Firefox 1.1 Alpha now available (Deer Park)

[madmaxmedia]

Hey all,

I used to use Firefox on PC, but have stuck to Safari and Camino on Mac since Firefox seemed the most 'un-Mac-like' of the browsers. The Mac 1.1 version was supposed to be a big step, I believe on Cocoa.

It's now available as an alpha-

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/

I've been running it for 2 days, and it has actually been very stable for me- no crashes! I've imported my bookmarks into it, and have basically switched over to using it full time. It's fast, and IIRC looks a lot better than 1.0.x.

I haven't yet tried loading extensions, but many may break with this version.
Enjoy!

 

[solaris]

Welcome to 3 1/2 weeks ago!
Deer Park Alpha 1 came out may 31...

 

[madmaxmedia]

LOL, I didn't know, there was no news about it anywhere. That's why I thought it just came out-

 

[FredAkbar]

I'll wait for the public beta/preview (as opposed to the alpha, which is like a developer preview, or it might even be a step before a DP). As was mentioned, I think the Deer Park alpha breaks some extensions. I'm not even sure if adblock works. I'll stick with Safari until a stable, adblock-compatible Firefox 1.1 is out.

 

[dmw007]

Downloading now. I loved firefox when I was a peecee user. Now I can use it on my Mac

 

[abc123]

it truly works like an alpha release for me. once i got it to launch i found it fast but i don't find it nice to look at or very reliable. i can't wait for the beta and final versions though.

 

[stridey]

Still seems pretty un-maclike to me. The cocoa elements are pretty basic, and it's not universal. I'll stick with Camino, thanks.

 

[Nermal]

There was a problem where if you open the Downloads window (and close everything else), you couldn't then open a new browser window. That's been fixed now

 

[iindigo]

Still seems pretty un-maclike to me. The cocoa elements are pretty basic, and it's not universal. I'll stick with Camino, thanks.

Ditto. It's good to know that Mozilla is finally putting some real effort into making Firefox a good, GUI-law-abiding Mac citizen though.

 

[ravenvii]

Glad to hear they're finally Cocoa-izing it. In it's current form, FireFox is horrible on the Mac as far as the GUI is concerned. Even the right-click menus aren't standard! And the dialog buttons looks weird as well. It really does look like a hack job.

 

[Makosuke]

Good to see progress being made on Firefox--the prefs in particular are starting to feel much more Mac like, and it's noticably faster.

Between this, the preview release of Camino 0.9 (what an improvement over 0.8.x!), and the Webcore builds that are starting to appear, it's a good time to be browsing on the Mac. Oh, and let's not forget Opera 8, either.

 

[mkrishnan]

So does the Cocoa interface basically look like cross-platform FF1.0 but cocoatized, or is it something new? Firefox in Cocoa will be sweeeeet. Unless there's something unexpectedly awful about it, I see me switching back to FF with 1.1.

 

[asif786]

There was a problem where if you open the Downloads window (and close everything else), you couldn't then open a new browser window. That's been fixed now

yes! thank god they fixed that issue..it really used to wind me up.

 

[Starfury]

Slightly cheeky question - could someone post some screenshots? I'd be interested in seeing if this release is visually different at this stage (though not that interested to give the Alpha a go!)

 

[mkrishnan]

Here is one for you.

It seems very nice so far. There are clearly some additional Mac-esque features, although the overall appearance at this point in the Alphas is pretty much FF1.0.

Interestingly, it seems to have a built-in ability to block images, although it is nothing like Adblock. And sadly, it doesn't seem to acccept wildcards (unless I'm doing it wrong) yet. But it's got huge potential!

Dunno, though, I think I like Camino better. As soon as they fix that textbox entry bug, I think I might be *wham* right there.

Well, that, and I wish one of the two would do spell-as-you-type using the OS X dictionary! Seems like Camino would be that one. To be honest, Camino doesn't seem that much more "Mac-like" to me than Firefox, so far. I *like* it, but I don't see it as Mac-like.