Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.5

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/30/mozilla-releases-firefox-3-5/)

Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 (http://www.getfirefox.com), a significant upgrade to the world's second-most popular Internet browser. Webmonkey summarizes (http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Mozilla_Pushes_the_Web_Forward_With_Firefox_3DOT5) some of the more important advances in the latest version, including speed enhancements, support for HTML 5, geolocation services, search improvements, and the addition of a private browsing mode.Originally envisioned as a quick follow-up to 2008's release of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla ended up packing in quite a few extra features into its flagship browser and spent months making sure that Firefox 3.5 was the fastest, most powerful Firefox yet.

Firefox 3.5 brings with it entirely new and much faster rendering engines for both static web pages and the JavaScript code that powers today's complex web-based applications. There are new privacy features, new capabilities for playing video and audio files and improved search tools. There are also a handful of other new features that should prove useful for both Firefox devotees and newcomers alike.Firefox 3.5 is available for OS X (10.4 or later), Windows, and Linux and is available in nearly 75 languages.

Article Link: Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.5 (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/30/mozilla-releases-firefox-3-5/)

[Andy-V]

Nice update. Been using the RC for a while.

[flapperdink]

nice. i recently switched to safari 4 at home because it was faster. hopefully FF3.5 is just as fast...i got very used to FF at work and would go back in a hearbeat at home if it was as fast as safari.

[SolRayz]

Have they smoothed out the scrolling on 3.5? I like Firefox but the ultra smooth scrolling in Safari keeps me from switching.

[kirky29]

Still slow for me.

Safari is king.

[FF_productions]

Firefox 3.5 is fast as hell...wow, I'd like to see some benchmarks..

[GimmeSlack12]

So long Safari 4.0, you're fun but you don't switch tabs as easily as Firefox. Safari just doesn't seem as solid as Firefox, I know that's a very scientific fact, but I just am not as comfortable with Safari.

Seriously, if Safari would switch tabs by Cmd-1, 2, 3... it would be tough for me to go back to Firefox (any tips are welcome).

[dwd3885]

I haven't used firefox since safari 4. But I'll check it out again. On a side note, They should make Firefox for the iPhone, although I'm not sure it would be accepted into the app store

[iSee]

I love that Safari and FF seem to be competing to be the best browser. Whichever is ahead at the moment hardly matters; we all win whichever one we prefer.

[goodwilldrums]

Firefox 3.5 is the first browser to support open video formats, allowing movies to become part of today’s dynamic web pages without requiring a plug-in.

Also, the best part about FF for me is the recently closed tab. Safari has yet to catch on to this much needed feature. If you accidentally close a tab you didn't mean to in Safari, you have to open a new tab and try to remember which page you were on. In FF, all you do is History > Recently closed tabs, and they're all there.

Love that feature!

[Mr Maui]

Hopefully it will stabilize Firefox a bit. Ever since I upgraded from Firefox 3 to Firefox 3, my browser crashes with regularity. I use to love Firefox, but use Safari more these days because Firefox 3 has nice features, but crashes regularly.

[Cassie]

Apparently it upgraded itself for me...when my computer was off, because it doesn't show I'm using the beta anymore? :confused:

[mathcolo]

Dang, Firefox 3.5 is extremely fast. I'm not sure about switching, however, since Safari 4 gets a perfect 100 on the Acid3 test and Firefox doesn't.

I do like Open Video though...

[Dagless]

Well fingers crossed this doesn't crash as much as 3.0 (which was up to 4 times daily). The next crash that occurs during typing pushes me to Safari for XP.

[redwarrior]

I'm in a love/hate relationship with Firefox. I need several of the addons, but it has always made my computer run hotter.

I'll give this one a try. I really need it, and I hate going back and forth between browsers.

[co.ag.2005]

Safari 4.0 FTW!... but I'll have to give this a test drive later on when I get home from work

[goinskiing]

I haven't used firefox since safari 4. But I'll check it out again.

I'm the same way. It seems like I have been bouncing back and forth between FF and Safari 4.

The new FF seems pretty slick and seems as snappy as Safari 4.

It's nice to have options.

[str1f3]

Firefox 3.5 is the first browser to support open video formats, allowing movies to become part of today’s dynamic web pages without requiring a plug-in.

Also, the best part about FF for me is the recently closed tab. Safari has yet to catch on to this must needed feature. If you accidentally close a tab you didn't mean to in Safari, you have to open a new tab and remember which page you were on. In FF, all you do is History > Recently closed tabs, and they're all there.

Love that feature!

The Glims plugin for Safari can do that and a lot more for Safari including easier tab switching. I understand what you're saying in that it would still be nice if it was built in.

[mathcolo]

The Glims plugin for Safari can do that and a lot more for Safari including easier tab switching. I understand what you're saying in that it would still be nice if it was built in.

I tend to not use addons if at all possible because they often bog down performance of the browser.

Like, for example, Adblock Plus slows the browser down because it checks all URL references in a page.

[slb]

Firefox still spins up the fans where Safari doesn't. I think most people who follow these things are aware that WebKit is the superior rendering engine by now.

[zerocustom1989]

Sweet. While I like Safari 4's Most Visited pages feature, it has been a nightmare to use.

Safari has often hanged while loading websites, and sometimes cuts my computer from the internet. Good Riddance. Idk what was causing my problems with Safari, but I'm glad firefox 3.5 is working lightyears faster than anything I had before.

[kemo]

I tend to not use addons if at all possible because they often bog down performance of the browser.

Like, for example, Adblock Plus slows the browser down because it checks all URL references in a page.

Well, may it does, but for sure it reduces time to load whole page because of flash banners, dont you think ?

[morespce54]

Firefox 3.5 is the first browser to support open video formats, allowing movies to become part of today’s dynamic web pages without requiring a plug-in.

Also, the best part about FF for me is the recently closed tab. Safari has yet to catch on to this much needed feature. If you accidentally close a tab you didn't mean to in Safari, you have to open a new tab and try to remember which page you were on. In FF, all you do is History > Recently closed tabs, and they're all there.

Love that feature!


Well, you could always use the "Reopen last closed window" and "Reopen all windows from last session" options...

If you didn't use the "private browsing" option, that is...

[mathcolo]

Well, may it does, but for sure it reduces time to load whole page because of flash banners, dont you think ?

True, I hadn't thought of that. I guess it just depends on how much advertising is done on pages. MacRumors doesn't have that much, but the Weather Channel does.

[birch25]

Dang, Firefox 3.5 is extremely fast. I'm not sure about switching, however, since Safari 4 gets a perfect 100 on the Acid3 test and Firefox doesn't.

I do like Open Video though...

How does Safari's slightly better Acid3 score (FF gets a 93, I believe, the site isn't loading for me so I can't test it now) affect your daily browsing needs? I know that standards compliance is good for bragging rights and is generally good for the web, but how many of your sites actually don't render correctly in Firefox? I use Safari 4 over Firefox but more because it launches and runs a hell of a lot faster.

I haven't used firefox since safari 4. But I'll check it out again. On a side note, They should make Firefox for the iPhone, although I'm not sure it would be accepted into the app store

Other browsers have been accepted but I think they have to use WebKit which mobile Firefox does not.

[kemo]

"the world's second-most popular Internet browser"

You probably mean Internet Explore as the world's most popular Internet browser, right?

I don't count IE like a browser, because it is a piece of **** (sorry for this word), at least because Microsoft isn't interested in web standards...and I better don't talk about web security with this "browser" ...

peace!

[adisor19]

Anyone knows of a hack/addon/plugin for Safari 4 that allows multiple rows of tabs ? It's the last thing keeping me from switching from the CPU/RAM hungry FF to Safari 4.

Adi

[wolfshades]

Other browsers have been accepted but I think they have to use WebKit which mobile Firefox does not.

*Scooby voice* Mmmuh?

[RebootD]

Until Safari can offer the level of color management that Firefox 3.5 does I'm sticking with FF. (Wide gamut display) Plus this new version screams compared to previous releases so far.

If you have a wider gamut display use the about:config to turn on color management in FF and then go to ESPN.com and compare Safari to FF. Safari's reds will make your eyes bleed. :(

[mathcolo]

How does Safari's slightly better Acid3 score (FF gets a 93, I believe, the site isn't loading for me so I can't test it now) affect your daily browsing needs? I know that standards compliance is good for bragging rights and is generally good for the web, but how many of your sites actually don't render correctly in Firefox?

Well, none :p. I'm a big supporter of full standards compliance so being able to go to the Acid3 test site and see a full 100 is great. It isn't that I wouldn't use a browser at all because of it, but I value the 100 with Safari 4.

I may consider switching to Firefox 3.5 after testing it for awhile now.

[Peel]

Does anyone know of a chart (or have the knowledge to compile one) that compares the feature list of firefox 3.5, safari 4.0 and the latest version of opera for OS X? Would be great to see side by side comparison if their capabilities.

[mr.steevo]

Hi,

With every little update my iBook gets incrementally slower and sloowerr.

dang.

s.

[tristan tumble]

does it now support finger swiping to go back and forth on the pages like safari does on laptops?

[Shasterball]

I haven't used firefox since safari 4.

Same here. We'll see how she runs.

[nubee]

does it now support finger swiping to go back and forth on the pages like safari does on laptops?

Yes.

You can also do the 3-finger scroll up and down.

[Michaelgtrusa]

Updated this a few days ago.

[jdechko]

I was able to update my portable version, fortunately, and it seems considerably faster than version 3.

[RebootD]

Hi,

With every little update my iBook gets incrementally slower and sloowerr.

dang.

s.

Sometimes it is hard to say goodbye to dear friends and move on but it eventually happens to all of us. :D

(I kid I kid!)

[That-Is-Bull]

Anyone knows of a hack/addon/plugin for Safari 4 that allows multiple rows of tabs ? It's the last thing keeping me from switching from the CPU/RAM hungry FF to Safari 4.

This is probably the only thing I miss from Firefox - only having one row of tabs and having to use multiple windows is annoying as hell for me.

[twoodcc]

glad to see improvements. gotta keep apple making safari even better as well

[celticpride678]

I don't know, but I still use Safari 4.

[angemon89]

Ever since I bought my new MBP I haven't even bothered to install Firefox. I'm very happy with Safari 4 and I have been a loyal Firefox user for many years up until now.

[kainjow]

It starts up a lot faster, and loads my employer's website a lot faster than Safari 4. It feels snappy, but I still like Safari more.

[germanjulian]

really does make a difference even with my ****** 2MB connection

[Macmoney]

I wonder will the release of Snow leopard make Safari even faster
I like Safari but may give this a spin just out of curiosity.

[Amdahl]

Until Safari can offer the level of color management that Firefox 3.5 does I'm sticking with FF. (Wide gamut display) Plus this new version screams compared to previous releases so far.

If you have a wider gamut display use the about:config to turn on color management in FF and then go to ESPN.com and compare Safari to FF. Safari's reds will make your eyes bleed. :(

Uh, I think Safari has had proper color support for years. It's one of the reasons I didn't use Firefox on Mac. (Smooth scrolling is the other.. Why can't Mozilla get it to work like Safari?)

I think this is what you are referring to with color:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

[The General]

Still slow, clunky and fugly. Deleted. Back on Safari.

I am, however, taking a liking to Chrome for Mac, though. It's faster than Safari, just lacks a few features.

Chrome opens so fast that my dock icon doesn't even bounce.

[BornAgainMac]

I think I'll pass and use the 3rd most popular browser for the Mac and the 4th most popular browser on Windows. Nice to see Firefox still improving.

[igazza]

i use to be a firefox user but safari 4 changed that. :D

still waiting for chrome..:p

[That-Is-Bull]

really does make a difference even with my ****** 2MB connection

****** 2MB connection? Try living outside of broadband access. It's either dial-up, satellite (which is much worse than dial-up), or 3G (which isn't much better than dial-up). I'd kill for a 2MB connection.

[techfreak85]

any one else notice the new icon?

http://www.billings.k12.mt.us/lewisclark/Lewis%20and%20Clark_files/firefox_icon.gif 3.0
http://www.firefoxfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/firefox512noshadow.png3.5

[NinjaHERO]

Sweet. Safari is cool and all, but I love me some Firefox.

[Mousse]

I don't understand why it has to be either Safari or FireFox for some folks. I use both (and Chrome on in XP), sometimes at the same time. I use Safari for general browsing, FF for when I visit sites that uses Flash animation and other sites that don't like Safari. The improvements to FF is very welcome in my book.

[John Jacob]

I just downloaded and installed Firefox 3.5, and it looks and feels just like 3.0. What's new here? Is this more of a stability and performance update, just like Snow Leopard?

That said, I don't feel the attraction to Safari that many people have here. For me, Firefox beats Safari hands down (and I don't even use add-ons).

[kainjow]

any one else notice the new icon?

<snip>

Yep, I noticed it too. Looks nice.

[SolRayz]

Ok so it so it does seem that the scrolling for us trackpad users is markedly improved, which is a great thing.

However, has anyone else noticed that the pages load much darker as compared to safari? Any reason for that?

[rgarjr]

FF is the only thing I use for browsing.. ;)

[Westside guy]

Until Safari can offer the level of color management that Firefox 3.5 does I'm sticking with FF. (Wide gamut display) Plus this new version screams compared to previous releases so far.

If you have a wider gamut display use the about:config to turn on color management in FF and then go to ESPN.com and compare Safari to FF. Safari's reds will make your eyes bleed. :(

Uh, I think Safari has had proper color support for years. It's one of the reasons I didn't use Firefox on Mac. (Smooth scrolling is the other.. Why can't Mozilla get it to work like Safari?)

Amdahl is right - Firefox was late to the party (well, every browser except Safari was late, and IE has still not shown up) when it comes to color management. Using a site that almost certainly is designed to display correctly on a non-color-managed browser as your "proof" of Firefox's better color management is not really thinking things through.

I'm primarily a Firefox user because the add-ons are indispensable to me. And I was glad when Firefox added color management as an option (having been one of the bug filers on bugzilla regarding this) - but its color management is still occasionally wonky.

[madrag]

been using FF for the last three years, along with safari (I'm a web dev).

3.5 seems snappy(er)...

I also noticed the new icon, better! :)

But 3.5 seems more uggly :( the tabs look bigger, and that "+" (add tab) is so predominant...
The tabs are in a different position now.

I suppose it's because everything is darker now (?).
I know I can change the theme.

As for the performance, I'll have to use it for some days to check that.

[Westside guy]

I don't understand why it has to be either Safari or FireFox for some folks. I use both (and Chrome on in XP), sometimes at the same time. I use Safari for general browsing, FF for when I visit sites that uses Flash animation and other sites that don't like Safari. The improvements to FF is very welcome in my book.

On the latter comment - is this because of Flashblock? There is now an equivalent flash-blocking plugin for Safari called ClickToFlash (http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master). I don't use Safari that much, but ClickToFlash seems to work very well - and lately I've noticed some Flash-based sites (CNN video for one) that don't work correctly in Firefox do work in Safari.

[habubauza]

I can never get to an add on that works properly to view PDF documents in the browser. I never have a problem with this in Safari. What do I have to do to read PDF documents in the firefox browser? I downloaded 3.5.

[ShiftyPig]

Is there a "Top Sites" type add-on that I could get for FF? I switched over to S4 and got hooked on that feature but I'm not an overall fan of Safari.

[Master Chief]

...But 3.5 seems more uggly :( the tabs look bigger, and that "+" (add tab) is so predominant...
The tabs are in a different position now.

I suppose it's because everything is darker now (?).
I know I can change the theme.
You don't even need to change themes as Firefox (Mozilla really) let's you change anything (Google it) to you likings – now try that with Safari 4 :D

[goodwilldrums]

Yes.

You can also do the 3-finger scroll up and down.

yeah I like that. 3 finger swipe down goes to the very bottom of the page, 3 finger swipe up goes to the very top!

Also, two finger twists, tabs left or right. :)

Don't get me wrong, I may be a high promoter for FF, but I still use Safari and think it's really great. I just don't like the people who stick to Safari just because it was on their Mac when they got it. Almost as bad as PC users with IE. (I am NOT comparing safari to IE, just the act of not trying something new)

[kyleh206]

I want Chrome :(

[macJC50640]

Well I'm on Safari 4 at the moment, but I guess I'll try out Firefox 3.5 and see what's up since people say its fast. :)

[Packersfan27]

Wow, my favorite browser just got a lot better!

It loads a lot faster for me and I love the new add tabs button. I don't like the default FF look, so I looked at some of the themes for it and found Walnut, awesome theme! All you FF users should check it out.

If only FF could play Netflix I could get rid of IE...

[macJC50640]

I want Chrome :(

Yeah Chrome is fast. Really fast. I use that when I go on my PC *gasp* (yes, I use a PC sometimes) :p

[dangleheart]

I find these modern browsers to take up a lot of my cpu time and memory, especially on some javascript heavy web sites. Hope FF 3.5 is better on that. Speed of rendering is one thing but if I stayed at a web site for some time, I do not want these browsers to take up 200-300 Meg of memory and 40% of cpu time. I know some tabs take a lot of cpu time when the fan on my laptop kicks in when I am not really doing anything much.

[Master Chief]

I can never get to an add on that works properly to view PDF documents in the browser. I never have a problem with this in Safari. What do I have to do to read PDF documents in the firefox browser? I downloaded 3.5.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=PDF&cat=all

[Master Chief]

Yeah Chrome is fast. Really fast. I use that when I go on my PC *gasp* (yes, I use a PC sometimes) :p
It's also missing a lot of built-in features. Stuff that can be found in Firefox only thus far.

[sn00pie]

Firefox 3.5 has made be switch from Safari 4 :)

[benlangdon]

i don't want or need this "+" (open a new tab).
its really bugging me.:mad:

[dkh587]

I LOVE Safari but it cannot handle a lot of GIF's that people post on boards that I frequent. They often crash the browser and if they do load, they're not at full speed. FireFox can support them no problem, and load them fast and display them at the correct speed.:confused:

[logotype]

honestly don't know why to use FF instead of Safari.

FF is just... ugly.

[SolRayz]

Well Firefox is out for me. Simply no way of syncing bookmarks over MobileMe to my iPhone. And probably something that Apple will never allow. Oh well.

[habubauza]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=PDF&cat=all


Thanks.

[McShizzel]

Whao!

FireFox 3.5 is fast and this is coming from my PowerBook G4, it also appears to eat up less system resources.

And somehow it looks nicer than the previous versions.

[SFStateStudent]

Yup, FF is still #2 in my book. Safari 4 has it hands down for me. FF is still a couple of clicks slower than Safari, and yes it's color schemes seem to be off or darker as some posters have mentioned. Still waiting on some pages to load, but at least the crashing issues haven't been occurring since the 3.5 update....:eek::eek::eek:

[benlangdon]

honestly don't know why to use FF instead of Safari.

FF is just... ugly.
add ons.


wow safari still open lightning quick compared to ff, still faster than the other one though.

[Shookster]

I just downloaded and installed Firefox 3.5, and it looks and feels just like 3.0. What's new here? Is this more of a stability and performance update, just like Snow Leopard?


The thing about web browsers is that you often don't spot the new features unless web developers specifically make use of them. Firefox 3.5 supports many new CSS3 and HTML5 features but most developers won't use them until there is more widespread adoption.

I can never get to an add on that works properly to view PDF documents in the browser. I never have a problem with this in Safari. What do I have to do to read PDF documents in the firefox browser? I downloaded 3.5.

I use this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7518

[macJC50640]

Well I'm on Safari 4 at the moment, but I guess I'll try out Firefox 3.5 and see what's up since people say its fast. :)

Okay well I'm posting on Firefox 3.5 at the moment...and it really is FAST! For those of you who have not tried it yet, try it! For those of you who are saying its ugly -- Safari has a better look to it, but in my opinion Firefox 3.5 is in no way "ugly".

[haravikk]

I think Safari 4 is still a bit faster than FireFox 3.5, definitely in javascript performance (Safari 4 is about 10-15% faster).

[johnmcboston]

honestly don't know why to use FF instead of Safari.

FF is just... ugly.

And I have a completely opposite opinion. nice to have choices, isn't it...

[tekcor]

Firefox just doesn't interest me. Being a UI designer, Firefox's Java roots make it hideous to my eyes. The improper menus, wrong font sizes on buttons, stupid halos around every control despite having that turned off in my preferences.

I cannot stand using FF for more than a couple of page tests.

[Jigsawjammer]

I feel like I can't use FireFox anymore because I love the features of my MBP trackpad. Am I missing something?

[Master Chief]

I would like to add two links for (future) Mozilla Application Developers:

https://addons.moz Contestilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=PDF&cat=all
http://labs.mozilla.com/contests/extendfirefox3.5/

Don't have a spot to start your project? Then please join mozdev.org or the likes and feel free to contact us developers (me est 1999) so that we can help you, when needed.

Good luck!

[TBDNET]

Firefox 3.5 is the first browser to support open video formats, allowing movies to become part of today’s dynamic web pages without requiring a plug-in.

Also, the best part about FF for me is the recently closed tab. Safari has yet to catch on to this much needed feature. If you accidentally close a tab you didn't mean to in Safari, you have to open a new tab and try to remember which page you were on. In FF, all you do is History > Recently closed tabs, and they're all there.

Love that feature!

Never knew about that... doesn't sound like a huge savings over clicking on a page from the history but saving seconds adds up at the end of the day.

[RebootD]

Uh, I think Safari has had proper color support for years. It's one of the reasons I didn't use Firefox on Mac. (Smooth scrolling is the other.. Why can't Mozilla get it to work like Safari?)

I think this is what you are referring to with color:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

No Safari has support for tagged images but anything without one it barfs up the usual colors without using your profile. FF defaults everything, even untagged, to use your profile. I opened up pages, as I've stated, ESPN and FF looks correct and Safari 4 is neon.

[soup4you2]

I think i'll run Firefox until :apple: figures out the stability issues with Safari 4.

[lhotka]

Initial Thoughts:

1) Install issue. Even after a clean reboot, finder thought that the dylib's were still in use. Had to delete them from finder before copying over the new version.

2) Memory PIG. After 3 hours of use, with only one tab open, 3.5 had 450MB of Real Memory locked up. Hey Mozilla, how about fixing the memory leaks in 3.6?

[Dark Horse]

Well Firefox is out for me. Simply no way of syncing bookmarks over MobileMe to my iPhone. And probably something that Apple will never allow. Oh well.

You could sync your bookmarks between safari and firefox using xmarks, then use ff on your machine and safari on your iphone

[Master Chief]

Firefox just doesn't interest me. Being a UI designer, Firefox's Java roots make it hideous to my eyes. The improper menus, wrong font sizes on buttons, stupid halos around every control despite having that turned off in my preferences.

I cannot stand using FF for more than a couple of page tests.
Eh, where did this: "Firefox's Java roots" came from?

FYI: Mozilla Firefox has no Java roots... and never will. Period.

[Master Chief]

Initial Thoughts:

1) Install issue. Even after a clean reboot, finder thought that the dylib's were still in use. Had to delete them from finder before copying over the new version.

2) Memory PIG. After 3 hours of use, with only one tab open, 3.5 had 450MB of Real Memory locked up. Hey Mozilla, how about fixing the memory leaks in 3.6?
Hey, how about disabling that feature, the one that saves pages in memory first?

p.s. If you really think to have found such a big memory leak in 3.5 (for a single tab) then please... be my guest and file a bug report here (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/). And don't forget to add clear steps to reproduce the bug :D

[parapup]

2) Memory PIG. After 3 hours of use, with only one tab open, 3.5 had 450MB of Real Memory locked up. Hey Mozilla, how about fixing the memory leaks in 3.6?

Looking at the wrong number? I routinely find that when Safari has gobbled 500+ Mb or "Real Memory" in Activity Monitor, FF has around 130Mb.

Right now after opening the same sites in FF and Safari - Safari has 140Mb and FF has 84.

[.:Meh:.]

Is there an Ubiquity plug-in for S4?

[ALUOp]

Firefox 3.5 is fast as hell...wow, I'd like to see some benchmarks..

Try this one.
One of my machines went from 4050ms to 1152ms.
Another one from 2541ms to 951ms.
And it feels much faster in real life too.

http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html

[skye12]

Seems faster. I've always preferred FF over Safari.

[UltraNEO*]

You know what buggs me with Safari4? It's the fact I can't use the customise the taskbar to how I like it, instead the refresh thing has to be in the middle and the [+] can'r be disabled.

http://img.skitch.com/20090630-qtjcabpcnc2ta8kut2yd86uk28.jpg

And I thought APPLE was suppose to create user-friendly applications and stuff.. it's not very user friendly if the user can't customise it.. Thank god there's FireFox!!

[Foggy]

Bah - Zend toolbar doesnt work with 3.5 so no upgrading for me :(

[aleksandra.]

Finally drag and drop of tabs between windows :>. Now I only need to figure out how to get rid of this huge, ugly, awful, IE-like "+" button...

[Civic Minded]

I LOVE Safari but it cannot handle a lot of GIF's that people post on boards that I frequent. They often crash the browser and if they do load, they're not at full speed. FireFox can support them no problem, and load them fast and display them at the correct speed.:confused:

Exactly. I have the same issue with Safari, and I hate it because of how much I love using Safari. Hopefully they'll get that straightened out sometime soon. I'm not holding my breath though.

[elppa]

Firefox just doesn't interest me. Being a UI designer, Firefox's Java roots make it hideous to my eyes. The improper menus, wrong font sizes on buttons, stupid halos around every control despite having that turned off in my preferences.

I don't think Netscape/Firefox were ever written in Java. They do use a cross-platform framework though.

For most of your other sentiments, I agree, Firefox doesn't feel right. Some people will think I am being silly and not arguing with rational points, but that's just the way it is. I want the browser to do well, but it's just not my first choice. And yes, I've used it when it was called Firebird, I've used 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5.

I feel like I can't use FireFox anymore because I love the features of my MBP trackpad. Am I missing something?

The fact that three finger swipes for back/forwards work natively out the box without plugins?

[okrelayer]

why are fonts so large on firefox??

[Sehnsucht]

Yay...love it. Always been a big fan of "der Feuerfuchs." :D

[raybo]

I'll switch to Safari - which I think may be the best browser - when I can get a Favicons toolbar add-on (as I have in FF). I wonder if the Favicons will work with 3.5.

Ray

[iPhoneNYC]

I'm quite happy with Safari 4.0 and don't see a reason to switch.

[scottuf]

i've been using ff for so long, anytime i try using safari i just can't get used to it. take the search box for example, why just google or yahoo. what about imdb? wikipedia? amazon? ebay? i can go on and on. probably a plug-in out there to fix that, but i haven't found it yet.

[daneoni]

Have to admit...its blazing fast. On par with Safari 4. I still prefer safari's font/integration with the OS and the fact that FF doesn't auto-update for me is a real turnoff...that and the lack of RSS support. Live bookmarks does nothing for me.

[CPD_1]

I'm not a big fan of the way firefox loads pages, but it does seem to be quicker then it was.

[bbyrdhouse]

I try really hard to like Firefox but always end up going back to Safari or WKN.

I will however give FF 3.5 a fair shake and see if they can woo me.

[RebootD]

Amdahl is right - Firefox was late to the party (well, every browser except Safari was late, and IE has still not shown up) when it comes to color management. Using a site that almost certainly is designed to display correctly on a non-color-managed browser as your "proof" of Firefox's better color management is not really thinking things through.

I'm primarily a Firefox user because the add-ons are indispensable to me. And I was glad when Firefox added color management as an option (having been one of the bug filers on bugzilla regarding this) - but its color management is still occasionally wonky.

I did say he was correct in that Safari has had color management but it is pretty poor. 9/10 sites don't use tagged images so Safari ignores your profile and just throws up the defaults. Right now FF is the only browser to accurately display color managed pages despite the page actually using tagged images.

[sukanas]

yay! multi touch works!

[matthemercyless]

The icon has seen some updates too. Looks pretty sweet!:D

[Bad Paper]

So why is this page 1 news?

[macshill]

Still no Google Toolbar compatibility for me. Also, I was alerted that Real Player download any video won't work, either. That's a shame.

[Amdahl]

No Safari has support for tagged images but anything without one it barfs up the usual colors without using your profile. FF defaults everything, even untagged, to use your profile. I opened up pages, as I've stated, ESPN and FF looks correct and Safari 4 is neon.

Can you post a link to a specific image that I can use to compare? I don't notice anything on my MBP, but I've got an HP 3065 that I can test on.

[macshill]

So why is this page 1 news?

Yeah! More iPod Touch G3 rumors/news!!!!

[aleksandra.]

I try really hard to like Firefox but always end up going back to Safari or WKN.

I will however give FF 3.5 a fair shake and see if they can woo me.

Exactly the opposite for me... I try really hard to like another browser, but always go back to Firefox within a week.

[Krafty]

Firefox crashes a lot for me.

[lhotka]

Hey, how about disabling that feature, the one that saves pages in memory first?

p.s. If you really think to have found such a big memory leak in 3.5 (for a single tab) then please... be my guest and file a bug report here (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/). And don't forget to add clear steps to reproduce the bug :D

Sure,

Open several sites in tabs, read and close them. Open some more. Read and close them. Have one tab left after visiting 12-15 sites and reading 2-4 stories per site (my normal morning routine), some with flash, some not. Bingo - 450MB of RAM (and yes, looking at that one, not Safari).

If that's not a memory leak, then what is? FF should release memory when the tab is closed, and it's clearly not. Then again, 3.0 routinely ran up to 300+ MB too.

I'm already in contact with Mozilla :-)

[SCMaverick]

So long Safari 4.0, you're fun but you don't switch tabs as easily as Firefox. Safari just doesn't seem as solid as Firefox, I know that's a very scientific fact, but I just am not as comfortable with Safari.

Seriously, if Safari would switch tabs by Cmd-1, 2, 3... it would be tough for me to go back to Firefox (any tips are welcome).

Use glims (http://www.machangout.com/). You can switch between tabs with the , and . buttons. Much easier than the Cmd 1,2,3 scenario.

It also has a lot of other pretty great features too.

[colmaclean]

Also, two finger twists, tabs left or right. :)

I can get the 3-finger swipes to work, but not the twists - is it the same action as is used to rotate an image?

[galactic732]

http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/

allows you to track the downloads

[RebootD]

Can you post a link to a specific image that I can use to compare? I don't notice anything on my MBP, but I've got an HP 3065 that I can test on.

Of course turn on FF color management in about:config
It depends on what you have gfx.color_management.mode set to.
0 = Color management is disabled for everything
1 = Color management is enabled for all rendered graphics including untagged images which will assume sRGB
2 = Color management is enabled for all rendered graphics except untagged images which are left unmanaged.

1 = what I have everything is treated as sRGB if untagged (which most are anyway)
2 = Safari mode: Only tagged images with color profiles will be managed.

visit sites with Red or Blue particularly:
espn.com (http://www.espn.com)
macrumors.com (look at the logo and compare)
this one is very noticable http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/?promoid=BPDEE
http://www.engadget.com/ the blue's are very off in Safari as well

Plus I've noiced skin tones on any site under Safari 4 make them looked almost glowing orange. I'm using a NEC 2690wuxi2 and while it has an sRGB mode I dont' want to have to switch modes every time I go from a browser to photoshop which is why I've stuck with FF ever since they allowed you to manually turn on color management.

[MacFly123]

I LOVE Safari :D Just my personal preference.

So how are the tests for speed etc. compared to Safari 4?

I do wish Apple would add the rotate fingers gesture to switch tabs, and 3 fingers up or down for top and bottom of pages like FireFox though.

[pdpardue]

Personally, I don't understand tabs at all. It's the first thing that I turn off.

I use expose like mad crazy and tabs just doesn't work with expose. I can switch to any window with expose, with tabs I've got to read each and every single tab title till I find the one I want, with expose I can see every page at once and visually find the page I want.

Can someone please explain the allure of tabs

[RebootD]

Personally, I don't understand tabs at all. It's the first thing that I turn off.

I use expose like mad crazy and tabs just doesn't work with expose. I can switch to any window with expose, with tabs I've got to read each and every single tab title till I find the one I want, with expose I can see every page at once and visually find the page I want.

Can someone please explain the allure of tabs

So you don't have to use expose' to filter through 15 separate windows ontop of your other open apps? ctrl + tab works just fine.

Plus if you are doing research you can have multiple windows open, each with tabs, to help organize topics/subjects. This also allows you to 'save all tabs' as a single bookmark so you can go back to them later.

[pdpardue]

So you don't have to use expose' to filter through 15 separate windows ontop of your other open apps? ctrl + tab works just fine.

so, lets say you have 15 open window... ctrl + tab 15 times or on click of expose? which is faster/easier/less button clicks? I would rather see all 15 windows at once then read through 15 titles one by one.

Try this, take 15 random objects and place them in front of you and take 15 pieces of paper with the name of the 15 objects, and tell me which is easier to find a specific object

[Speedy2]

Hopefully it will stabilize Firefox a bit. Ever since I upgraded from Firefox 3 to Firefox 3, my browser crashes with regularity. I use to love Firefox, but use Safari more these days because Firefox 3 has nice features, but crashes regularly.

You might want to start fresh with a new profile.
Firefox is stable as a rock.

[Speedy2]

Finally drag and drop of tabs between windows :>. Now I only need to figure out how to get rid of this huge, ugly, awful, IE-like "+" button...

He he
I actually like the + button very much. I even had a skin for FF3 that enabled it.

The good thing about it: if you have many tabs open, it is still very easy to open a new tab. Without it, you will have a hard time double clicking that tiny empty space next to the tabs.

I know there are other way to open a new tab, but this is my favourite way.

[pdpardue]

Of course turn on FF color management in about:config
It depends on what you have gfx.color_management.mode set to.
0 = Color management is disabled for everything
1 = Color management is enabled for all rendered graphics including untagged images which will assume sRGB
2 = Color management is enabled for all rendered graphics except untagged images which are left unmanaged.

1 = what I have everything is treated as sRGB if untagged (which most are anyway)
2 = Safari mode: Only tagged images with color profiles will be managed.

visit sites with Red or Blue particularly:
espn.com (http://www.espn.com)
macrumors.com (look at the logo and compare)
this one is very noticable http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/?promoid=BPDEE
http://www.engadget.com/ the blue's are very off in Safari as well

Plus I've noiced skin tones on any site under Safari 4 make them looked almost glowing orange. I'm using a NEC 2690wuxi2 and while it has an sRGB mode I dont' want to have to switch modes every time I go from a browser to photoshop which is why I've stuck with FF ever since they allowed you to manually turn on color management.

as a photographer that built my website from scratch, and a frequent web user, having a feature that is turned OFF my default isn't a feature.

both of my monitors are calibrated and the only browser that displays my images correctly is safari. sRGB images rendered in FF, even with color management on, come out incorrect.

As the designer of my website I have to realize that even if you are using FF that the VAST majority of users aren't tweaking their configurations to turn color management on, therefore I can't consider it to be a feature at all

edit:
http://paulparduephotography.com/tmp/color.png

[DELLsFan]

Still slow for me.

Safari is king.

I'm starting to think this too. Safari 4.0 is just awesome. Although I kinda miss a few Firefox extensions, I sure don't miss them enough to do without the TOP SITES feature in Safari. It's way too cool to give up. :cool:

[Reaperducer]

So long Safari 4.0, you're fun but you don't switch tabs as easily as Firefox. Safari just doesn't seem as solid as Firefox, I know that's a very scientific fact, but I just am not as comfortable with Safari.

Seriously, if Safari would switch tabs by Cmd-1, 2, 3... it would be tough for me to go back to Firefox (any tips are welcome).
FWIW, through the magic of the MultiClutch utility, I use a three-finger swipe left or right along the trackpad to change tabs in Safari. It rocks and very quickly becomes second nature.

Even if you end up switching back to Firefox, I suggest looking into it. It should work for Firefox as well, and is a hell of a productivity booster if you keep anywhere from 2-15 tabs open.

[RebootD]

as a photographer that built my website from scratch, and a frequent web user, having a feature that is turned OFF my default isn't a feature.

both of my monitors are calibrated and the only browser that displays my images correctly is safari. sRGB images rendered in FF, even with color management on, come out incorrect.

As the designer of my website I have to realize that even if you are using FF that the VAST majority of users aren't tweaking their configurations to turn color management on, therefore I can't consider it to be a feature at all


Do you have a wide gamut display? (110% NTSC 97-100% adobe rgb)
I understand that if you don't have a wide-gamut display, I never bothered with it but now it is a noticeable difference between safari and FF, especially reds, bleed and are hyper-saturated.

[wschutz]

The king beats once more time the wannabe Safari :D
Wanna see becnhmarks :P

[Amdahl]

Of course turn on FF color management in about:config
...

Plus I've noiced skin tones on any site under Safari 4 make them looked almost glowing orange. I'm using a NEC 2690wuxi2 and while it has an sRGB mode I dont' want to have to switch modes every time I go from a browser to photoshop which is why I've stuck with FF ever since they allowed you to manually turn on color management.

I think I notice a slight difference in the red on the MR logo, but not seeing much anywhere else. It probably varies by how much correction is in your local color profile. I have some heavily corrected screens I'll try later, plus I'll try the 3065.

[TakeManhattan]

I think MBP trackpad support by Firefox was mentioned previously in this thread, but I want to mention it again, more explicitly, because I am so thankful that Firefox 3.5 now supports 3 finger swipes and zooming via the MBP trackpad !

Thank YOU Mozilla !

I've been using Safari (3... I'm wary of Safari 4) instead of Firefox precisely because Firefox 3.0 didn't support page back/forward using the trackpad on my MBP.

Now Safari has nothing over Firefox. (I only wish that Firefox windows had a slightly skinnier header.)

Does Safari 4 remember the zoom settings of individual web pages?

[zelet]

Well Firefox is out for me. Simply no way of syncing bookmarks over MobileMe to my iPhone. And probably something that Apple will never allow. Oh well.

Edit: I obviously didn't read your question all the way through. Sorry.

[Johnny Apple]

I've been a website designer since 1997.

The current versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox 2.0 all render graphics in tables correctly, and in the same way.

FireFox 3.0 does not! It adds extra padding to the tables so the graphics split apart!

The Mozilla development team takes the attitude that the way they do things is correct and, if all the rest of the world does things differently, they are wrong!

[pdpardue]

Do you have a wide gamut display? (110% NTSC 97-100% adobe rgb)
I understand that if you don't have a wide-gamut display, I never bothered with it but now it is a noticeable difference between safari and FF, especially reds, bleed and are hyper-saturated.

i'm not quite sure I understand your question. on the same monitor my aperture, photoshop, and safari colors looks the same. the same photo viewed in any of those application, or any other like preview or even quick look all have the same rendering, firefox does not.

[forzagaribaldi]

Apparently it upgraded itself for me...when my computer was off, because it doesn't show I'm using the beta anymore? :confused:

Same here! Got all excited about downloading the release and then realised I have it somehow. A bit freaky...

[MisterK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

I've got MobileMe keeping my Safari bookmarks synced. Can't say I miss Firefox much though. I just don't need plugins. Never found a use for them. My surfing isn't nearly fiddley enough to warrant it.

[soup4you2]

Wanna see becnhmarks :P

Only if those benchmarks also show current stability comparisons.

[pdpardue]

I've been a website designer since 1997.

The current versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox 2.0 all render graphics in tables correctly, and in the same way.

FireFox 3.0 does not! It adds extra padding to the tables so the graphics split apart!

The Mozilla development team takes the attitude that the way they do things is correct and, if all the rest of the world does things differently, they are wrong!

i don't claim to be a web designer but I did build my website from scratch and the one thing that I can say is that every browser handles things differently. IE has been the worst for me since I don't beta test in IE so the random times that I'm forced you use windows and IE I always check the rendering.

that being said it would be nice if all browsers would do the same thing without having to fuss in the design stage for browser compatibility


anyone interested, http://paulparduephotography.com/

[goodwilldrums]

i've been using ff for so long, anytime i try using safari i just can't get used to it. take the search box for example, why just google or yahoo. what about imdb? wikipedia? amazon? ebay? i can go on and on. probably a plug-in out there to fix that, but i haven't found it yet.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Another reason why FF gets the nudge over Safari.

[Mad Mac]

anyone interested, http://paulparduephotography.com/

I just checked out your website in both FF and Safari and they both rendered the dress orange-ish and not red. Per your comparison pic, both browsers looked like the pic on the left. Tried changing the settings in FF and everything's still orange-ish.

[goodwilldrums]

I can get the 3-finger swipes to work, but not the twists - is it the same action as is used to rotate an image?

Yes, that's what it used to be in Firefox 3.0 up until now. Since downloading 3.5 today, it doesn't seem to be working!:confused: Anyone else notice this missing feature on multi-finger gestures?

[Eraserhead]

IE has been the worst for me since I don't beta test in IE so the random times that I'm forced you use windows and IE I always check the rendering.

IE is the worst for everyone. Fortunately it supports conditional comments and also IE 8 behaves much much better.

I've been a website designer since 1997.

The current versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox 2.0 all render graphics in tables correctly, and in the same way.

FireFox 3.0 does not! It adds extra padding to the tables so the graphics split apart!

Can you give a link?

PS maybe you need to set the padding or the cellpadding on the table cells to 0.

[xUKHCx]

I'm starting to think this too. Safari 4.0 is just awesome. Although I kinda miss a few Firefox extensions, I sure don't miss them enough to do without the TOP SITES feature in Safari. It's way too cool to give up. :cool:

Firefox addon: Speed Dial (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810) which is essentially Top Sites.

[aleksandra.]

He he
I actually like the + button very much. I even had a skin for FF3 that enabled it.

The good thing about it: if you have many tabs open, it is still very easy to open a new tab. Without it, you will have a hard time double clicking that tiny empty space next to the tabs.

I know there are other way to open a new tab, but this is my favourite way.

I suppose if you're clicking to open a new tab it's useful. I assigned rotate clockwise to open a new tab via MultiClutch, so I use this or cmd+T.

[kmiahali]

The New Mozilla Firefox so much quicker than the original 3.0. It now stands up with safari 4.0.1 and the speeds of it.

[LukeHarrison]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Another reason why FF gets the nudge over Safari.

Just install Gilms, it adds all the FF features you could ever want in Safari. As many search engines as you want, thumbnail previews in Google, easy tab switching etc.

[MacAndy74]

It's good. But not a keeper on my Mac. Sorry to say Mozilla.
IMHO Firefox 3.5 would have competed well (and probably won me over) in the day of Safari 3.x but Safari 4 renders my websites faster, images look richer and RSS is handled better.

Firefox is stable as a rock.

Firefox has only ever been as stable as the last least stable add-on you have installed.

[Scallywag]

Yeah Chrome is fast. Really fast. I use that when I go on my PC *gasp* (yes, I use a PC sometimes) :p

Yes, I'm using it now, and it's very very fast...only windows browser I use anymore (on my under-powered work laptop that can't run FF without practically catching on fire.) It's very simple and clean, few options, and I like that.

Looking forward to the Mac version, though I really like Safari (w/ click to flash.)

[kockgunner]

Firefox is still slow and annoying to use and scrolling is not smooth. Safari 4 is still my main browser. I only use FF for when some flash videos don't load on Safari.

[Jayomat]

Have they smoothed out the scrolling on 3.5? I like Firefox but the ultra smooth scrolling in Safari keeps me from switching.

hehee, i used safari for the exact same reason... but after some time, i really missed the features firefox has to offer and safari is lacking (e.g. intelligent "search-in-navigation-bar" (best feature ever ;) ).... now im back at FF, and honestly, i think the scrolling has become a little smoother! at least smooth enough to come back to my beloved firefox :)

[ITMacRN]

if only Safari had sidebar bookmarks like Firefox, I'd happily switch to Safari full time.

[Amdahl]

and honestly, i think the scrolling has become a little smoother! at least smooth enough to come back to my beloved firefox :)

It does seem a little better, but I'll have to try it on G5 w/Geforce 6800 or x1900. It is my benchmark.

[mnb]

FireFox used to be good on the Mac. Then came 3.0.

In 3.0, right clicking was broken on google maps, a site I use frequently.

I was hoping they fixed it in 3.5. They didn't.

So I tried to report it using report broken sites. But that feature is broken.

Classic.

[nickpro]

safari 4.0 STILL does a horrible job at rendering GIFs. i browse a lot of message boards with animated GIFs that frequently lock up safari and/or crash it. 3.5 feels pretty nice, i might permanently switch from safari.

[Jayomat]

It does seem a little better, but I'll have to try it on G5 w/Geforce 6800 or x1900. It is my benchmark.

it IS better ;)

[RebootD]

i'm not quite sure I understand your question. on the same monitor my aperture, photoshop, and safari colors looks the same. the same photo viewed in any of those application, or any other like preview or even quick look all have the same rendering, firefox does not.

First I forgot to say nice photo! I'm a designer first and photographer a distant second. :D

What I mean is the type of monitor (lcd) panel you have. On a regular sRGB monitor it displays only around 76% of the color spectrum so safari 4 looks better than FF for color management. I now have a 'wide gamut' lcd that displays 98% of the color spectrum which is great for design and photography but horrible for anything using sRGB like the web.

Because of this colors look blown out and hyper-saturated and skin tones look pretty bad in general. After looking at pages (like espn, adobe flash site) that use lots of reds Safari looks crayola compared to FF. This is because unless the images on a page say "use sRGB" it doesn't know what to do with them so it just displays them as default, no color management.

Anyway before I got the NEC I loved Safari but now I cannot stand the over-saturated look.

[Smoothie]

I've tried Safari, but I like Firefox much better. I like that it's highly customizable, and I haven't found a better browser at managing all of my bookmarks. Some of you have complained about scrolling in Firefox, but I find scrolling very smooth and precise. I'm glad we have choices.

[Master Chief]

Right. Safari scores a perfect 100/100 on the Acid 3 test... but it can't display the SunSpider benchmark page properly. Well well (sorry David).

[clevin]

In 3.0, right clicking was broken on google maps, a site I use frequently.

I was hoping they fixed it in 3.5. They didn't.


care to elaborate?

Right. Safari scores a perfect 100/100 on the Acid 3 test... but it can't display the SunSpider benchmark page properly. Well well (sorry David).

Acid 3 is a missed opportunity, i know some people don't agree, but I really hope Ian made the test in house, rather than leak out everything through the process and gave browser vendors chances to take short path.

Mr. Hickson did mention that he will develop acid 4 in secret tho. Glad he learned.

[Amdahl]

it IS better ;)

Yeah, I agree now that I just tried smooth scroll on G5. However, it still hitches when there are Flash (or something?) in the visible area. It works well enough page-at-a-time, but still not quite right when you use the mouse wheel.

[SactoGuy18]

I'm using Firefox 3.5 right now and except for having to update the EasyGestures plug-in to Version 4.3, everything seems to work quite well and fast. I especially like the faster rendering of many web pages. :)

[windywoo]

All those complaining that Firefox is ugly... you do know that you can skin it don't you? You're not stuck with one look like Safari.

I liked Safari but its tabs support is shocking. Things keep opening in new windows when I don't want them to. I'll have a look at this glims thing maybe it will help. Does anyone know of a download accelerator for Safari that is free? If a site insists on allowing me only 30kbs for a 30MB download I would like to be able to speed that up with more connections. Very handy sometimes in FF. Is there an addon for Safari that will show the URL of a link in the tooltip? Not having the status bar showing by default in Safari is just asking for phishing scams. Of course I can turn on the status bar, but I don't really have a very big screen.

All those saying FF is slow, use Appcleaner to remove all the settings before installing 3.5. This helped me on my iBook.

[Speedy2]

Firefox has only ever been as stable as the last least stable add-on you have installed.

Nearly all major addons are XUL/JS only (i.e. all text files) and pose no stability problem whatsover.

[mrbrightside623]

FF3.5 is running ok for me I guess. Seems to be taking about 137-240mb of physical memory... and about 22.2% of cpu. It was insane when running flash tho. It was 140% cpu usage and like 240mb of physical memory usage... I didn't get to check the usage of FF before update so is this normal or is this a memory leak like one of the posters said?

-Tony

Edit: Smooth Scrolling so far with Smooth Scrolling Function On.... And FAST AS HELL. I must say..... it's faster than Safari 4 to me.... I used mainly Safari 4 and occasional FF on my Mac....and Chrome mainly on my PC and occasional FF and Safari... But after FF implementing the multitouch functions.... it might just win me back :D

[jableskg]

Wow it works great and is super fast.. Its seems even faster then Safari

[MacAaron]

I tried FF on my Mac and I just couldn't get used to it. I am so used to Safari and how it works. Now on Windows (have to use it for work), FF all the way. It is hard for me to go to another browser after I have gotten use to another one.

[iMaggot]

Safari is crashing to much, I think I'm going back to FF.

[jimoase]

Safari can not smoothly scroll the display of this site
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

while FoxFire can correctly display and smoothly scroll the display. Safari 2.x could correctly scroll this display while Safari versions 3.x and 4.x can not.

[ThunderLounge]

I've been a website designer since 1997.

The current versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox 2.0 all render graphics in tables correctly, and in the same way.

FireFox 3.0 does not! It adds extra padding to the tables so the graphics split apart!


Graphics in tables? Tables? Tables are for tabular data. :rolleyes:

If one just had to crutch it for a lack of semantically correct skills and use a table for a layout (barf), then if it's coded correctly there is no extra padding.

I have to give FF props on this one. If I put a div somewhere, FF puts it where I tell it to. IE 6, rarely; IE7, sometimes, but more than 6; IE8, shockingly it's been less hassle than expected, but still needs it's own special love at times. Safari is usually good with it, although on occasion it has its moments too.


The Mozilla development team takes the attitude that the way they do things is correct and, if all the rest of the world does things differently, they are wrong!


Unfortunately, there isn't much weight behind that statement. All browsers have their quirks, but I'll take FF and their approach over anything, any day.

For browsing, I like both FF and Safari, although I use as many as I can get my hands on at times.

It sounds like 3.5 is an improvement, which is good, but also as with any other improvement there is still work to be done.

[eXan]

All those complaining that Firefox is ugly... you do know that you can skin it don't you? You're not stuck with one look like Safari.

I liked Safari but its tabs support is shocking. Things keep opening in new windows when I don't want them to. I'll have a look at this glims thing maybe it will help. Does anyone know of a download accelerator for Safari that is free? If a site insists on allowing me only 30kbs for a 30MB download I would like to be able to speed that up with more connections. Very handy sometimes in FF. Is there an addon for Safari that will show the URL of a link in the tooltip? Not having the status bar showing by default in Safari is just asking for phishing scams. Of course I can turn on the status bar, but I don't really have a very big screen.

All those saying FF is slow, use Appcleaner to remove all the settings before installing 3.5. This helped me on my iBook.

There is a terminal command that forces Safari to open in new tabs instead of windows:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Not sure about download accelerators, I use torrents when possible.

About showing links in tooltips, just click and drag the link and it will show the address

You don't have a big screen so having status bar in safari is no-go for you, yet firefox's interface takes more vertical space and has status bar on by default and its ok? Hmm

And yes, FF is ugly as hell. BTW, whats up with the blinking (animated) cursor when page is loading in FF? I hate that.

:P

[BillyBobBongo]

Gotta say I'm impressed with the speed of this new version of Firefox, I does seem much faster than Safari.

I'd stepped over to using Safari 4 for a while....but I'm 100% sure that I'm going back to Firefox. :cool:

[Packersfan27]

This Firefox is pretty good, but I just love me some Internet Explorer 8!

Naw, I am just joshing. Great update we have here!

[Amdahl]

Safari can not smoothly scroll the display of this site
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

while FoxFire can correctly display and smoothly scroll the display. Safari 2.x could correctly scroll this display while Safari versions 3.x and 4.x can not.

Hmm, that's quite interesting. Safari must use a 'full page render' window that let's the OS or graphics driver/hardware do the scrolling. Works great in the ideal case, but when you've got a huge graphic area that is constantly updating, not so well.

Firefox must be doing the whole thing in software, and knows not to spend time updating areas off-screen. Works great, except when you've got Flash in the page. Wish they could get their speed more consistent. This would also explain why it seems like FF scrolling works the CPU harder.

[windywoo]

There is a terminal command that forces Safari to open in new tabs instead of windows:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Not sure about download accelerators, I use torrents when possible.

About showing links in tooltips, just click and drag the link and it will show the address

You don't have a big screen so having status bar in safari is no-go for you, yet firefox's interface takes more vertical space and has status bar on by default and its ok? Hmm

And yes, FF is ugly as hell. BTW, whats up with the blinking (animated) cursor when page is loading in FF? I hate that.

:P

I've tried that terminal command its still not as effective. Firefox actually take up less vertical space than Safari when you have more than one tab open. Remember I mentioned skins?

[smileyborg]

Here are my recommended settings/changes to Firefox 3.5 in order to have the best browsing experience (in other words, make it how it should have been "out of the box").

First, enter about:config in the address bar, accept the warning, and type gesture in the filter box at the top.

Next, do the following modifications:

browser.gesture.pinch.latched set to false [makes the pinch gesture zoom continuously instead of one zoom level per pinch]

browser.gesture.twist.left set to Browser:PrevTab [enables the twist gesture to switch between tabs]

browser.gesture.twist.right set to Browser:NextTab [enables the twist gesture to switch between tabs]

browser.gesture.twist.threshold set to 20 [makes the required amount of the twist gesture to trigger the tab switch a bit lower]

browser.gesture.twist.latched set to true [makes the twist gesture only change one tab per gesture]

These changes really make browsing in Firefox a great experience on one of the newer Aluminum MacBooks...try these modifications and enjoy seamless tab switching!

[eXan]

I've tried that terminal command its still not as effective.

Since that command Safari never ever opened anything in a new window. What are you talking about?


Firefox actually take up less vertical space than Safari when you have more than one tab open.

Really?

[benlangdon]

aight for those who said it looks bad, just found a theme that is exactly like safari.

Firefox actually take up less vertical space than Safari when you have more than one tab open. Remember I mentioned skins?
Really?
yup

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12612
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12611
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12610
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6703
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6704


my only question now is, how do i get rid of the bar on the bottom?
not the find bar, but the one under it.

EDIT: View - Show Status bar
thanks xUKHCx

[xUKHCx]

my only question now is, how do i get rid of the bar on the bottom?
not the find bar, but the one under it.

In Firefox

View - Show Status bar

?

[benlangdon]

In Firefox
View - Show Status bar
?

ahhhhh i new i've turned that on or off before.
thanks:D

[matrix01]

When Firefox went to the database setup for bookmarks (Firefox 3.x), we lost the ability to edit bookmarks from one set location to another precisely set location.

It used to be - I still keep a Firefox 2.x running for the purpose - you could see all your bookmarks in one window, all visible, and you could select and move any bookmark into any exact position where you wanted - i.e. move it to the 3rd position down in the 5th folder.

With the 3.x, you can't see them in all their folder positions at once, so you don't get the overview. And when you drag a bookmark to another folder, it doesn't go where you want in the folder - it's drag and drop into the mystery void, and it goes to whatever position in the folder that the Firefox database is amused to put it. I.E. useless.

I know - it's groovy modern design to have everything database-based, and the user experience be damned. The concept is, you random collect a huge Hefty garbage-bag of bookmarks in semi-random disarray, and then you search them when you want one back. Super-cool for teenagers. Not so cool for maintaining an organized set of bookmarks as your research tools - i.e. grown-up stuff.

Sadly, there are a few seasoned pros that actually have a lean, useful set of bookmarks and like to have them at our fingertips.

Right now, the workaround is to use Multifirefox, and switch your bookmarks over to Firefox 2.x every time you want to clean them up. Not too handy.

It sure is nice adding zillions of whizz-bang features every revision. But Firefox, any chance you'll give us "bookmarks for grownups" again?

[kemo]

i don't want or need this "+" (open a new tab).
its really bugging me.:mad:

Same here buddy!

[Jayomat]

Yeah, I agree now that I just tried smooth scroll on G5. However, it still hitches when there are Flash (or something?) in the visible area. It works well enough page-at-a-time, but still not quite right when you use the mouse wheel.

i dunno, i have flash blocked by default. only on sites i want flash to be displayed (youtube, bbc...) i turn it on... maybe you should give it a try too ;)

Originally Posted by Johnny Apple
The Mozilla development team takes the attitude that the way they do things is correct and, if all the rest of the world does things differently, they are wrong!

hhahh, ever heared of a company called "apple" ? :rolleyes:

[aleksandra.]

I know - it's groovy modern design to have everything database-based, and the user experience be damned. The concept is, you random collect a huge Hefty garbage-bag of bookmarks in semi-random disarray, and then you search them when you want one back. Super-cool for teenagers. Not so cool for maintaining an organized set of bookmarks as your research tools - i.e. grown-up stuff.

Sadly, there are a few seasoned pros that actually have a lean, useful set of bookmarks and like to have them at our fingertips.


Once these teenagers grow up, their way will be "grown-up" and yours just plain "old". :rolleyes:

What's wrong with View -> Sidebar -> Bookmarks anyway? You can display the bookmarks from as many folders as you want there. Also if your folder is in bookmarks bar it opens when you drag a file to it, so you can place it wherever you want.

[MorphingDragon]

Until Mozilla Org fixes Firefox's terrible C++ memory leakage, Safari for me. I don't care if it made me coffee and gave me winning lotto numbers. Those features are useless if they crash. Its just a shame I have no real choice on what i can use on Linux. Theyre all Mozilla based. So much for choice.

Oh, and they need to go back to GUIs 101.

[xUKHCx]

Its just a shame I have no real choice on what i can use on Linux. Theyre all Mozilla based. So much for choice.

Opera has a linux version (http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux)

[MorphingDragon]

Opera has a linux version (http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=linux)

Shhh, Opera is a heavily guarded secret. Remember?
Beep Boop - Non Open Source Software on Linux. It must be eradicated.

[parapup]

Until Mozilla Org fixes Firefox's terrible C++ memory leakage, Safari for me. I don't care if it made me coffee and gave me winning lotto numbers. Those features are useless if they crash. Its just a shame I have no real choice on what i can use on Linux. Theyre all Mozilla based. So much for choice.

Oh, and they need to go back to GUIs 101.

What? None of that made any sense to me. To me Safari gobbles more memory than FF - all times. If you have some particular sites which cause FF to leak - have you filed a bug report yet? I am fairly certain they will fix it soon if you report it in the right place. Crash - never had one since *long* time.


Linux having no browsers other than FF - you must be kidding. There are Konqueror, Arora, Epiphany/WebKit, Chrome Alpha, Opera, ReKonq that I remember off the top of my head.

[Pommy]

Is there a "Top Sites" type add-on that I could get for FF? I switched over to S4 and got hooked on that feature but I'm not an overall fan of Safari.

Speed Dial (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810) (inspired by the Opera feature -- it's manually managed)

Autodial (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8615) is automatically managed / populated (like Chrome) but is a little messy looking

[MorphingDragon]

What? None of that made any sense to me. To me Safari gobbles more memory than FF - all times. If you have some particular sites which cause FF to leak - have you filed a bug report yet? I am fairly certain they will fix it soon if you report it in the right place. Crash - never had one since *long* time.


Linux having no browsers other than FF - you must be kidding. There are Konqueror, Arora, Epiphany/WebKit, Chrome Alpha, Opera, ReKonq that I remember off the top of my head.

It dont keep a track of my sites as I do a lot of research. I just notice logs report an average of About 500MB.. and it crashed often.

Most of those browsers use the Mozilla engine or do not even have to ability to use the Flash plugin, making them unusable. Just because theres lots of slop doesn't make the slop any better.

[clevin]

It dont keep a track of my sites as I do a lot of research. I just notice logs report an average of About 500MB.. and it crashed often.

Most of those browsers use the Mozilla engine or do not even have to ability to use the Flash plugin, making them unusable. Just because theres lots of slop doesn't make the slop any better.

first, all the tests show firefox manages memory better than any other browsers. you can google for the tests

second, you are spreading serious false information here. Firefox and gecko based browser can't use flash? Did you try it for yourself? a hint, youtube is all flash videos.

You can use whichever browser you want, but the misinformation should be pointed out.

[MorphingDragon]

first, all the tests show firefox manages memory better than any other browsers. you can google for the tests

second, you are spreading serious false information here. Firefox and gecko based browser can't use flash? Did you try it for yourself? a hint, youtube is all flash videos.

You can use whichever browser you want, but the misinformation should be pointed out.

Have you tried getting flash to work with the Minor browsers such as Konquerer or Flock to use flash in Linux? The rendering engine doesnt help the browsers poor configuration modules.

Spread all the pointing finger crap you like but lack of experience just makes you a clueless dolt.

Mozilla-Plugin-Config should be all you need to do to configure NSPluginwrapper to use flash. Apparently this doesn't apply in La La land.

I'm not going to comment on the benchmarking as the only ones I can find either cross reference or use Pre Release software. (Snickers at Chrome though, 1GB are you kidding Google?)

[windywoo]

Hey morphing I have tried to get flash working in konqueror and it was easy.

[clevin]

Have you tried getting flash to work with the Minor browsers such as Konquerer or Flock to use flash in Linux? The rendering engine doesnt help the browsers poor configuration modules.

Spread all the pointing finger crap you like but lack of experience just makes you a clueless dolt.

Mozilla-Plugin-Config should be all you need to do to configure NSPluginwrapper to use flash. Apparently this doesn't apply in La La land.

first, if you want to talk about linux, pointed it out clearly.

second, Konqueror is mother of safari, it has zero thing to do with firefox or gecko.

third. I do NOT know flock on linux, although firefox works just fine on linux with youtube.

I see nothing wrong in pointing out your intentional or unintentional omission of the facts from your statements. Im finger pointing at your statement right there. You know what you were saying, doesn't mean others won't be confused and think you were describing a problem with gecko browsers on mac.

[MorphingDragon]

Hey morphing I have tried to get flash working in konqueror and it was easy.

Which version of KDE?

[equalsabracket]

Is anybody else having the problem of having a small light-yellow box appearing next to the cursor at random moments? I can't catch a screenshot of it unfortunately, but it's annoying that it keeps happening all the time.

[MorphingDragon]

first, if you want to talk about linux, pointed it out clearly.

second, Konqueror is mother of safari, it has zero thing to do with firefox or gecko.

third. I do NOT know flock on linux, although firefox works just fine on linux with youtube.

The conversation spanded into more browsers because of Parapup. By misreading Mozilla Based for FF. Flock is avliable for linux you just have to install it manually.

And KHTML is a wild and untamable beast incorporating parts from kPart and Bonobo while trying to attach itself to ActiveX features. A fork is a Fork, they are created when someone doesn't like what someone else is doing.

Can I ask have you ever gotten the Grey box of flash death when more than one flash instance is running?

[Shookster]

Now Safari has nothing over Firefox. (I only wish that Firefox windows had a slightly skinnier header.)

Ctrl-click on a blank area of the main toolbar and go to Customize, then check Small Icons. That helps a lot. I'm not a fan of the giant Back button to be honest.

I've been a website designer since 1997.

The current versions of Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, Camino, OmniWeb and FireFox 2.0 all render graphics in tables correctly, and in the same way.

FireFox 3.0 does not! It adds extra padding to the tables so the graphics split apart!

Tables are not recommended for layouts.

[clevin]

The conversation spanded into more browsers because of Parapup. By misreading Mozilla Based for FF. Flock is avliable for linux you just have to install it manually.

And KHTML is a wild and untamable beast incorporating parts from kPart and Bonobo while trying to attach itself to ActiveX features. A fork is a Fork, they are created when someone doesn't like what someone else is doing.

Can I ask have you ever gotten the Grey box of flash death when more than one flash instance is running?

I haven't use linux for a while, when I did, I noticed such problem, although Im not sure if the grey box is part of the problem of compiz fusion.

I don't think this should be blamed on firefox, flash support isn't good from adobe on mac too, on top of that, linux distroes does not provided adequate support if users were to download and install browsers from vendor's websites, they are expected to use the pre-installed browsers. Which is fine to certain degree.

If there is anything mozilla can do, you can submit bug report any time you want, but I do not think firefox can include non-open codes like flash in its release. 3.5 does include ogg codecs tho. Which I hope helps the situation a bit, albeit ogg still needs more improvement.

[VoR]

I haven't use linux for a while, when I did, I noticed such problem, although Im not sure if the grey box is part of the problem of compiz fusion.

Firefox, flash64 and compiz are working fine for me.

[carmenodie]

It is fast but it sucks. You can't edit the names, there is no spellchecker and moving the tabs the way you can do with Safari is ********!
I can easily change whatever I want on my Safari bookmarks with EASE but the FF doesn't have that swag. What's up with that?!And one would think FF would be ALL THAT given its open source status. Damn FF, take that crap back to the drawing board and get your game RIGHT!!!!

[gwmac]

Well Firefox is out for me. Simply no way of syncing bookmarks over MobileMe to my iPhone. And probably something that Apple will never allow. Oh well.


What i do is run xmarks, which syncronises your bookmarks across all browsers. Firefox syncs with safari on your mac then that syncs with iphone - works a treat.

[clevin]

It is fast but it sucks. You can't edit the names, there is no spellchecker and moving the tabs the way you can do with Safari is ********!
I can easily change whatever I want on my Safari bookmarks with EASE but the FF doesn't have that swag. What's up with that?!And one would think FF would be ALL THAT given its open source status. Damn FF, take that crap back to the drawing board and get your game RIGHT!!!!

your statement is full of bs. Thats the only thing needs to go back to drawing board.

[Hostbot]

In my opinion Firefox is most like IE. At least Safari 4 has the tabs at the bottom again >_>

[Dagless]

Well so far so good. I was almost ready to move to Safari XP from all the random crashings Firefox 3 did. But nothing so far.

[parapup]

It dont keep a track of my sites as I do a lot of research. I just notice logs report an average of About 500MB.. and it crashed often.

Most of those browsers use the Mozilla engine or do not even have to ability to use the Flash plugin, making them unusable. Just because theres lots of slop doesn't make the slop any better.

So you seem to have an agenda - you don't want to take the few minutes to verify if FireFox is the problem at all - how much Real Memory does Activity Monitor Report for FF and do a google search to find that all the browsers including Konqueror support Flash and Java but you do want to spend time writing about how everything other than Safari is slop.

[redwarrior]

I really like it so far. It opens much faster and does not seem to be hogging my cpu as much (of course, that may just be because I wanted so badly for it to be less needy.):o

[armoguy94]

Firefox 3.5 is unbelievably fast, compared to Safari 4. So long Safari!


It is fast but it sucks. You can't edit the names, there is no spellchecker and moving the tabs the way you can do with Safari is ********!
I can easily change whatever I want on my Safari bookmarks with EASE but the FF doesn't have that swag. What's up with that?!And one would think FF would be ALL THAT given its open source status. Damn FF, take that crap back to the drawing board and get your game RIGHT!!!!Yeah man, it just doesn't have that swag right?

[fef714]

I haven't used firefox since safari 4. But I'll check it out again. On a side note, They should make Firefox for the iPhone, although I'm not sure it would be accepted into the app store

Ditto ;)

I would get Firefox for the iPhone if it had a similar UI as Safari

[sn00pie]

Nice private browsing :)

[fef714]

I have both Safari and Mozilla Firefox sitting right next to each other on my dock. They actually get along very nicely.

Safari is my default browser, because I think it's UI is to die for. I love it.

But I use Firefox for anything involving video, or large downloads.


I get the best of both, whenever any competing software comes out, the consumer wins!!! :)

[Dark Angel]

Choice is good. It's great to have such fast browsers available like we have today. I like Firefox mostly because it is multi-platform and customizable.

Interface:
Most people complain about Firefox but in fact it's basically their inability to change habits or find the right answers. Firefox doesn't have to do this or that the way Safari, Chrome or Opera does just because you like them. It does things it's own way.

Safari is nice on the eyes, but mostly because it integrates the system very well on the Mac. You can't please everyone and Firefox allows you to change things to the way you want it. Find Firefox ugly? Get a new theme, there are hundreds. Just an example if you want to try to get the Safari look in Firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6124
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6174
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12156

Still not enough? Read about userChrome.css and you can tweak it all you want. You don't have to do it...but you can, and that's something Firefox is unique about.

Don't like the "plus" button for new tabs? Edit userChrome.css in your profile and add:

.tabs-newtab-button {display:none !important;}

Speed:
I have been using optimized builds of Firefox 3.5 for Mac and I find them very fast and responsive, probably more than the stock Firefox but i haven't tested it accurately in any way.
You can get them here:
http://www.latko.org/

I believe a browser needs to be fast and responsive. This isn't a race, it just needs to do things quickly and whitout an annoying lag. What if it takes 83ms more to render a page on a benchmark? Does that matter? Do you notice that?
Most people look at benchmarks and say "X seems faster" and it can be just placedo effect or some other factor affecting the comparison.

Memory:
Someone said that Firefox should release memory when you close a tab. It doesn't and it shouldn't, because it is not the way it works. It caches pages from the tabs you closed so you can quickly restore closed tabs and use the forward/back navigation.
If you want, you can tweak this behavior. There are settings and extensions that can do that. Again, part of the beauty of Firefox.
I'm not saying that Firefox is not without memory problems, but I believe they have been much worse in the past and are mostly caused by bad extensions. Speaking of which...

Stability:
Someone said that addons are just text files, as in they don't affect stability. That is not true, I had an extension the other day that kept crashing my browser just by hovering one of it's menu entries. It is true that Firefox is as weak as the weakest of it's installed addons, but that is true for other browsers as well. Just start installing plugins in Safari and you'll see.
The problem in Firefox is that it has plenty of more extensions than other browsers and so their quality can be very good or very bad, and the more you install...bigger the chance of bugs and compatibilty issues.

That's were the user comes in and should choose wisely what to install, not to get their browsers bloated down to death. I recently started to remove some extensions and cleaning my profile and I can tell you I saw an increase in responsiveness and better startup times. Plugins like Flash can be guilty of crashes too.
In the end, if you have problems...try a clean profile. Or disable some extensions to try and find the guilty one. It's not rocket science, it's basic troubleshooting and every software has it's problems. Deal with it.


I'm not a Firefox fanboy, but I do use Firefox mostly and Safari every now and then. I like Opera aswell, it is a great browser and it's a shame more people aren't aware of it.
However, I think in some cases users fail to see and use some of the benefits of Firefox that can solve their problems, some don't even try...they just go back to what they had.

[benlangdon]

Same here buddy!
i have tree style tab 0.7.2009051501
and in prefernces under "appearance" in the "Tab bar position" section there is a "show 'open a new tab' button"
just deselect, magic :D

there is no spellchecker
firefox pref ->advanced -> general
under browsing
"check my spelling as i type

It opens much faster
i dunno, i have opened both at the same time now a bunch of times, safari owns it. maybe its because i have add ons, if i knew why it was slower i would love to fix it.
edit": i just tested this. firefox is running, safari isn't. safari opens faster than firefox when firefox is even running.


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6124
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6174
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12156

maybe im missing something, but all those do not work on 3.5 on osx.

check my post, all work on 3.5

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12612
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12611
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12610
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6703
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6704

[Povilas]

I'm using Safari since 2.0 and there isn't a thing that will make me switch to FireFox. I use Inquisitor, AdBlock, ClickToFlash and that's it. No need for zillion of extensions with crappy implementation.

[kelvinti]

It's extreme-fast for me, compare to the slow IE8. :)

I like it. It;s finally became my default browser. I can throw that IE away.:mad:

[redwarrior]

It is definitely much better. It may not start up as quickly as Safari, but it's pretty close, and certainly a lot faster than the previous version.

Anyone who calls FF's implementation crappy clearly has not used it.:rolleyes:

[windywoo]

I'm using Safari since 2.0 and there isn't a thing that will make me switch to FireFox. I use Inquisitor, AdBlock, ClickToFlash and that's it. No need for zillion of extensions with crappy implementation.
What? Like the millions of iPhone apps with crappy implementation? I hope you don't use the same reasoning when you choose your OS as when you choose your browser. You plainly have little experience of Firefox or you wouldn't be saying such things.

[LAS.mac]

I don't generally like to have or learn to use different programs to do the same thing. However, I have to switch back and forth between Safari and Firefox because to the access to different bank accounts.
One only works with Safari, the other two only work with Firefox.
Both work in Internet Explorer (win).

[wobudong]

I have chosen Firefox over Safari time and again. But I just had to try out the latest versions of both. I did not expect the results. Firefox takes longer (I'm impatient) to load. Safari loads in a flash. And, to my initial disbelief, pages load faster in Safari than in Firefox.
So I've switched back to Safari for the sheer speed of it.
I'm using latest model Mac mini with 4g RAM.
Just to retest, I disabled Firefox add-ons WOT, the ad-blocker and Google gear, getting rid of all the add-ons I was using. Firefox seemed a bit faster, but still did not outpace Safari.
Did anyone else get similar results?

[windywoo]

Well of course Firefox is slower to load since its not a native app and checks for updates on startup. But how many times in a day do you start it up? I start mine up and then leave it running. I put my computer to sleep and leave Firefox running while it sleeps.

[jbcaro]

Downloaded, installed and had issues. No back button history. No history, history. Always opened a blank page on start and when clicking a link. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::confused:

thank goodness for Time machine on my Mac. Got the previous version back in about a minute.:)

[sn00pie]

I went from Safari to Firefox, then to Safari 4 beta, then back to Firefox, then from Firefox to Safari 4 final, and now from Safari 4 to Firefox 3.5.

phew, that was a mouthful.

[trekkie604]

You're all forgetting the most important feature of FF3.5: the icon is shiner :cool:

[redwarrior]

I went from Safari to Firefox, then to Safari 4 beta, then back to Firefox, then from Firefox to Safari 4 final, and now from Safari 4 to Firefox 3.5.

phew, that was a mouthful.
I think that is the experience of many of us. I am always looking for a better browser. But when you're in any form of technology or programming, you are always looking and working for something better. It's what keeps the world spinning.:)

[iAlexG]

I may finally get round to getting Firefox. I've been hooked on Safari since I got my Mac

[MrMoore]

I was using FireFox 3.0 until Safari 4 Beta came out.

But now with installing FF 3.5 I noticed a speed increase. Also before with FF3 I never really used add-ons, but after installing 3.5 and some add-ons I am really impressed with this new version. Time to keep the FireFox icon on the dock again.

:D

[MorphingDragon]

I haven't use linux for a while, when I did, I noticed such problem, although Im not sure if the grey box is part of the problem of compiz fusion.

I don't think this should be blamed on firefox, flash support isn't good from adobe on mac too, on top of that, linux distroes does not provided adequate support if users were to download and install browsers from vendor's websites, they are expected to use the pre-installed browsers. Which is fine to certain degree.

If there is anything mozilla can do, you can submit bug report any time you want, but I do not think firefox can include non-open codes like flash in its release. 3.5 does include ogg codecs tho. Which I hope helps the situation a bit, albeit ogg still needs more improvement.

Its due to NSPlugin wrapper which is developed by an old Netscape guy who doesn't know that people might be running more than one instance of flash. Dont ask me why Linux developers insist on such a crappy system thats really outdated.

[MorphingDragon]

your statement is full of bs. Thats the only thing needs to go back to drawing board.

Holy Flimoly Batman. Someone agrees.

[Povilas]

What? Like the millions of iPhone apps with crappy implementation? I hope you don't use the same reasoning when you choose your OS as when you choose your browser. You plainly have little experience of Firefox or you wouldn't be saying such things.

Same goes for App Store ;) Look and Feel is what counts and Safari hands down wins (again for me) and with Safari 4 i'm very happy. What experience? Please, used it before, tried it today still no go. The Poblem is that for every thing that needs fixing i need an extension and with all that it's bloated burning fox. On Windows i use Opera, on linux i use Opera and Safari on Mac OS X. Can't really say i'm missing features of firefox using Safari and Opera. Good luck.

[pigoz]

I just use Firefox with Caminofox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7527) theme. It is slow on startup but I leave it always running, and extensions are awesome, as the awsome bar is.

[iphoneftw]

CHROME FTW
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/google-chrome.jpg

[mtbdudex]

Downloaded, installed and had issues. No back button history. No history, history. Always opened a blank page on start and when clicking a link. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::confused:

thank goodness for Time machine on my Mac. Got the previous version back in about a minute.:)

+1

3.5 on my work WinTel machine XP SP2 and my home OS X 14.4.x MacBook No history when you open a link, just blank page....boo, that was such a handy time saver.

However, my OS X 10.5.x iMac works fine with a new tab and history, go figure, some bug for older OS's.

[macintoshtoffy]

Downloaded, installed and had issues. No back button history. No history, history. Always opened a blank page on start and when clicking a link. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::confused:

thank goodness for Time machine on my Mac. Got the previous version back in about a minute.:)

Before I go any further, why are you running 10.5.4 when the latest is 10.5.7? have you updated and tried Firefox 3.5 on 10.5.7? I am running it right now and I haven't experienced a single problem. Maybe the issues you're facing have to do with your setup rather than Firefox.

[SactoGuy18]

CHROME FTW
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/google-chrome.jpg

While Google Chrome is VERY fast, the lack of third-party support puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to Firefox 3.5. And now even more so with the dramatic performance increases offered by Firefox 3.5. :)

[macintoshtoffy]

While Google Chrome is VERY fast, the lack of third-party support puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to Firefox 3.5. And now even more so with the dramatic performance increases offered by Firefox 3.5. :)

True - there is an extension technology in development though which should appear in Safari and Chrome. The problem with Chrome as it stands now - there is no stable version for Mac OS X yet so it is difficult to make judgement due to that issue.

[ToM7]

safari is my fav. but apple have to update him with bug fixes , safari sometimes just hangs..

p.s
i luv the 3.5 its good !!
im using FF sometimes :rolleyes:

[ThunderLounge]

Don't like the "plus" button for new tabs? Edit userChrome.css in your profile and add:

.tabs-newtab-button {display:none !important;}



Unfortunately for me, with enough tabs open to fill the tab bar, it is causing the tabs to vibrate back and forth pretty rapidly. :(

Looks like I'll have to find another alternative.

[windywoo]

Same goes for App Store ;) Look and Feel is what counts and Safari hands down wins (again for me) and with Safari 4 i'm very happy. What experience? Please, used it before, tried it today still no go. The Poblem is that for every thing that needs fixing i need an extension and with all that it's bloated burning fox. On Windows i use Opera, on linux i use Opera and Safari on Mac OS X. Can't really say i'm missing features of firefox using Safari and Opera. Good luck.

At least Firefox has the addons. Safari more often than not just lumps you with whatever Steve Jobs thought was best that month.

While Google Chrome is VERY fast, the lack of third-party support puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to Firefox 3.5. And now even more so with the dramatic performance increases offered by Firefox 3.5. :)

How can google's own browser not even have search suggestions?

[brewser]

I have been using Firefox for 2 reasons over Safari. I would love to use Safari but these items bug me:
1. I can't use Safari for Bank of America account. It states I have an out of date browser.
2. 1 password has to use a button on Safari with a drop down list while Firefox has a nice toolbar that I can access with one click.

[22Hertz]

FireFox did a fantastic job with this new one.

Its noticeably faster, and updates rarely show this much performance increase.
Feels stable which was a problem for the last few versions I was using.
There are no doubt a few changes to make, but they will do it.

Good Job FF!!

[zagato27]

I updated to FF 3.5 yesterday. No issues with installation. FF even told me that two of my themes were incompatible and did I want to continue. Well, you know we become attached to our themes and the "look". Arrrrrgh, grinned and bear'd it. So, FF 3.5 was up and running with a new look. I went to the developer of my favorite theme to see if he had updated (Aaron Spuler and the Apollo theme) but no joy. Surprised when later that day I hit the check update for themes and found that Apollo was updated to FF 3.5. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaron even got the slider bar working on this edition. Everything is right again. BTW, I use both Safari 4 and FF 3.5 but prefer FF. Cheers

[iphoneftw]

While Google Chrome is VERY fast, the lack of third-party support puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to Firefox 3.5. And now even more so with the dramatic performance increases offered by Firefox 3.5. :)

it needs more google integration like google bookmarks with sign in
notification in browser when u get new email
its fast and thats all i need it for i now use it as my main browser because of the speed

[dnguyen]

i love using this new mozilla, such a good browsing experience

[macintoshtoffy]

Unfortunately for me, with enough tabs open to fill the tab bar, it is causing the tabs to vibrate back and forth pretty rapidly. :(

Looks like I'll have to find another alternative.

What is wrong with the plus button? what is it failing to do?