced with a Firefox button that is orange so you can't miss it. When you click on this button you find all the menus that would be on the menu bar. Bookmarks, history, the options (like font size), print, etc. Also options relating to toolbars & the now missing status bar, which you can re-enable. This is necessary because a lot of extensions have their icons on that bar, like ScribeFire which I use to do this blog.
Then there is pinned aps. This is something new & it took me a while to figure it out. You go on a website that you use a lot, like Gmail & right click it. A menu shows up with the option to pin it as an app tab. that means it appears as an icon next to the Firefox button. It is always open, meaning if you click it you don't have to wait for it to load, because it's already open. But be careful! If you go to another site while on it, the app tab will switch. So you have to go to another tab before surfing. Took me awhile to figure that one out.
And now we come to tab groups. I'm still not sure I like this & may not keep it. This means you can have a bunch of tabs open & put them in a grouping. there is an icon on the right next to next tab. Click it & it will show your current tabs. You can have a lot of tabs open & create multiple groups by dragging tabs out of the original grouping to start a new group. Fine. But if you close a tab, it goes away. No save button. Actually I think tags are better, because once you tag something you won't lose it. Close everything, & when you want to go back you open the menu & look for recent tags. This has been around since FF3.
Speed. I'm not sure. It's supposed to be many times faster than FF3.6 but I'm not sure I see it. Some sites still seem to take forever to load, & I don't notice that the original start up in the morning is any faster than 3.6 was. It's not that I have a slow machine. Mine has a 3.07 GHZ processor with 4GB of RAM. That's a lot better than my previous machine (2 GHZ, 768 MB RAM).
Add ons. Under the Firefox button you will find an add on listing. When you click it, you go to the newly re-designed AMO site. The problem is that a lot of stuff , especially themes are not compatible yet. Give it time. I lost AniWeather & StatusBar Ex. Hopefully those come back. But AdBlock Plus & No Script do work.
So this is after a day & a half of using it. There are a lot of reviews out there, so take mine as an amateur with a grain of salt. Add your own thoughts if you want to.
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