Firefox 3: A Safari User’s Review
Officially released in November 2004, Firefox has grown to become the second biggest browser, with a market share of nearly 18%, all platforms combined (Internet Explorer has 75%, to web developers’ great regret).
Today, it seems that version 3 of Firefox is just around the corner. Mozilla has released a “Release Candidate” version on its U.S. website (other users have to manually change the web address to this to get it). This is not a public release version, merely an “almost ready for public release” version.
If you’re a Firefox 2 user, then the upgrade will be more than welcome. But what changes have been made? What would the average user gain by adopting Firefox 3, rather than Safari for example?
First of all, one must stress that Firefox 3 requires Mac OS Tiger or later to work. So if you’re still on 10.3 or below, spare yourself the trouble.Secondly, I am a Safari user, and never enjoyed using Firefox 2, so some bias is bound to come forth.
Now that that is cleared, let’s tackle the user interface.
The User Interface: the Good and the Ugly
On the plus side, Firefox 3 looks a hundred times more “Mac-like” than its predecessor, with a distinctive “metal” colour scheme (and the history sidebar also looks much nicer).
Probably the first thing one notices afterwards is the big, glaring “Back” button in the toolbar. Ugly as hell in my opinion, but does get the message across.
Next, favicons. The toolbar in Firefox 3 doesn’t just change the buttons; It also adds a little block around the address bar, which is where the favicons appear. Unfortunately, this doesn’t look good with icons that were made to fit rectangular address bars, such as our favicon (or Apple’s, for that matter). But it does look very nice for favicons made in the PNG format with transparency.Another change worth mentioning is the default favicon Firefox generates if a website has none. In Firefox 2, this was a globe. In Firefox 3 though, they have sadly dropped this for an icon of a blank document.
Fortunately for Safari-lovers such as myself, Firefox 3 can be “re-themed”, and a theme exists to make Firefox 3 look more like Safari 3. Still, I’d like to find a Firefox 3 theme that isn’t Safari-inspired but removes those things I dislike. After all, if you can’t visually differentiate a browser, what’s the point?
A useful change concerns inactive tabs, because now Firefox highlights the favicon of an inactive tab when you hover on it. This nifty addition gives visual feedback, which improves your web experience. Firefox 2 users will deplore the fact that the tab itself doesn’t follow suit.
Next, the “recent use & favourites” drop-down menu.
This allows you to see a number of pages you have visited often or recently (this is based on website ranks: the more you visit a site, the higher it will appear), and is very easy to use. It is also more elegant than it was in Firefox 2, because it now has more vertical space between items, and favicons appear next to a website’s title and URL.
Elements unchanged from Firefox 2
(but disconcerting for Safari users)
The “find” toolbar, which appears at the bottom of a window, does not work like it does in Safari 3. It highlights the words you are looking for, but doesn’t dim the rest of the page. However, it has more options: you can choose to highlight all results (or not), or you can check the “match case” option.
Another aspect of the “find” toolbar, is that it is window, not tab, dependent. This means that once you have called upon the Search function, you won’t need to call upon it if you switch tabs. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Plug-ins
Firefox’s greatest strength (I believe), and its way of conquering web browser usage share, has been its add-on database. For those who want something that is “more than just a browser”, Firefox is one of the greatest choices out there.
Thanks to the beta and now release candidate phases, many plug-in developers have been able to create “FF3-compatible” versions of their add-ons. If you are an avid Firefox 2 user with many plug-ins though, it’s best to check which ones are compatible before even considering Firefox 3.
Web compatibility
Firefox 3 supports many more standards and web innovations than Firefox 2 did, which means that if a website didn’t render correctly in Firefox 2 because it used “advanced web stuff”, there’s a greater chance it will work in Firefox 3. Apart from that, normal users shouldn’t feel the difference.
For web developers, however, Firefox 3 means that they will be able to use this “advanced web stuff” more often. A detailed list of new features and supported technologies can be found here.
Warning
When a user opens Firefox 3 for the first time, he/she is taken to a page telling him/her all the benefits of Firefox 3.
One of those is the following: “Find out who you’re talking to by clicking on the website icon.”. But users should be warned that this information (if it does not change before the official release of Firefox 3) is not entirely true: this will only work for secure websites (see in the screenshot what happens on the Mozilla website itself).
Should I download Firefox 3?
The question is for you to decide.
For web developers, the answer most certainly is “Yes”. And Firefox 3 is definitely a great improvement, both in terms of support of standards and usability, so it will be “a must” for Firefox 2 users (but remember that note about add-ons).
For others, I would suggest at least giving Firefox 3 a test-drive. It may prove to be better for you than other browsers. Or it may end up not suiting your taste. I for one prefer Safari, because I don’t need any Firefox add-ons, and because I like Safari’s ease of use, feel etc.
Just remember: this is not yet the official release, and it is therefore, not 100% complete.
Hmm. This feels more like a witchhunt than a review.
I used to use Firefox but was tired of it hogging memory, so I’ve been using Camino and Safari for a year now. Now I’m back to Firefox and loving it. The interface is elegant and features like the smart history and the add-ons make it wonderful to use.
Nice review, but you miss an important improvement about recent use. When you try to put an url written before you can write the domain or any word in the title’s pages, easier to find some webpages you visited before. An example: “macapp fire rev” and you will get this page.
While I think Safari 3.0 generates a better look to web pages, especially when I set a minimum font size, I use Firefox. The privacy features (cookie blocking) are just too weak for me to be comfortable using Safari on a day to day basis. The add-on architecture for Firefox is far better than the kludge methods you have to use for Safari. Safari is about 80% of what I want in a browser and Firefox is close to 95%. I also have Camino installed and I use one website that neither Firefox 3RC1 or Safari 3.1 will load, but Camino happily loads.
I’ve always been using Camino but Firefox 3 felt snappier on my iBook G4. Might spend more time with it before making a decision.
Oh come-on guys, is this what you consider a review??? This looks like a small (very small) list of personal gripes from an uninformed troll.
One of your complaints is the GUI’s toolbar buttons, yet you don’t mention you can easily change them with a theme. I got rid of the large Back button with gRApple - see my article on Firefox Extensions here - I have a screenshot in case you aren’t familiar with it.
You bring up the Favicon, mention the Who-Is feature, but don’t even mention that you can also set site-specific preferences in that very same box that comes up. That’s kind of a HUGE feature to leave out, no?
You mention plug-in compatibility before upgrading to FF3, but don’t mention Nightly Tester Tools which will make most all plug-ins compatible with any version of FF. That’s something someone considering upgrading might want to know, perhaps?
Did someone force you to write this “review” (I use that term lightly), or is this the typical review here? Uninformed, uninspired. I realize that the payment per article is really, really low - but if you’re going to do something, at least put some effort into it. And MacApper, you need to seriously start editing your writers. Of course, choosing better ones would be even better.
@Jim: Does a review really have to say everything about an app? If so, most articles would be ~30 paragraphs long. You can’t just write an article about some nice features in an app, you have to interest yourself to interest others. The fact that you posted a comment here, means he interested you. So he didn’t realize that there were a few things he left out. You people have to realize that a writers’ 1st review may not be his best one! It takes time to be able to write a review that every reader will like (even you). As I have said before, don’t post pointless comments in a review. You comment is neither helpful, or interesting to anyone. If you have a concern or comment about our reviews, post it in the feedback area of our forums!
Thank you for your insightful, and interesting comment Jim!!!
@ Jim: if you had read the review, you would have noticed I did mention the theme. Not by name, but I linked to a complete tutorial on the subject.
While I agree the site-specific preferences are a great tool, they aren’t that obvious, and Mozilla’s explanation of the feature certainly doesn’t help.
Thank you for mentioning Nightly Tester Tools. I wasn’t aware of it, as I’ve never been big into Firefox plug-ins, and didn’t follow all the information available once the Firefox 3 public beta came out.
As an ending note, do not forget I took the point of view of a Safari user. If you want a Firefox-user’s review, I’m sure you can find plenty of such reviews. The point of this review is to give a “first user’s” look. This isn’t for hardcore Firefox users.
PS: this article was pro-bono.
I have tried it and on the Mac it is a big step forwards for Firefox
While this a good critical review, you fail to mention one huge positive about FF3. It is at least three times as fast as the old FF3, and it renders java in significantly less time than Safari does. It also loads much faster than FF2 and uses less memory while opened.
I have given FF3 a few serious tries. I used to be an avid FF user, but switched to Safari a while back, and I can’t get myself to use FF regularly.
First, the “recent use & favourites†drop-down menu in my opinion is horrrible and is among the top three reasons I can’t use FF3. The mix of colors, font sizes, and favicons adds a _lot_ of confusion. Moreover, I personally remember URLS, and not Titles. As a result, I have to squint at the small low-contrast URLs to see the page I want.
Another gripe is the progress bar (yes, I know about Fission)..it’s way in the lower right corner, on the total opposite side of the browser than the location bar (an inconvenient separation).
Another gripe I have is how the location bar is selected (An issue brought up by Gruber).
The giant back button can easily be changed by customizing the toolbar (view -> toolbars -> customize) and checking the “Use Small Icons” check box at the bottom. The back button is the only icon that is changed by that check box.
The way the location bar is selected can be changed pretty easily by changing the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll setting in the about:config to false.
[...] [...]
[...] [...]
[...] the ignorance. I just picked up Firefox 3: A Safari User’s Review by Peter Craddock. He obviously notices the huge back button, and while I thought most mac users [...]
[...] [...]
Firefox 3 can manage, sort and tag your bookmarks! You go mental trying to organize thousands of bookmarks on Safari.
[...] [...]
I can understand some of these viewpoints as I prefered Safari over Firefox 2. There are still some things I like better in Safari really, but Firefox 3 is a major improvement over Firefox 2; the memory footprint and rendering is so much better. I’m glad some one mentioned the “small icons” option to fix that huge back button - the same trick works on PC and Linux as well.
I will say that I have switched to FF3 over Safari and my main reasons are the add-ons and the better flash/java handling. Even though things like twurl and Safari Adblock helped, some of FF3’s add-ons and new updates finally got me switched over. If you aren’t that worried about add-ons though - I think Safari vs Firefox 3 is gonna be a long debate.
Firefox 3, as it stands now, doesn’t support AppleScript.
http://www.happyapps.com/blog/2008/06/applescript-is-broken-in-firefox-3/
i like the new FF interface, and i will try to use it for more than a day to see how much i like it…i have used it off and on. what keeps me coming back to safari:
smaller/larger text buttons …i really wish FF had these
history …i prefer safari’s approach, though i like the sidebar in FF
bookmark management …just easier in safari
make a tab into a window just click on a tab and drag it into the desktop….love it
resize text windows …this is cool, espec when a website gives you a small box to write in
find bar …. both are good
I suppose it’s inevitable given the design and graphic-arts roots of the Mac, but comments by Mac users so often emphasize form over function. This “review” (I use the quotes advisedly) and many of the comments bear this out.
The reason I use Firefox isn’t because it’s prettier or uglier than Safari. I use it because it has better functionality, especially from the thousands of available free plugins. By the way, how do you know you “don’t need” any of the plugins if you don’t even know what they are? For that matter, you don’t need a computer at all… just food and water.
Firefox is useless, just another browser to the list with another set of render rules to abided to. It does not even handle layers on top of flash.
[...] http://www.techreviewsource.com/content/view/173/, http://macapper.com/2008/06/01/publish-firefox-3-a-safari-users-review/, http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/06/firefox-3-review/, [...]
Firefox 3 :: Review…
The web browser is becoming the new desktop. You hear of things like Web 2.0, Google Apps, and Salesforce.com as the next step in business management and marketing. All of these things depend on an interface between your computer and the Internet. This…