Firefox 4 review – was it worth the wait?
After a lengthy public beta period, Mozilla has finally released version 4 of its popular web browser. Linux User kicks Firefox 4’s tyres and peek under the bonnet to find out whether it was worth the wait…
This article originally appeared in issue 98 of Linux User & Developer magazine.
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Software releases nowadays are like a birthday present delivered in pieces over several months. Take Firefox 4, for example. The new version of the browser has been around in alpha and beta forms for almost a year, and its individual features have been reviewed and discussed extensively in various news outlets and blogs. So we find it rather difficult to get excited about the final release of the popular web browser. But on the bright side, we have had plenty of time to put the browser through its paces and use its new features for an extended period of time – a luxury one is rarely afforded as a reviewer. And now that the final version of Firefox 4 starts trickling down to Linux distros near you, we are ready to share our findings with our readers.
When you spend most of your daily computing in the browser, even small interface tweaks can have a great impact on your productivity. So let’s start with what Firefox 4 holds for its users in the looks department.
The latest version of Firefox does away with the status bar and places the window tabs on top of the address bar – just like the Google Chrome and Chromium browsers. The status bar is not gone completely, though: it appears when you hover the mouse over a link and when the browser loads a webpage – exactly the way it does in Google Chrome. While some might think of this as a blatant rip-off, we prefer to call it cross-pollination. After all, both projects are open source, so it’s only natural to borrow good ideas from each other. Call it what you like, these seemingly minor tweaks improve the overall usability and browsing experience. We particularly like the tab pinning feature, as we have been using this functionality extensively since it was introduced in Google Chrome. We were, however, slightly disappointed to see that Firefox 4 still uses a separate search bar. It would have made more sense to roll it into the Awesome Bar. After all, this is how it’s done in Google Chrome, and it works pretty well, so why not borrow this feature as well?
Interface improvements in Firefox 4 are not limited to borrowed features, though. In fact, the new version of the browser comes with a unique and innovative tool for managing tabs, named Panorama. Using this nifty feature, you can create as many tab groups as you like and move tabs between them using the mouse. What makes Panorama so useful is that the browser displays only one tab group at a time, but you can instantly switch to any other group using a keyboard shortcut. For example, youbeta can group all news sites and Linux-related pages into different tab groups and quickly switch between them. This feature can come in equally handy for managing multiple tabs and grouping them by topics. Our only quibble is that it’s not immediately clear how to save the tab groups between sessions. It turns out that you need to set Firefox to display tabs from the previous time in the Preferences window. We would prefer a dedicated save button in the Panorama view. Another useful feature is the ability to reduce Firefox’s interface to a bare minimum by hiding the entire menu bar. You probably won’t appreciate this feature on your desktop machine, but it’s a boon for notebooks and netbooks where screen real estate is at a premium.
Continue to: Page 2 – Conclusion
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Very interesting post. You miss the most important point. Firefox 4 do support restartless add ons. Its the add on developers who need to create restartless add ons.
Interesting post. You seem to forget the fact that some add ons apparently slows down Firefox 4. Especially during startup.
Mozilla does in fact warn about it: http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/01/improving-add-on-performance/
…as well as listing the worst offenders: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/
…if you’ve mentioned that, the post would have got a straight 4/5, – instead I’ll give it a 3.5/5 :-)
Using the Windows version of FF4.0 I have experienced multiple crashes with Adobe FlashPlayer viewing programs on Hulu. I had t revert to FF 3.x.
Like the interface overall, mainly because of the increased viewing area.
Don’t like the tab bars over the address bar. It was faster the other way. I make HEAVY use of tabbed browsing.
I use FF4.0 on Ubuntu 10.10 and I love it, I haven’t had an issue with it, to be honest I didn’t have any issue with FF3.6.x either. I think FF 4.0 is a solid browser I prefer to use it more than Chrome. I like the sync capabilities on it, I use it alot between my PC and my android. I love the Tab browsing it reminds of Chrome.
The pinning feature in Chrome is poorly implemented (typing a web site in the address bar while in a pinned tab will allow the new page to stomp out the pinned page rather than defaulting to a new tab) and the bookmark access seems really user-unfriendly to me: there is no useful way to keep it open to double-click or drag-drop to open pages.
I hope the new FFox betters those issues.
@Phil Gilmer:
It’s easy to go back to the other, oldstyle tab position, just right click the tab region and uncheck “tabs on top”
One of the reasons I use Firefox instead of Chrome is because it has a separate search bar. Those of us who are lazy, and just key in “gmail” as an address, get gmail.com. On Chrome you get the search results. Being lazy, it is difficult to change a habit. Multi-tasking bars or people rarely perform as well as a single, dedicated version. So, there is no reason to put up with an the irritant of occasionally getting a search when you want an address or vice-versa.
Moving tabs on top by default is counter-productive. People use tabs much more often than an address bar, and moving tabs farther away just adds a delay in reaching them with a mouse. How adding a delay for tab switching is an interface improvement?
@joe, used to like the separate search bar – but it seems to confuse users.
Opera has had keyword searchs in the location bar for years: ctrl+l then enter ‘g keywords’.
Feels much better than using the search box.
I bin the search box, and most of the icons.
Here is a fix for chrome:
http://blog.stevehorn.cc/2009/02/google-chrome-feeling-lucky-search.html
I still hate Firefox’s handling of tabs. It’s just too slow. How about some intelligent grouping of tabs? I think tab handling should really be the realm of the OS not the application – I’d prefer a standard for this!
“We were, however, slightly disappointed to see that Firefox 4 still uses a separate search bar. It would have made more sense to roll it into the Awesome Bar. After all, this is how it’s done in Google Chrome, and it works pretty well, so why not borrow this feature as well?”
This is one of the things I like best about Firefox! The Chrome text box is slow and confusing. How many times do I have to click “yes I really meant to go to http://mywebpage dammit” before it learns the difference between a search and a website? Why do I have to type and then delete (breaking the cardinal rule of autocomplete) to make it *not* autocomplete with some obscure URL I ended up at before?
Google has built their empire on having a single text box, and if their browser fails to make sense of it they’re just sending you to google.com anyway (more money for them!). I’m glad Firefox stuck with something that I can at least figure out how to use.
I won’t say the “single text box” interface is the worst part of Chrome, but it’s up there.
Back to the old version 3.5.4 for me, I just love the old Winstripe theme and the ‘Get Mail’ button that opens Thunderbird.
Sorry Foxy all the fancy gizzmos are not for me.
I have a guide for installing this on my blog http://backtogeek.com/2011/04/19/install-firefox-4-on-linux-mint-debian-edition-lmde/ specificaly for lmde (linux mint debian), hopefully someone will find it useful.
Hi, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your blog in Chrome, it looks
fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some
overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, great blog!