Mozilla Releases Firefox 3 Web Browser

[clevin]

Lets see, since somebody already stated Im too stupid... I will just try my best to explain

That's right. Webkit promotes openness, innovation and opportunity of the web and Safari, which uses the Webkit rendering engine in turn promotes openness, innovation and opportunity of the web. This applies to any other browser which uses Webkit as its engine.

I guess when they said "created to", that means they started from that goal.

Webkit... ok, obviously you should know webkits is a fork of KHTML, I have no problem with the idea that KHTML was created to promote OSS. But why was webkit created? and why was safari created?

Webkit, as a fork, has no position to claim "built from the ground", this is first point, next point is: apple established webkit, and announced safari, becasue, IMHO, the development if IE on mac was stalled. Apple grabbed KHTML and built a browser in hope of not lagging too much behind and w/o a decent browser. Was "openess' a thing in apple's mind? IDK, and I think you dont know neither.

There are lots of examples.
This is great. Obviously they are on to something good. You missed off Google's Android as well, which will also use Webkit.
Glad we're agreeing so far.

yes. thats good

Please explain.

Why not? They are competing browsers. They use different rendering engines and both of those have got full marks in ACID 3.

well, lets say, a standard passed W3C, which contain 54 items for web developers to utilize, Opera support 50 of those 54 items, while safari only support 3 of them. Why? because acid 3 can't check every item, so it only check few items of each standard, and webkit just did so to pass the test.

Normally you measure performance by how good something is, not how much work went into it. Webkit needed less work to it in order to pass, so what? That just means it started out better in the first place.

Thats not real pass, don't you see? when you only implement 5 items out of 54 of a standard, web developers can't use it!, It has no meaning in helping the web environment!

Its not webkit need less work in order to pass the test, its it didn't pass any meaningful thing, it tells web developers it passed, but when developers use those standard, the result would be a no, its confusing and not helpful

Of course no measurement is perfect. It is better to have some measurement than none. If Mozilla are not happy with the ACID tests then they should create there own tests and push for these to be used to determine support of standards instead.

It is important to have a test, but ppl need to regard the test with some realistic ideas. Acid3's standard enclosure has a deadline of 2004, do you think there is no change in past 4 years and all the standard remain the same? NO, Acid 3 also include some standard that since been altered, updated, or abolished, in that case, NOT pass is a better result than pass.

 

[Simon R.]

I installed FF3.... and then re-installed FF2. I simply can't live with the "improved" autocomplete in the address bar.

 

[TwinCities Dan]

update, since yesterday mozilla's server was down for 1hr 16min, the finish line is now 18:16 UTC

That's kinda cheating, isn't it? Just because their servers were down doesn't add 1hr 16min to the day does it?

 

[clevin]

Tell me, how do Safari controls not act exactly the way all other OS X controls do?

Are they non-native controls? I see no indication of that (even looking into the application bundle itself I see .nibs and other IB artifacts). If they aren't though, at least Apple did a complete job of replicating the OS standards!

there is a read here http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/firefox-3-for-mac-os-x-under-the-hood/

It's also bad design as it confabulates two completely different features into one control. You can't effectively type a URL into the control because it starts searching yahoo or some such place instead, then you hit enter by mistake and you are off onto some site that you never intended to go to. On the other hand if you use it to search, it's not clear what, where and when it's searching and it's almost impossible to control.

It's a dumb feature IMO, intended for people who like to be lazy and imprecise (like some of the people on this thread).

Besides which, who searches their history much anyway?

lol, please smart guy, where does yahoo come from? so I guess smart guy made up thing w/o any experience? LOL

or anything safari doesn't have is useless? thats a little bit fanboyism, isn't it?

That's kinda cheating, isn't it? Just because their servers were down doesn't add 1hr 16min to the day does it?

That would depends on when they started counting..

 

[QAPete]

I installed FF3.... and then re-installed FF2. I simply can't live with the "improved" autocomplete in the address bar.

I don't like that "awesome bar" at all. It's annoying to me. There's a reasonably complicated method out there for getting it pretty much back to the old bar, which I'm going to do at some point.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

no problem, I never feel bad about asking questions, smart people can always make "cute words" that are indicative of their superiority, sorry, Im too dumb to understand the underline meanings. ...

Your not fooling many people with this "dumb act" you know.

There's at least a few times on this thread alone where you get so mad you stop pretending to "dumb down" your writing and get all eloquent and grammatically correct and stuff. I suggest you go back and edit your posts.

A smart person can troll a forum pretending to be a dumb-ass user asking awkward questions and promoting their product of choice, but someone as stupid as you are making yourself out to be, can't then turn around and make some of the comments you have. You are not dumb at all, just intellectually lazy and somewhat disingenuous.

 

[clevin]

Your not fooling many people with this "dumb act" you know.

There's at least a few times on this thread alone where you get so mad you stop pretending to "dumb down" your writing and get all eloquent and grammatically correct and stuff. I suggest you go back and edit your posts.

A smart person can troll a forum pretending to be a dumb-ass user asking awkward questions and promoting their product of choice, but someone as stupid as you are making yourself out to be, can't then turn around and make some of the comments you have. You are not dumb at all, just intellectually lazy and somewhat disingenuous.

well, when you write a whole post of hundreds of words that are all judgment of another person, and has nothing to do with the topic of the thread, you know you are trolling.

 

[jettredmont]

Try addon "YASS" (yet anothet smooth scroll)

Hmmm ... seems to help slightly, but way too many controls with incomprehensible descriptions. Do I really need to go this deep into scrolling geekery to just get Firefox to operate the same way every other Mac app does natively?

 

[clevin]

Hmmm ... seems to help slightly, but way too many controls with incomprehensible descriptions. Do I really need to go this deep into scrolling geekery to just get Firefox to operate the same way every other Mac app does natively?

haha, no, reason might be able to explain the situation, but can't always be excuses.

Firefox is cross-platform app, It sure still can do better to be more native, but it takes time, I think the humongous changes warrant the 3 years spent on firefox3 by mozilla, for it to be even better, Im sure they are working on it, but please be patient. Firefox has many priorities, and no product is perfect.

Basically, just know "native-ness" itself is a vague word that sometimes don't really mean what you think it means.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Its over for FireFox. Safari has already won. And the next version of Safari will make this even more useless, desperate.

In two or three years, it won't even exist.

So sayth the noobie. Does Safari run on any other platform other then windows and OS X. No? Is it open to be tweaked by anyone. No? Sorry try again noob.

 

[cal6n]

@ clever clevin

I have had an absolute gut-full of you and your fanboi-ism.

goodbye

 

[slffl]

Is there a way turn on autocomplete for the addressbar? I start typing, it comes up with 'suggestions' below, but the addressbar doesn't change and if I press return it trys to goto an incomplete address.

 

[jettredmont]

Tell me, how do Safari controls not act exactly the way all other OS X controls do?

Are they non-native controls? I see no indication of that (even looking into the application bundle itself I see .nibs and other IB artifacts). If they aren't though, at least Apple did a complete job of replicating the OS standards!

there is a read here http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/firefox-3-for-mac-os-x-under-the-hood/

On summary, the site says they can't use native controls on web pages because HTML and CSS need to be able to change control appearance and behavvior in ungodly ways which Cocoa does not support (this I can agree with). He says he believes Safari doesn't use native controls either (again, might be true).

Still, leaves the question: why are FireFox's "fake" controls so god-awful non-standard (and Windows-like in function) while Safari's work so seamlessly? Obviously, Apple has a bit of an advantage here given they control the standard controls too, but if they're able to hook into common Cocoa control services then there's a way for FireFox to do the same.

 

[clevin]

why are FireFox's "fake" controls so god-awful non-standard (and Windows-like in function) while Safari's work so seamlessly?

now thats a good question, and I think it deserve to be filed as a important bug.

whats the "windows-like in function" tho?

Is there a way turn on autocomplete for the addressbar? I start typing, it comes up with 'suggestions' below, but the addressbar doesn't change and if I press return it trys to goto an incomplete address.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5620461/

 

[Diode]

For those looking for a intel compatible PDF plugin I stumbled upon this.

 

[atsang]

tested FF3 on OSX for a while and I love it. but after reading these posts I decided to "try" safari again and came up with some questions for Safari users:

1. How do I sync bookmarks across multiple machines automatically for free?
2. How do I change the switch tabs hotkey to something that doesn't require 3 buttons?
3. How do I install mouse gestures seamlessly and for free?
4. How do I get my tabs to open, close, and switch between them in the specific order that I want them to switch?
5. How do I download multiple files off a webpage in two clicks based on their filetype?
6. How do I customize all Google websites to remove ads, clicktracking, automatically?
7. How can I force an encrypted connection to gmail, add row highlights to my mail and attachment icons?
8. How can I type in the exact website I want and have it fill in my www and .com for me?
9. How can I integrate downloads into the main window without being obtrusive?
10. How can I drag and throw links to create new windows/tabs?

If safari can do these for me I may switch to it.

 

[philips]

awesome bar is awesome

All this lambasting of new location bar in Fx3 make me feel like you really never used location bar before.

Because had you ever really seriously all day used location bar for doing anything - then you would have known about "cool" feature called "keywords."

Go to Bookmarks. Select the bookmark you use very often (e.g. nytimes.com). Open its properties. In keywords, type "ny". Now close Bookmarks and go to location bar. Type "ny" - and enjoy!

And I'm not even mentioning here "Add keyword search" feature available from Fx2 times.

Stop the lame flames. It just shows that you really never used any advanced feature of Fx.

 

[jettredmont]

Firefox is cross-platform app, It sure still can do better to be more native, but it takes time, I think the humongous changes warrant the 3 years spent on firefox3 by mozilla, for it to be even better, Im sure they are working on it, but please be patient. Firefox has many priorities, and no product is perfect.

Basically, just know "native-ness" itself is a vague word that sometimes don't really mean what you think it means.

As a version 3 product, it has a lot of rough edges. That it took three whole versions before even attempting to fit into the host OS is astounding. But, moving forward: FireFox has all the time in the world. It just won't be on my clock. I just can't see myself continuing to use it after this trial week on a regular basis, because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the apps on the system.

"Native-ness" is a word I never uttered, to be pedantic. I said "natively", and I am quite positive it means what I think it means:

When an application (or control) acts substantially the same across a significant portion of applications on an OS, or in the way declared by the UI guidelines for that OS, then it is acting natively. Yes, there are some gray areas there, but the line isn't nearly so blurry that a reasonable person would say FireFox controls hit or cross it.

 

[clevin]

As a version 3 product, it has a lot of rough edges. That it took three whole versions before even attempting to fit into the host OS is astounding. But, moving forward: FireFox has all the time in the world. It just won't be on my clock. I just can't see myself continuing to use it after this trial week on a regular basis, because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the apps on the system.

"Native-ness" is a word I never uttered, to be pedantic. I said "natively", and I am quite positive it means what I think it means:

When an application (or control) acts substantially the same across a significant portion of applications on an OS, or in the way declared by the UI guidelines for that OS, then it is acting natively. Yes, there are some gray areas there, but the line isn't nearly so blurry that a reasonable person would say FireFox controls hit or cross it.

well, Thanks for trying

firefox has its pros and cons, hits and misses, obviously each individual has his/her own balance to weight. Big picture can only be seen as a collective statistics. You gave it a fair trial, thats all I can ask for, and I really appreciate it.

 

[elppa]

[*]How can I type in the exact website I want and have it fill in my www and .com for me?

Safari has always done this

If you don't believe me, open Safari type “Apple” or “Macrumors” or “Firefox” into the location bar and hit enter.

The rest are features that don't come with Safari.

 

[Butthead]

tested FF3 on OSX for a while and I love it. but after reading these posts I decided to "try" safari again and came up with some questions for Safari users:

1. How do I sync bookmarks across multiple machines automatically for free?
2. How do I change the switch tabs hotkey to something that doesn't require 3 buttons?
3. How do I install mouse gestures seamlessly and for free?
4. How do I get my tabs to open, close, and switch between them in the specific order that I want them to switch?
5. How do I download multiple files off a webpage in two clicks based on their filetype?
6. How do I customize all Google websites to remove ads, clicktracking, automatically?
7. How can I force an encrypted connection to gmail, add row highlights to my mail and attachment icons?
8. How can I type in the exact website I want and have it fill in my www and .com for me?
9. How can I integrate downloads into the main window without being obtrusive?
10. How can I drag and throw links to create new windows/tabs?

If safari can do these for me I may switch to it.

Can only answer a few off the top of my head.

8. Don't most browsers do this automatically, not sure what you're referring to then. Older versions Safari have been able to do that probably since the beginning? Just type away in the url cell and the browser will do the rest when you hit the return/enter key. But only works for US sites, ie. if you type in independent, you'll get the Santa Barbara Independent, as it wouldn't as co.uk if you were looking for www.independent.co.uk

9. Integrate into the main window? That *would* be intrustive, IMHO. I prefer to have a separate window, just me.

10. Drag N throw links? Can you more fully explain that? Standard procedure is to just right click on a link w/mouse or "option, click" with using lappy trackpad N click to get a popup window menu that gives you option of either opening that link in a new window or opening the link in a tab, amongst other options...don't understand your question.

 

[lkrupp]

Firefox is useless on a Mac!

I just don't get it. Firefox is a load of cow dung in my opinion. Still looks like an OS 9 app and I haven't had a problem with a web site in two years using Safari. All this mumbo jumbo about Firefox being more compatible is a crock. I used to keep Firefox and Camino around "just in case" a website didn't display correctly. They've both been gone from my system for over a year now and I'm not missing them at all. Too each their own I guess but pontificating about Firefox being a better browser than Safari is just plain disingenuous.

 

[clevin]

I just don't get it. Firefox is a load of cow dung in my opinion. Still looks like an OS 9 app and I haven't had a problem with a web site in two years using Safari. All this mumbo jumbo about Firefox being more compatible is a crock. I used to keep Firefox and Camino around "just in case" a website didn't display correctly. They've both been gone from my system for over a year now and I'm not missing them at all. Too each their own I guess but pontificating about Firefox being a better browser than Safari is just plain disingenuous.

I guess you didn't read the title of this thread "Firefox 3". OS 9 looks?

Im sure even safari fans wouldn't just make this load of false statements w/o at least give it a 5 minutes try.

 

[sebastianlewis]

I just don't get it. Firefox is a load of cow dung in my opinion. Still looks like an OS 9 app and I haven't had a problem with a web site in two years using Safari. All this mumbo jumbo about Firefox being more compatible is a crock. I used to keep Firefox and Camino around "just in case" a website didn't display correctly. They've both been gone from my system for over a year now and I'm not missing them at all. Too each their own I guess but pontificating about Firefox being a better browser than Safari is just plain disingenuous.

You don't have to use it, it looks nothing like an OS 9 app, in my opinion it's the best browser ever made, and if you don't believe that then don't waste your time 1) reading about Firefox and 2) reading the comments about it.

Sebastian

 

[jettredmont]

now thats a good question, and I think it deserve to be filed as a important bug.

whats the "windows-like in function" tho?

A few off the top of my head:

Select controls (drop-downs) always expand from the top or bottom, which means the mouse doesn't start pointing at the selection. If you mis-click on "English - UK" when you meant to click on "English - US", the Mac native control you click on the select control, move one line down, and click again; the Windows and Firefox controls place your cursor above "Aardvarkian" and have you scroll all the way down again.

Still on the select control: I can't get it to "drop down" when keyboard selected (it acts like a "spinner" control then instead of a select). On OS X, the spacebar will drop it down, and the same will select and collapse once you've moved onto the right option. I call this "Windows-like" only because I've seen similar misbehavior fairly often on Windows (although I don't think it's recommended there either).

Tab close control is on the right, matching Windows placement of the window close control, instead of on the left, matching Mac placement of the window close control. This is a bit of a toss-up, given that there isn't really a well-defined standard for close controls on tabs, but Safari's placement seems much more in keeping with the rest of the OS.

Lastly, "Windows-like" in that like in Windows every single application with a text box has a slightly different implementation of the text box than every other application, and "global" services like spell checking (does FireFox use my OS dictionary?), dictionary lookup, text services, etc, are unknown. That's the Windows Way, built and fostered by a non-extensible UI toolkit. I use a Mac because I find it annoying to maintain a spell-check exceptions list in every application, for instance.

That having been said, controls like radio buttons (tab thankfully doesn't go from selection to selection like it does on Windows) behave properly, and scroll bars properly adopt the system-level together/top-bottom setting.