Firefox emerges

[CortJstr]

Anybody started using Firefox yet? What's the verdict?

[jough]

I kinda liked "Firebird" better than "Phoenix" - but Firefox?  I don't know.

I'm still using Firebird 0.7.

I'll have to think about trying out the new toy.  I'll probably give it a month before moving to it, if only because I use a LOT of Firebird extensions, most of which it seems won't be compatible with Firefox.

Thankfully, these open source folks are fast to provide new versions.

[andalucia]

That is an uberly lame name. I'm still on Firebird 0.7 too, but I'll give this a try soon.

[Bozack]

I'm rocking out with Firefox, and loving it. The one problem I had with Firebird (when I clicked on the icon in the dock, I had to hit control+N to open a new window, instead of it doing it itself (most insignificant problem EVER)) has been fixed in Firefox, and I'd have to say it's probably the best browser I've got, at least for OS X, tons better than the godawful Safari, which I can't seem to keep from opening all the time.

[CortJstr]

I think the Tabbrowser extension being updated for .8 will be the main hurdle for me and lots of others.  There are others I use (flash click-to-view, mng support, alt-text, et ) but the tabbrowser is make-or-break for me.

[Choop]

I grabbed Firefox at like 5 a.m. the day it was released, and I'm digging it, though yeah watch out for the Tabbrowser Extensions and their pesky "not working" status. The rest of the extensions I've installed work just fine, including Javascript Console Status, All-in-One Gestures*, Link Toolbar, Nuke Anything, Flash Click to View, Copy Image, Adblock, TTLO, LinkIt, and Paste and Go.

It's a bit faster-loading than Firebird, and keeps your place in forms when you switch back-and-forth between tabs (hooray!), and I happen to think Firefox a better name than Firebird. The awful car and its proponents have kind of spoiled that name for me. Also, I think you'd better get used to it, because it's officially been trademarked by the Mozilla organization.

*my make-or-break extension

[jough]

Well, Firebird was trademarked too.  They'll trademark everything after the Phoenix fiasco.  That's no excuse.

Eventually, of course, it'll simply be the "Mozilla Browser, v. 1.0" - these project names are just for the pre-release anyway.

And then the Thunderbird e-mail client (will this become the Thunderfox too?) will just be the Mozilla e-mail client.

Mozilla is the brand name they're working towards - these interim releases are just to distinguish the project from the Netscape Mozilla Application Suite.

[CortJstr]

watch out for the Tabbrowser Extensions and their pesky "not working" status.

What do you mean?

All-in-One Gestures*, Link Toolbar, Nuke Anything, Flash Click to View, Copy Image, Adblock, TTLO, LinkIt, and Paste and Go.

I can't install gestures because I share my comp and it would drive my S.O. nuts. But Nuke Anything always looked nice. What are the others?

It's a bit faster-loading than Firebird

Thank God!

I hope the Google bar works too. I like it better than the built-in search bar.

[andalucia]

Ok, I'm getting it... for the faster loading if nothing else.  Time is money!

[Choop]

watch out for the Tabbrowser Extensions and their pesky "not working" status.

What do you mean?

I can't get the "TabBrowser" extensions working in Firefox like they do in Firebird - middle-click an empty spot on the tab bar to "undo close tab" and a few other things.

All-in-One Gestures*, Link Toolbar, Nuke Anything, Flash Click to View, Copy Image, Adblock, TTLO, LinkIt, and Paste and Go.

I can't install gestures because I share my comp and it would drive my S.O. nuts. But Nuke Anything always looked nice. What are the others?

Switch the gestures to your S.O.'s secondary button (context menu), so they're out of the way. Plus, you can teach your S.O. with the option that displays the gesture paths -- start with "Refresh", as it makes the most sense visually: up, down.

It's a bit faster-loading than Firebird

Thank God!

Like I said, a bit faster-loading. Just a touch speedier when you start it up. Should you leave Firefox minimized (or in the background) for any length of time, it'll be sluggish for a minute.

I hope the Google bar works too. I like it better than the built-in search bar.

Personally, I've never liked the Google bar, and I find the search toolbar just fine for my needs. CTRL+K if you want to search using the current tab, or CTRL+T - TAB if you want a new tab, and you're good to go. The only thing they need to change is to enable keyboard-based selection of the engines (have you added any search engines? It's great. IMDB, amazon, etc. are all available.)

[andalucia]

Ok... Installed Firefox and couldn't get it to do ANYTHING.  It'd open up eventually, but I couldn't get it to load the homepage or open any menus... should I have uninstalled Firebird first?

[Choop]

No, but you should have installed to a new profile. If it doesn't ask you which profile to use next time you start it up, just un- and re-install it, pointing to some new profile somewhere.

[Choop]

Oops: I forgot this bit:

All-in-One Gestures*, Link Toolbar, Nuke Anything, Flash Click to View, Copy Image, Adblock, TTLO, LinkIt, and Paste and Go.

[...]But Nuke Anything always looked nice. What are the others?

Nuke Anything is awesome - I had Nuke Image before Nuke Anything was available, so I never changed it, but this time I went with this one, and it's S O - M U C H - A W E S O M E R you can't believe it. anything - ANYTHING can be removed from the page, completely.

Link Toolbar: it parses the <link> tags in a document, but not for stylesheets -- look at the source code on this very page you're reading right now yes this one TYPE CTRL+U DAMNIT and you'll see <link> tags for "top," "search," "help," and "authors." Link Toolbar gives a navbar in the status bar to get immediately to these pages. LinkIt is a secondary extension that extends the Link Toolbar extension (whew) to parse for other tags that resemble the relationship-defining <link> tags.

Flash Click to View - turns embedded flash anything into a button that you need to click to play the flash. No more ridiculous flying flash ads, or annoying flash-contained-mp3s before you turn down your speakers, &c.

Copy Image - Funny enough, Gecko browsers don't come with a context-menu option to copy an image to the clipboard. So this does it.

Paste and Go - copy a URL to the clipboard, get to the address bar, and type CTRL+SHIFT+V to ...paste the URL into the address bar and go there without bothering to hit enter.

TTLO - "Things They Left Out" - basically kind of a greater-detail options panel to add in some configuration pieces for the peniswheel, HTTP settings, external applications, and other things. It really helps integrate the browser smoothly into your environment.

Adblock - The. Single. Greatest. Plugin. Ever. (though please note it's the gestures that I absolutely require) You can block content (images, scripts, iframes, etc) from servers - any server - using wildcards. I used to have a 31 thousand line hosts file (resolving all known adservers to the dead loopback 127.0.0.1 address) to keep ads from loading. This cuts my filters down to about seven to start with, such as "*/ads/*" and "ads.*" and "*.atwola.*" - plus, it's easy as anything to block content that you're viewing, since they've added access to the context menu PLUS a clickie in the status bar which lists all blockable content on the current page. Create your filter, click "OK," reload the page, and you're done.

[CortJstr]

Like I said, a bit faster-loading. Just a touch speedier when you start it up. Should you leave Firefox minimized (or in the background) for any length of time, it'll be sluggish for a minute.

See now I'd been blaming other CPU/RAM intensive programs for the slow Restore. But on my work computer (NT4, maybe 400MHz) Firebird takes like 2 minutes on the initial load.

I hope the Google bar works too. I like it better than the built-in search bar.

Personally, I've never liked the Google bar, and I find the search toolbar just fine for my needs. CTRL+K if you want to search using the current tab, or CTRL+T - TAB if you want a new tab, and you're good to go. The only thing they need to change is to enable keyboard-based selection of the engines (have you added any search engines? It's great. IMDB, amazon, etc. are all available.)

The main reason I like the G bar is that is spawns a new tab by default. With the built in bar I frequently forget to ctrl+t before searching. I like the single-click site search as well. I hated having to type in "site:www.411mania.com" or whatever. The other egines sound fun though.

I love Flash c-t-v. I usually hate Flash so I only click it for menus and stuff. Ad blocker didn't seem that necessary since just right clicking and "block images from" has wiped out virutually all of them already. I noticed FB also doesn't really let you drag an image into explorer so the copy function could be nice.

I looked at TTLO but it was so vague in the features that I couldn't tell if I wanted it or not.

For andalucia's problem: not everybody has to create a new profile but if it wasn't working you should. You can just run the .exe with a -p argument.

[jough]

Okay, I bit the bullet and installed Firefox.  Half of my favourite old extensions don't work with it, but everything essential does.

It's faster to open now than IE - about 1.3 seconds on my 1.8Ghz Athlon.  Pages don't seem to render any faster, but Firebird was pretty fast to begin with.

What I don't like is that no skins work with it but the original one that came with it (and which is not very nice looking).

Still, it's better than the early Mozilla releases that used the old Netscape 4.x buttons as the default.