Mozilla unfurls twelfth and last Firefox 4 beta

At last!

They finally fixed that absolute clusterfuck of ruining the URL bar?

oh well

Too little too late, as they say. Switched to Chrome a few days ago because couldn't take the Hotmail bug anymore. And there's no mention of it in the changes, so pass it is. lol

Lost its way

I remember when Firefox was built on a really powerful premise - there would be a small core browser that would do the basics really really well, and a set of Extensions, from which I could choose the ones that were important to me.

Firefox seems to have increasingly lost its way, becoming full of bloat and pointless (to me, at least) alterations to its appearance.

Not sure where to go next - Google knows too much about me already, so not Chrome, and I just don't get on with Opera. Perhaps I should give IE9 a whirl???

Addons

I'll only switch to 4 once ALL of my addons have been officially updated for 4.

And once there's addons available which turn on all the features that are removed from 4.

Why do people think that fiddling with UIs for the sake of it is a good thing?

At last 2

Well at least they fixed that url hover problem. The url bar thingy looked sharp, but there was less room to view large urls.

Actually I kind of like the compromise they made. One can now view long urls, and the space at the bottom of the screen is not lost.

And... more importantly, they do seem to listen to feedback.

like it

I installed beta 4 and have been using it since. The tabs layout took a little getting used to but I much prefer it now. The URL down in the bottom left corner is far more sensible given that most users are used to looking for the status bar (which is gone).

The half dozen or so add ons I use all seem to work fine.

Really like the 'pin as app tab' feature if you use gmail - especially if you protect the tab then use google labs to show the message count on the favicon and use tabs mix plus to hide the 'protected' thing on the icon.

Not all "radical" UI changes are for the best

Too often, somebody (some company, etc) makes a radical change -- and then everybody thinks they have to do the same thing to not seem like they are "out of date".

Think about bell-bottom pants from the 1970's. They were in. Then, they went to tight. Sheeple followed. Fast-forward a few cycles, now it is hanging-low-exposing-butt-crack. Really? If something is **COMFORTABLE**, I prefer to continue to use it... even if young sheeple don't.

WinAmp did it right. They moved to a sort-of-radical new look, but kept the NATIVE "classic" look. Yes, today, I still use it. I am a minimalist - it is a simple UI that has what I need with no flashy icons.

Firefox was that way... until 4.0. Sure, **SOME** people may like the new look (keeping up with the Joneses), but the other way was fine. I can understand needing to minimalize the interface if suddenly you have *LOTS* of new functionality you need to make available - and it would clutter the old menus... but, the "new" way simply makes things take more clicks (hides menus) and in return you get a teeny-tiny more screen real estate.

Really? I have a not-so-great 1920x1200 (several years old) - and never run any windowed (non-video) items full screen -- or even full height or full width. YES, I LIKE HAVING EASY ACCESS TO ALL FUNCTIONS.

Fortunately, there are hidden options and addons to restore the menus, status bar, etc to Firefox 4. If I were running on a netbook... then I'd appreciate the screen savings. But, please, just make it a simple menu choice: [ ] I prefer a minimal UI... [ ] I prefer to have all options immediately accessible.

FF 4.0b12 the last beta ?

Given that the current nightly build is yclept Minefield 4.0b13, permit me to entertain some doubts....

Henri

Damn Furries

Extension hell is a nightmare. I had to talk this kid away from Firefox 2 so they'd stop coming back with new viruses. Problem was the "Super Mario" browser theme wasn't available for newer builds. Stupid reason but there you go: aesthetics over safety.

I would clearly state that I am of "the other browser" persuasion, so my perspective is a touch jaded; however I feel that Firefox 4 is being held back by cooking too many features at once. Also, no more Fursonas for now, right?

Anybody have a sitrep on Firebug? Dev mailing list viewable on Google, seems there are like five guys trying to make it work with all of the changed behavior in FF4. Can't even debug sites before it goes live, without functional developer tools.