10 Things You Need To Know About Firefox 4

[agnickolov]

Correction - Firefox 4 is the 7th major release, not the 5th. Let's list them for clarity:
Firefox 1.0
Firefox 1.5
Firefox 2.0
Firefox 3.0
Firefox 3.5
Firefox 3.6
Firefox 4.0

The author seems to have missed Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 3.5, which were certainly major releases. You can check the complete list at the following page:
http/www.oldapps.com/firefox.php

 

[LordConrad]

Status-4-Evar FTW!!

Status Bar is much better than the new Add-on Bar.

 

[tntom]

My Laptop has Windows 7, and I've been using FF4 betas through their ups and downs and now the final release is great. FF4 gives me trouble with "Yahoo Mail Beta" though Chrome does not have the same problems.

IE9 is huge improvement over IE8, though it is really choppy when you scroll a webpage and doesn't work on my desktop which has XP.

 

[Titanius]

9. Where can I find the menu bar?

You can also find the Menu bar by clicking on the Alt key on your keyboard, FYI.

 

[Bolbi]

There's a mistake in #1. New versions are planned to be released every 16 weeks, not months.

 

[toxxel]

Only major problem I have is text is a little on the blurry side. It's not a problem on my side, I've seem a few mentions of this on other sites while it was in beta but it seems to stuck around with the release.

 

[warmon6]

so far, on a HP netbook with windows xp, a Lenovo 3000 n200 with ubuntu 10.10 (64bit), and Toshiba satellite (with core i7 720QM/Geforce 310m), firefox 4 on all boot much faster than 3.6 did.

Although for some reason it seams that on my lenovo 3000 n200, FF4 starts up faster than chrome 10. That could be just be my imagination on that but i keep redoing it and it seams to be faster..... cant explain that one......

FF4 on the 2 windows based laptop mentioned above does boot much faster than the IE's on them. (ie 8 for xp and ie 9 for 7)

I've also seen the FF4 is near the speed of what im used to in chrome. meaning another improvement from 3.6.

Im so far having a hard time finding a negative for FF4..... (although im pretty adaptive on where things are located so it doesn't bother me if some button is moved from one side of the screen to the other, ect)

 

[welshmousepk]

They always leave out opera, which is easily better than most other Browsers. Certianly comparable to IE and FF whichever way you look at it.

I used FF, but just last month went back to opera because FF was too slow to load up and load pages. Is this enough of an improvement to warrant coming back form opera?

 

[Guest]

Firefox has great addons and extensibility, which is what makes it good... If I need a benchmark to tell me my javascript engine is slow, then it can't be THAT slow... If you're running a decrepit 10 y/o PC, then "speed" benchmarks may concern you... Otherwise it's a straw man argument...

 

[natmaster]

Future version of Firefox will follow a 16 WEEK cycle, not months.

http/people.mozilla.com/~sayrer/2011/temp/process.html

 

[natmaster]

Under what's new, you end with, "Firefox also separates its tabs and processes, which means that a crashed plug-in only affects a new and not the entire browser."

Putting aside that this sentence is not proper English, you are mistaken about Firefox's capabilities. It separates plugins from the main browser process, so if plugins crash it doesn't affect Firefox (the #1 crash for firefox was flash). However, this feature has existed in 3.6 already, except on Mac. So this is only new for Mac.

Process separation for tabs comes later this year.

 

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]jjmfe[/nom]Yes, I downloaded it too. I like it. Safari has been getting slower, and I'd been using Chrome too. I'd eliminated Firefox a year or two ago. It was just too slow. This feels like a better browser. I've not tried IE9 yet.[/citation]

You should try IE9. Since its MS, they utilize all the features of Windows 7 (Vista its better than IE8 but is much better in IE7) such as Aero. Its fast, light and feels good. Most web pages load correctly now and it will probably be easier to dev for.

My combo is IE9 and FF4. Both have their ups and downs but together it makes the web even more fun.

I just hope both push updates that speed the browsers up even more.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

IE9 maybe faster but it is more difficult to use without adblock and sync

 

[slyphnier]

for me ...

for reading news / standard view = chrome (because fast load, have each own process)

for flash / heavy site = FF4 because chrome have flash issue and firefox have better pluggins like downloading stuff (even there is in chrome, but seems not as good as ff version yet)

for microsoft link = IE

 

[kkiddu]

@All Firefox people concerned about addons

I use 10-15 add-ons at a time, and they all worked with Firefox 4.0. Most developers (at least the popular ones) have already updated their add-ons to work with 4.0. So go download and rock and roll.

 

[HappyBB]

I'll give 4 a try until the plug-ins that I regularly use are compatible with 4.

 

[Horhe]

I read somewhere that they plan to release Firefox 7 by the end of this year. I don't like that they borrowed the versioning scheme from Chrome and are considering every new addition as a major version.

 

[eddieroolz]

11. Shortcut for Search Box is now CTRL + K, breaking a standard of every browser within the industry.

That alone is enough reason for me to not use it.

 

[Prescott_666]

"Shame they are not bringing it to XP tho."

If you installed a Firefox 4.0 beta before they enabled hardware acceleration which was beta 5 it would install into Windows XP without a problem. After that if you just kept updating it, it continued to let you. I'm typing this into Firefox 4.0 RC on a Windows XP system.

 

[ballinjoey2332]

overall i like it; its faster, simple, and u get more content without scrolling due to the hidden menu options