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Impressed with Firefox version 1.5 beta 2

bousozoku

bousozoku

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Jun 25, 2002
16,598
2,949
Lard
I've been using this version since yesterday and already, I find it so much better than version 1.0.7. It seems that they've sorted the performance problems and the lockups that I was having with various multimedia plug-ins.

Rendering looks a bit better and XUL looks like it's been cleaned up finally too. There's been a nasty vertical scroll bar bug that took down the Mac applications since the original beta of XUL.

Considering the various problems I've had with lockups, I decided to simply replace the production version with the beta version. Nothing like a good scare to keep you awake, right?

Try it, you'll like it. :)
 
I have been using the beta for a couple of months or so and it works great, it also seems to load pages faster than 1.0.7. It seems quite stable and has addressed some of the previously pesky problems.
 
highres said:
I have been using the beta for a couple of months or so and it works great, it also seems to load pages faster than 1.0.7. It seems quite stable and has addressed some of the previously pesky problems.
Click to expand...
Yes, but has it become better than Safari 2? I find safari 2 more stable, and to be quicker...

Also, I would seriously like to see firefox to fix that scroll-wheel problem that just doesn't work correctly with my kesington mouse, and to improve the support for other languages and encodings... When I view pages written in greek I am experiencing slow behavior.

Such things made me switch from firefox to Safari.
 
Soulstorm said:
Yes, but has it become better than Safari 2? I find safari 2 more stable, and to be quicker...

Also, I would seriously like to see firefox to fix that scroll-wheel problem that just doesn't work correctly with my kesington mouse, and to improve the support for other languages and encodings... When I view pages written in greek I am experiencing slow behavior.

Such things made me switch from firefox to Safari.
Click to expand...

For the sites I frequent, Firefox 1.0.7 was already better than Safari 2.0.x. Still, there were occasions to use Safari when something was not rendered correctly. I suspect I will use Safari a lot less now.

I never had problems with slow performance viewing Japanese pages but I'm sure Roman-based character sets get preferential treatment since they've the most experience with them.
 
there are too many little things that keep me from using firefox. the lack of drop shadows, the lack of support for flip4mac...
 
Still, no bad experiences. Reversing course is almost always instantaneous and that's a first with any browser I've ever used. Java, Flash, and Director web content all seems to work just fine.

I really want to try the Thunderbird beta but I'm a little concerned about losing saved e-mail.
 
Moved from Safari to Firefox at home and have never been happier. I haven't tried out the 1.5 Beta, but I have a different question for the list: Does anyone know how Firefox (the 1.5 Beta) stacks up against Camino (I'm thinking the .9 Beta here)? Mozilla seems to indicate that Camino is somehow "better" than Firefox, but having used the latest stable releases of them both for daily browsing, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Sure, Camino is optimized for OS X, but is that all?
 
bousozoku said:
I really want to try the Thunderbird beta but I'm a little concerned about losing saved e-mail.
Click to expand...
There's 3rd party programs that will help you make the switch from Eudora and a couple others to Thunderbird (read: open source MBX files). I spent a weekend "switching" from Eudora to Thunderbird (mail archives that have used Eudora on three platforms - Win 3.1, Win95-XP, and OS X - since 1992), and now that it's all in place I really like it. Tends to crash unexpectedly sometimes, but every release gets more stable. I also burned the latest version of Eudora that would open all my archived mail along with the files and attachments to a DVD, so theoretically I can get them back in the future by re-installing Eudora.
 
FoxyKaye said:
There's 3rd party programs that will help you make the switch from Eudora and a couple others to Thunderbird (read: open source MBX files). I spent a weekend "switching" from Eudora to Thunderbird (mail archives that have used Eudora on three platforms - Win 3.1, Win95-XP, and OS X - since 1992), and now that it's all in place I really like it. Tends to crash unexpectedly sometimes, but every release gets more stable. I also burned the latest version of Eudora that would open all my archived mail along with the files and attachments to a DVD, so theoretically I can get them back in the future by re-installing Eudora.
Click to expand...

That's good, but I switched from Eudora quite a while ago, when Thunderbird was still beta since Eudora's index to my mail broke and suddenly I ended up with most of my deleted mail, instead of the good stuff.

I'm just concerned about leaving my current stable version of Thunderbird (1.0.7) for the beta. However, if the upgrade is as good as that for Firefox, I shouldn't look back.
 
FoxyKaye said:
Moved from Safari to Firefox at home and have never been happier. I haven't tried out the 1.5 Beta, but I have a different question for the list: Does anyone know how Firefox (the 1.5 Beta) stacks up against Camino (I'm thinking the .9 Beta here)? Mozilla seems to indicate that Camino is somehow "better" than Firefox, but having used the latest stable releases of them both for daily browsing, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Sure, Camino is optimized for OS X, but is that all?
Click to expand...

To some people, the look is really important. Beyond that, Camino has a few features that haven't been implemented in Firefox (i.e. built-in ad blocking without an extension), and some on the way as well (i.e. inline spell-checking using the capability that exists in Cocoa). Personally, Camino won't work for me until it has inline spell-checking. I really, really like that feature in Safari.

But anyway, if you snoop around MR, there are many, many threads of people criticizing Firefox because it doesn't "look" like it belongs on a Mac. I guess it's important to them.
 
mkrishnan said:
...there are many, many threads of people criticizing Firefox because it doesn't "look" like it belongs on a Mac. I guess it's important to them.
Click to expand...

Well, look at it this way: Your Mac is a shiny new red convertable, and Firefox with it's less-than-mac look is a beat-up ugly steering wheel from a Model T Ford in your convertable. It just ruins the experience.

That and all the stuff like proper support for OS X services (there's scads of those, check Application Menu > Services), inline spellchecking, Ctrl-Apple-D mini-dictionary, etc. is quite annoying.
 
iindigo said:
Well, look at it this way: Your Mac is a shiny new red convertable, and Firefox with it's less-than-mac look is a beat-up ugly steering wheel from a Model T Ford in your convertable. It just ruins the experience.

That and all the stuff like proper support for OS X services (there's scads of those, check Application Menu > Services), inline spellchecking, Ctrl-Apple-D mini-dictionary, etc. is quite annoying.
Click to expand...

Since I don't use any of those, I haven't missed them.

Considering that the brushed metal look wasn't always a Mac look, Safari once had a less-than-Mac look of its own. Also, considering the number of Mac looks lately (what is it? 5 from Apple), who is to say that Firefox doesn't have a Mac look of its own? ;)
 
bousozoku said:
Since I don't use any of those, I haven't missed them.

Considering that the brushed metal look wasn't always a Mac look, Safari once had a less-than-Mac look of its own. Also, considering the number of Mac looks lately (what is it? 5 from Apple), who is to say that Firefox doesn't have a Mac look of its own? ;)
Click to expand...

I dunno. I guess it's little stuff like the oversized contextual menus with no blink on item select and such that annoy me... the collection of these little things ruin it for me.

That, and if they want a proper Mac version, they should trash as much of the portable stuff in favor of Mac compatible stuff as possible to make the Mac version more Mac-freindly and not just YALWP (Yet Another Lame Windows Port)
 
I really like firefox.. i cringe whenever I have to use IE at school. I'm interested to see how googles secret project gbrowser, or whatever it'll be called, turns out.
 
The problem with firefox and why it will never really be "mac-like", is because of the philosophy mozilla uses: one common source code that can be compiled for every platform.

llama
 
iindigo said:
I dunno. I guess it's little stuff like the oversized contextual menus with no blink on item select and such that annoy me... the collection of these little things ruin it for me.

That, and if they want a proper Mac version, they should trash as much of the portable stuff in favor of Mac compatible stuff as possible to make the Mac version more Mac-freindly and not just YALWP (Yet Another Lame Windows Port)
Click to expand...

It's not YALWP because it isn't a port at all. It's a cross-platform application. That its strength. It doesn't suffer from Apple-only support or Omni Group-only support. I feel more comfortable because people all over the world are using it. I also like being able to use themes, something that Apple certainly doesn't seem to want us to have. I'm really, really tired of all the blue. (Yes, I could switch to graphite.)
 
FoxyKaye said:
Moved from Safari to Firefox at home and have never been happier. I haven't tried out the 1.5 Beta, but I have a different question for the list: Does anyone know how Firefox (the 1.5 Beta) stacks up against Camino (I'm thinking the .9 Beta here)? Mozilla seems to indicate that Camino is somehow "better" than Firefox, but having used the latest stable releases of them both for daily browsing, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Sure, Camino is optimized for OS X, but is that all?
Click to expand...
deer park, aka 1.6, is optimized for os x, too. the main difference is that camino is a proper app specifically designed (meaning, the GUI, look, and feel) for the mac.

optimized camino versions (for G3, G4, and G5 processors) also exist.

i primarily use optimized versions of camino, but deer park is quite nice. you have to live with the standard theme, however, as many of the themes don't work on the latest versions of deer park.
 
iindigo said:
Well, look at it this way: Your Mac is a shiny new red convertable, and Firefox with it's less-than-mac look is a beat-up ugly steering wheel from a Model T Ford in your convertable. It just ruins the experience.

That and all the stuff like proper support for OS X services (there's scads of those, check Application Menu > Services), inline spellchecking, Ctrl-Apple-D mini-dictionary, etc. is quite annoying.
Click to expand...

Well...first, my Mac is pink, thank you very much. :eek: ;) :D

And second, yes, I agree that Safari is definitely prettier than Firefox, but I don't think Camino is all that mac-like. More so than Firefox, perhaps, but to me it doesn't approach Safari. And none of the features you describe work, as far as I know, in Camino. Well, I don't know if the mini-dictionary does or not.

But someone asked why people were interested in the development of Camino, and I tried to answer. I use Safari, if that wasn't already clear.
 
Speaking of Camino

Personally, I use Safari 90% of the time, but I've also got Firefox 1.0.7, Firefox 1.5 Beta 2, Camino 0.8.4, Camino 1.0a1+ alpha, and the last Internet Explorer installed so I can test my webpage. I'm biased towards Safari since I've been using it so much, but I've never had any trouble with the Firefox or Camino browsers. The latest nightly Camino builds are a little buggy, but show a lot of promise (I like it better than Firefox based on out-of-the-box features). Certainly, Firefox has better support, more themes, and more extensions than Camino or Safari, but that's Firefox for you. That's what it brings to the table. If I could get the Safari "Google" search to work with Wikipedia, Amazon, and the other search engines like you can in Firefox, I'd probably never leave Safari at all. Its RSS features simply out class the rest. The brushed metal theme could change to a dark platinum gradient like iTunes or even a light platinum gradient like the Spotlight window or the new Camino. No serious bugs with any of the browsers other than IE, but that's normal. Beta 2 worked great for me so far. :)
 
physics_gopher said:
If I could get the Safari "Google" search to work with Wikipedia, Amazon, and the other search engines like you can in Firefox, I'd probably never leave Safari at all.
Click to expand...

Are you aware of AcidSearch? It is very easy to use -- you can easily add custom search engines, without needing to find an appropriate search plugin. I have Wiki and Amazon in mine, within a long, long list of other search engines. :) (Although eep...there seems to have just been released a 0.6 version, and when I installed it, it slowed keyboard scrolling down terribly, and I had to get the old version of the bundle back from the trashcan, so...)
 
Firefox version 1.5 is almost finished. The nightly they're considering the release candidate is out, as of the 26th.
 
Is (Mac) Firefox's download still buggy? I couldn't stand it, and haven't used Firefox on my Mac, and every time I check, the bug is still there.


Say you're browsing around, then begin downloading a huge file. If you accidentally close your browser window(s), leaving only the download window open, you're stuck.

In other words, you can't open another browser window unless you close the download window (which inexplicably cancels the download).
 
Santaduck said:
Is (Mac) Firefox's download still buggy? I couldn't stand it, and haven't used Firefox on my Mac, and every time I check, the bug is still there.


Say you're browsing around, then begin downloading a huge file. If you accidentally close your browser window(s), leaving only the download window open, you're stuck.

In other words, you can't open another browser window unless you close the download window (which inexplicably cancels the download).
Click to expand...

I couldn't tell you. I must be the only one who hasn't done that.

I have noticed that this does have another flaw when backing up through previous pages. The buffer isn't always cleared so some of the image isn't right.
 
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