Back to Firefox?

By Daniel Miessler on December 15th, 2005: Tagged as Apple | Firefox

So there’s a new G4 build of Firefox out. I am particularly interested in the widgets — even moreso than the performance gains (which I didn’t even notice, by the way).

The question then becomes whether or not this is enough to get me to come back to Firefox (I’ve been using Safari for the last month or so).

Reading about cool FF extensions hurts my soul. It goes like this:

  1. Read about badass Firefox extension.
  2. Get excited.
  3. Realize I run Safari.
  4. Get depressed.
  5. Review my reasons for running Safari.
  6. Decide to say with Safari until Firefox looks like Safari does.

I just can’t get over how clean Safari is, and how tight it is with OS X. The widgets and beauty with which it renders pages is unsurpassed. But I know Firefox can emulate that long before Safari can do what Firefox has done in terms of overall functionality.

So I wait.

Only time will tell whether or not this FF mod will finally let me dump Safari for good.

  • Tim

    Well, on the windows front at least, FF 1.5 is shaping up really well. There’s one feature that made the transition from 1.0 to 1.5rc all worthwhile.

    The ability to move tabs. That’s right. It seems intuitive that once you have tabs you should be able to move them around and re-order them, but until 1.5, you had to find a special extension to do it for you.

    Until 1.0 came out, there was a great extension to do it, but afterwards, you had to use an extension that did it but had “extra features” that tried to replace another extension (Tabbrowsing preferences), and did a rather crappy job of it.

    It seems like a simple pleasure, but I’m glad it’s been incorporated into the main FF build. Maybe my other favorite extensions will be incorporated in time as well!

  • Tim

    Well, on the windows front at least, FF 1.5 is shaping up really well. There’s one feature that made the transition from 1.0 to 1.5rc all worthwhile.

    The ability to move tabs. That’s right. It seems intuitive that once you have tabs you should be able to move them around and re-order them, but until 1.5, you had to find a special extension to do it for you.

    Until 1.0 came out, there was a great extension to do it, but afterwards, you had to use an extension that did it but had “extra features” that tried to replace another extension (Tabbrowsing preferences), and did a rather crappy job of it.

    It seems like a simple pleasure, but I’m glad it’s been incorporated into the main FF build. Maybe my other favorite extensions will be incorporated in time as well!

  • http://www.alexhutton.com/ Alex Hutton

    I switched. The aesthete in me had to get “Firefoxy” to make the widgets look less “Motif”.

    I miss a few things with one complaint:

    1.) Clicking on what should be an RSS icon in the URL bar (like Safari) brings up “Live bookmarking”. I just want feeds to register with NetNewsWire (like they do in Safari).

    2.) Stability, it doens’t blow up on crappy javascript like Safari, but the OS X build “feels” less stable once you start loading all these cool extentions.

    3.) SPELLCHECK!

    4.) Crappier Popup blocking

    My big complaint? Processor usage. I have a 1.5ghz powerbook, and Firefox can peg me pretty easily.

    The nice parts:

    Extentions.

    It seems faster.

    Being a little part of the Firefox “revolution”.

  • http://www.alexhutton.com Alex Hutton

    I switched. The aesthete in me had to get “Firefoxy” to make the widgets look less “Motif”.

    I miss a few things with one complaint:

    1.) Clicking on what should be an RSS icon in the URL bar (like Safari) brings up “Live bookmarking”. I just want feeds to register with NetNewsWire (like they do in Safari).

    2.) Stability, it doens’t blow up on crappy javascript like Safari, but the OS X build “feels” less stable once you start loading all these cool extentions.

    3.) SPELLCHECK!

    4.) Crappier Popup blocking

    My big complaint? Processor usage. I have a 1.5ghz powerbook, and Firefox can peg me pretty easily.

    The nice parts:

    Extentions.

    It seems faster.

    Being a little part of the Firefox “revolution”.


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