Firefox 19 for Mac Now Available for Download

[Risco]

I used to use Firefox all the time on my windows laptop. On Mac it is really a non starter until they fix the zooming and text reflow, as well as implementing h.264 through OSX like what has recently been enabled for windows.

Then we have theme issues, a lack of intergrated search and a whole host of other bugs that have yet to be fixed. Yes, some of these can be enabled by extensions, but they dont work that well. It seems they have a lot of mac users, just not enough coders.

 

[Gallion]

Firefox's release cycle explained here : http://mozilla.github.com/process-releases/draft/development_overview/

Warning : Do read it until "Releases Over Time". If you only read the beginning, it sounds as though they introduce features in the final releases that aren't fully working. It is not so.

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a lack of intergrated search

What do you mean by integrated search?

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Sorry, not willing to let Google track my bookmarks. But you go right ahead.

I'm not familiar with this. Google sells you web "applications" that only run in their Chrome browser? What, sort of like a modern day IE6? But I'm sure it's great for the Google Uber Alles crowd...

My answer to your Google paranoia : http://xkcd.com/792/

 

[negrohero9]

Firefox soon to be...over9000

 

[clevin]

Firefox has fallen so far behind Chrome and Safari.

you don't even know what you are talking about. Unless you consider less memory hog, faster js, better extension system somehow "behind" safari.

On Mac it is really a non starter until they fix the zooming and text reflow, as well as implementing h.264 through OSX like what has recently been enabled for windows.

Then we have theme issues, a lack of intergrated search and a whole host of other bugs that have yet to be fixed. Yes, some of these can be enabled by extensions, but they dont work that well. It seems they have a lot of mac users, just not enough coders.

what zooming an text flow?
what integrated search? you mean search from urlbar? i am pretty sure you can do that long time ago?

 

[Simplicated]

you don't even know what you are talking about. Unless you consider less memory hog, faster js, better extension system somehow "behind" safari.

Still no support for Lion scrollbars and gesture support is still half-baked. It may be faster but these user interface elements should also be updated to bring about a better user experience. Unfortunately Firefox seems to have done so little in this area.

 

[clevin]

Still no support for Lion scrollbars and gesture support is still half-baked. It may be faster but these user interface elements should also be updated to bring about a better user experience. Unfortunately Firefox seems to have done so little in this area.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636564
It apparently is going to land on the nightly soon, but will still be a way to go until showing up in the released version.

If these are important issues, sure, otherwise, I don't agree with categorically claiming firefox is somehow "far behind", since its superior in many substantial areas many people care.

 

[rmwebs]

None of them can handle my very numerous tabs as well as Firefox does.

Never had a problem on chrome tbh. I've regularly got 5+ windows open, each with around 50 tabs. As long as you've got a decent spec mac it should never be an issue.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Firefox has fallen so far behind Chrome and Safari.

Yeah. The security you can get via the Adblock Plus and NoScript extensions is really an old and unique feature of FF. FF is so far behind!

;-)

 

[Mascots]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636564
It apparently is going to land on the nightly soon, but will still be a way to go until showing up in the released version.

If these are important issues, sure, otherwise, I don't agree with categorically claiming firefox is somehow "far behind", since its superior in many substantial areas many people care.

I remember seeing this topic way back when Lion was released, sad to see they still haven't implemented it. I moved away from Firefox completely around that time because it began to look like an eyesore and was lacking support for too long on "basic" native Mac elements.

That and it performed like crap under the work I was doing. I found it was constantly maxing out the memory on my notebook to the point that OS X was crawling to a stop. Chrome seemed to handle the same workload under the same circumstances much better. Then I discovered that Chrome and Safari's debug panel rivals, if not exceeds, Firebug. That was goodbye.

 

[Terrin]

What proof do you have that Google is tracking your bookmarks?

And no, Google doesn't sell them. At least I've never paid for one, and I have a fair few.

At any rate, I'm using Safari 6 at the moment. Under Mountain Lion I generally only launch Chrome if there's a YouTube video I can't see under Safari.

Seriously? Google is an advertising company. Unlike with Apple, you are not the customer. You are the product. Google's whole business model is to get as much information about you as possible to offer that to advertisers. It does that by giving you so called free product.

First, I have Little Snitch installed on my Mac. When using Chrome, it calls home multiple times a session. No other browser does that. By comparison, Safari and Firefox call home once a week to check for an update, and that can be shut off. Chrome is calling home to give Google your browsing information.

Second, Gmail scans your email and gives you ads based on what you send and receive in terms of email. For instance, I am a bankruptcy attorney. I get email with the words attorney and bankruptcy in them a lot. Consequently, Google gives me law school and bankruptcy attorney ads. This also highlights how Google's methods performs poorly for their real customers: the advertisers. I get ads from Google that I have no interest in.

Third, Google's analytics definitely tracks your bookmarks. If you don't disable it, it even does it on other browsers.


Finally, I don't have any direct proof that if I take a nose dive off the twenty story water tower by my house I am going to die, but common sense dictates that is the case. The same applies with Google. Its business model requires it to data mine you. This might not bother you. There are larger principles at stake though related to government. Google has to give governments the information it has on you when the government requests it.

Further, Google's security isn't that great. Recently, the Wiki Leaks revealed that the Chinese government hacked Gmail and obtained a large amount of information. My step dad's account was recently hacked. I received emails from his actual email account telling me he was in the hospital. My gmail account was also hacked a few months later.

 

[hexor]

Let me ask you the opposite question: What proof do you have that Google isn't tracking synced bookmarks in Chrome?

Guilty until proven innocent is a slippery slope.

 

[Terrin]

Yes, FF is very stable, but I don't like that it's slow. The Safari RAM hog thing is strange (never happens to me), but I can see it happening to others since Safari sometimes has issues on certain computers for unknown reasons. It's fine for my desktop, luckily, not as good on my laptop though.

The RAM hogging on Safari has to do with Safari's Top Sites feature. Safari indexes a large portion of your browsing feature to allow Top Sites to work. If you don't use Top Sites, there is information on the Web that tells you how to disable it.

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Why not? What's the big deal, seriously? You can turn this feature off if you think big, bad Google is invading your privacy (OMG, I've been screwgled!). Then turn off Safari's feature too that keeps that your bookmark settings in the cloud. Also, Firefox offers this feature.

Oh, and make sure you get an independent email provider that has zero spam filtering...because if any provider protects against spam, they're reading your emails. I mean, that's the way it sees if something is spam. So don't let them do that! (OMG, They're tracking your email along with your bookmarks!!!!).

This whole privacy this is way way WAY overblown.

You clearly do not understand the issue. Apple is not actively tracking your book marks or email. For book marks, it merely is storing them at your request in the Cloud. Use the feature or not, Apple doesn't care. With the exception of iAd, Apple isn't an advertising company. For instance, there are no ads in its online services. When you buy a Mac, there are no third party products cluttering up the desktop popping out at you. iAd also is very limited. It doesn't offer any personalized information to advertisers.

Google on the other hand does want you to use all of its online products because it is actively analyzing your data to try and more effectively offer you personalized advertising. Some people might not mind that. I personally do because I dislike ads and the personalization of ads is poorly done. The bigger issue is 1) Google hasn't safe guarded people's information very well (it has been hacked), and 2) it has a lot of information to give to any government seeking the information.

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Why not? What's the big deal, seriously? You can turn this feature off if you think big

PS you can't turn it off. Chrome calls home no matter what you do.

 

[Yvan256]

I haven't tried FF in a long time.

I haven't played Final Fantasy in a long time too.

 

[scaredpoet]

Sorry, not willing to let Google track my bookmarks. But you go right ahead.

I really don't get how some people can smugly proclaim that they're not letting a company track them or allegedly do "evil" things with their data in one turn, and in the next use software that is largely bought and paid for by that same company, to the tune of $300 million a year. That accounts for 84% to 86% of Mozilla's yearly revenue. In exchange for what? Why, for the right to be first in line to track and allegedly do "evil" things with your search data, of course!

Double standard much?

And this is all assuming you trust Mozilla's statements on the matter. The IRS didn't. But Mozilla paid them off. No doubt with some of that Google cash they get plenty of.

Bottom line: that oh-so-evil-company you hate so much for wanting to know everything about your bookmarks, among other things, is largely responsible for the very survival of the browser you're using to avoid their evil ways... and it's probably not nearly as effective at that as you think.

I use neither Chrome nor Firefox on my Macs. But I'd have to say if I was in this conundrum, I'd at least respect Google for largely telling you what they do with your data, even if it is in legalese. It's better than proclaiming to be the tiffany standard for openness out the front door, and accepting hundreds of millions of bucks for data tracking rights from the back door.

 

[Terrin]

Finally, for what it's worth, Safari on iOS tracks your browsing as well. Apple keep a pretty similar record to Google, which is used to show you iAds.

No big company is 'Good' and Apple is far from exempt.

OK, now you are making stuff up. iAds is not used in Safari, and it doesn't gather personalized information. iAds is used strictly in iOS apps where the developer elects to use iAds. Safari does not track anything on Apple's behalf.

You can test this on a Mac by installing Little Snitch. Chrome calls home repeatedly during a single session. Safari and Firefox call home once a week to check for updates.

Compare Apple's online services to Google's. None of Apple's online services, including its email, contain ads.

 

[ncaissie]

Seriously people. Chrome is at version 24. No one complains about that.

I guess the only reason people complain about Firefox's version number is that they have nothing else to complain about.

I'll make a bold statement. Firefox is the best browser out right now. I'm running 28 tabs right now. How much memory is it taking? A measly 845MB. Suck on that Chrome/Safari.

Add on the customizability, the number of great plugins out there like Adblock Plus, Pentadactyl, NoScript, made by an awesome company that actually respects the open web and your privacy, and the secure browsing, you'd be mad to use Chrome or even Safari.

While people have complained, Firefox has just gotten better and better with each release, while Chrome has just gotten buggier and buggier. Don't deny this, I use Chrome for flash and I know how buggy that piece of crap is. Meanwhile, Safari just thinks your free RAM is up for grabs and ends up slowing the entire system down, bringing it to crawl and then you get the dreaded "all tabs must be force reloaded" if you even think of opening more than 5 tabs.

My 11 year old daughter uses FF on her windows laptop. The other day I tried to use it but she had 20-30 tabs open and there was an out of memory error on the screen. I hard to do a hard reboot of the laptop to recover it.
As a developer I’m proud of her for not using IE. I have a Mac and love how Safari syncs all my open tabs with my iOS devices.

 

[zorinlynx]

Call me stubborn but I still use Firefox on Mac.

Part of it is inertia and being used to it. Another part is using Firefox on other platforms at work, particularly Linux. It's nice to have the same browser configuration across platforms.

Also, no other browser has such a rich support for add-ons. Adblock works best on Firefox, and there's all kinds of fun tools like video downloaders and the like.

App tabs are another great feature; they let you have persistant minitabs on the left side for things you always keep open, like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.

So yeah. I acknowledge that Safari and Chrome are also great browsers, but Firefox is what I'm used to; it works well and is highly flexible, so I keep using it. Besides, I get plenty of MobileSafari time in on my iPad and iPhone.

 

[Prof.]

Apparently I was using Firefox 13, since I hadn't updated it since June/July of 2012 when I bought my MBP. So 6 updates have been released in that time.

 

[Terrin]

I really don't get how some people can smugly proclaim that they're not letting a company track them or allegedly do "evil" things with their data in one turn, and in the next use software that is largely bought and paid for by that same company, to the tune of $300 million a year. That accounts for 84% to 86% of Mozilla's yearly revenue. In exchange for what? Why, for the right to be first in line to track and allegedly do "evil" things with your search data, of course!

Double standard much?

And this is all assuming you trust Mozilla's statements on the matter. The IRS didn't. But Mozilla paid them off. No doubt with some of that Google cash they get plenty of.

Bottom line: that oh-so-evil-company you hate so much for wanting to know everything about your bookmarks, among other things, is largely responsible for the very survival of the browser you're using to avoid their evil ways... and it's probably not nearly as effective at that as you think.

I use neither Chrome nor Firefox on my Macs. But I'd have to say if I was in this conundrum, I'd at least respect Google for largely telling you what they do with your data, even if it is in legalese. It's better than proclaiming to be the tiffany standard for openness out the front door, and accepting hundreds of millions of bucks for data tracking rights from the back door.

It isn't the same thing. Google has paid Mozilla to be its default search engine. The user isn't required to use Google. The user can use Bing, Yahoo, or whoever. Whoever the user decides gets the search data. Mozilla doesn't need a privacy policy, as it doesn't choose who gets your data.

Apple does the same thing. Google pays Apple to be the default Search provider, but the difference is in Safari you can change it permanently. In Firefox, you have to use the pull down menu every time.

I personally prefer Bing on the Desktop as Microsoft pays me to use it and the results are about the same. Microsoft even has a website where users blindly test their preference for the results. It has bought me at least 10 Starbuck coffees. Further, I think the default screen is cooler, and it does better image searches.

I also do not see the relevance of your IRS statement, as the dispute was over how Mozilla accounted for its income. It is no secret Google pays Mozilla to be the default search engine.

 

[jthompson666]

Anyone with me in thinking Opera still kicks ass? (Well pretending versions 12.1x never happened)

 

[jc1350]

Not sure about Firefox, but on Chrome your bookmarks & settings are synced, so you don't have to export the bookmarks on other computers or on Windows.

Firefox has built-in sync that syncs cookies, bookmarks and tabs that are open on your other devices/computers.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-sync-take-your-bookmarks-and-tabs-with-you

 

[Thana6tos]

Already??

It will be 30 by year end, LOL. What the heck, 50 by the end of 2014

 

[VoR]

It will be 30 by year end, LOL. What the heck, 50 by the end of 2014

Doesn't matter though, it's just a fast release cycle and is just a number

I use firefox as my main browser for various reasons and chromium to a lesser extent.

I'm not that impressed with the PDF.js reader, but even less impressed with the original article that seems to imply that it's fast because its html5? Probably worth testing rather than focusing on key/buzzwords, the PDF viewer is unfortunately slow.

 

[rmwebs]

OK, now you are making stuff up. iAds is not used in Safari, and it doesn't gather personalized information. iAds is used strictly in iOS apps where the developer elects to use iAds. Safari does not track anything on Apple's behalf.

You can test this on a Mac by installing Little Snitch. Chrome calls home repeatedly during a single session. Safari and Firefox call home once a week to check for updates.

Compare Apple's online services to Google's. None of Apple's online services, including its email, contain ads.

Read what I said again. I said Safari ON IOS. The webkit framework on iOS does call home to Apple unless you disable it.

 

[Risco]

you don't even know what you are talking about. Unless you consider less memory hog, faster js, better extension system somehow "behind" safari.

what zooming an text flow?
what integrated search? you mean search from urlbar? i am pretty sure you can do that long time ago?

Smooth zooming the whole page, instead of moving all the text and jerky zoom. In otherwords safari style zoom.

Firefox's release cycle explained here : http://mozilla.github.com/process-releases/draft/development_overview/

Warning : Do read it until "Releases Over Time". If you only read the beginning, it sounds as though they introduce features in the final releases that aren't fully working. It is not so.

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What do you mean by integrated search?

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Safari / Google Chrome search style rather than a seperate dedicated search box. Searching from the url bar only gives "i'm feeling lucky" results. It also does not bring up suggestions.