Comments on: Firefox 3: The Browser War Just Got a Lot Hotter

By: Lee R.

Lee R. — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:00:40 +0000

Can anyone tell me how to solve this problem? Even though I check to accept cookies, and from third parties, in the options, the checks are removed as soon as I close the browser. How do I get my choice to remain as I check it?

By: Heywood Jablohmey

Heywood Jablohmey — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:33:13 +0000

I agree, the Awesome Bar is anything but. As far as the oldbar extension, it does nothing other than restore the look of the firefox 2 address bar. The underlying type ahead text replacement mechanism for firefox 3 is a step backward for me. Hey developers, let us have the old ff2 inline autocomplete usability back!

By: Bruce A

Bruce A — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:44:15 +0000

Don’t like the “awesome bar”? You’re not alone. Thankfully, there’s an addon called oldbar which restores the FF2 address bar.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

By: mark

mark — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:13:13 +0000

Has anyone had a problem with heat running FF3? From what I can tell, it’s the cause of my MBP fan, which usually doesn’t run (or at least can’t be heard), coming on full blast after just a few minutes of FF3 use.

By: PappaTobbe

PappaTobbe — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:38:59 +0000

The biggest change is that Gecko 1.9 is based on Cocoa instead of Carbon on Mac OS X. There has always been a lot of confusion about what this means, particularly since Gecko 1.9 also happens to include Aqua form controls. It may seem strange to some, but Geckoâ€™s new Cocoa underpinnings and its Aqua form controls are almost completely unrelated.

By: PappaTobbe

PappaTobbe — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:36:17 +0000

http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/firefox-3-for-mac-os-x-under-the-hood/

By: Steven Owens

Steven Owens — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:53:27 +0000

Here’s how to get rid of the big back button .
http://lifehacker.com/392452/shrink-firefox-3s-supersized-back-button

By: clevin

clevin — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:57:12 +0000

no, firefox is using mostly cocoa, very limited carbon, such as printing interface.

Keychain support is in development, because firefox need to retain the function of remembering multiple password so it needs extra work on this.

System integration isn’t necessarily a function of cocoa. so spellcheck. dictionary etc aren’t a standard for the cocoa

Finally. if you goto preference->advanced->general and check “start search when I type”, you can search within the page by simply typing, not even forward slash is necessary anymore. You can modify the userchrome.css such that this quik find bar will have all the functions of find bar, which include next, previous, highlight all, etc.

By: Mark Milian

Mark Milian — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:31:43 +0000

@Alex It’s true that there have been alpha builds floating around months before FF3’s release for a Cocoa Firefox, but all the features aren’t there yet (the Cocoa dictionary, for example). The project has been headed up by the Camino team, though moving slowly. They have their resources more tied to make sure the current (Carbon) build of Firefox they have is kept up to speed with the other operating systems, while still making Mac-friendly advances like native (looking) widgets. We’ll see a Cocoa Firefox eventually, but not until AT LEAST version 4.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:05:56 +0000

Firefox 3 uses Carbon..? Funny… From what I heard, it’s been using Cocoa since the alpha builds.

By: Firefox 3: The Browser War Just Got a Lot Hotter | NEWSFORGE

Firefox 3: The Browser War Just Got a Lot Hotter | NEWSFORGE — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:34:57 +0000

[...] Source: macapper.com [...]

By: Binny V A

Binny V A — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:56:40 +0000

> One feature that didnâ€™t get a much needed revamp, however, is the built-in RSS reader, which is still as worthless as ever.
Totally agree – I am even thinking about creating a plugin to create a better RSS reader for firefox.

By: ogrigsby

ogrigsby — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:49:35 +0000

While it’s true that tabs can’t be ripped away into new windows, you can drag a tab from the tab bar in one firefox window into the tab bar of another firefox window. Comes in handy every so often.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:18:20 +0000

Excellent review. One nice new feature I didn’t see mentioned is the ability to click on the Favicon to not only get some info about the site you’re on, but set site-specific permissions such as Pop-ups, image loading, cookies, etc. It’s still not as powerful and intuitive as OmniWeb’s site-specific preferences, but it’s a step in the right direction

By: dex

dex — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:29:09 +0000

Big deal. FF3 is still a lot slower than Safari on my MBP and it doesn’t offer anything really interesting for me. I still use it though because some sites are designed to run only on FF. Overall I’m satisfied with Safari and it should get a whole lot better in few months.

By: bala

bala — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:53:46 +0000

I’ve been using firefox 3 on my mac, yes its considerably faster than the its previous incarnation however I’m having trouble with keyboard shortcuts (which seem to be behaving unpredictably!) as well intermediate freezes…I’m back to the trusted safari now

By: venus

venus — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:32:25 +0000

Let it be. But at the end its all about what user wants to use and they will do according to their own wish. They won’t change their mind because of this.

http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

By: Dermah

Dermah — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:02:48 +0000

I forgot to mention that Safari just makes the internet look better in general (this is probably a WebKit thing). I’m not sure what it is, anti-aliasing of fonts?

By: Dermah

Dermah — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:48:11 +0000

I downloaded FF3 on the Download Day. I really wanted to like it but I just cannot get used to it.

I’m having trouble getting used to the awesome bar. Maybe that is just coming down to lack of experience with it.
I’m not an avid bookmarking kind of person so the bookmarks overhaul doesn’t really apply to me.
Even if they did revamp the RSS, i’m pretty sure it would not pull me away fro NNW.
The inline search doesn’t work as well as Safari’s, I already found myself scouring the page for the fluro-green text. I also can’t press escape to get rid of the search bar if I have clicked somewhere on the page.
The password saving thing is a cool idea but I don’t trust password saving so I don’t use it.
Unlike a lot of people, the giant back button does not make me furiously angry
No inline PDF support is really supprisingly annoying.
I, like most people, don’t notice the 0.x second speed increase.
I actually find the security information annoying, when I go to click on the favicon I am greeted by grey policeman instead of selecting the text in the address bar.

But by far my BIGGEST problem with Firefox is simple, I can’t mouse over a word and press Control-Command-D and get a little dictionary popup. This is supprisingly ingrained to my browsing experience and it broke the camel’s back: back to Safari for me.

By: Khurt

Khurt — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:46:36 +0000

The other missing feature is the ability to use the system value for proxy settings. To I connect to the company VPN from my MacBook I switch locations before running the VPN tool and Safari is able to use the proxy settings for that location. With Firefox I then have to go through the extra step of setting those manually and then setting them back when I disconnect.

By: pambuk

pambuk — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:42:34 +0000

The only thing I hate is this â€œAwesome Barâ€, unreadable for me and often I have to write much more text than on FF2 in orderd to see the link I want :/