Mozilla releases Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 (3.7 update)

Thought about trying it but, I'm still leery of it. I may create a portable version later on and see what happens with it. Sunspider/Javascript crap means nothing to me - all of them get the damned test done in less than one second so the excessive focus on that shit drives me insane, it's simply irrelevant.

We'll see what happens...
 
it makes me a bit sad but chrome has fully replaced firefox on my desktop, and in my heart. :(
 
outspoken said:
it makes me a bit sad but chrome has fully replaced firefox on my desktop, and in my heart. :(
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I feel sorry for you, but glad in a way that if I were a software developer I could get you to buy my product based on syntethic benchmarks :)
 
I happily don't have a browser replaced by any. I run firstly, Firefox, secondly Chrome and third IE. Depending on what i'm doing, what application I'm running, etc. I also have Safari and opera installed, but don't really ever touch those. Sometimes I may test a website in them when helping somebody.

But the quick breakdown would be 60/30/9/1 - Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari-Opera-Other (estimated percentage of use)

There are too many important things that FF does to be able to get rid of it. Even if it does sometimes have memory issues, using 600MB, 700MB, 1000MB+ of my RAMS! Keeping in mind that I run multiple instances with at least a dozen of tabs each.
 
AVT said:
And it would've for me too, if it weren't made by Google.
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If you want all the advantages of Chrome but without having Google keeping tabs on you, try SRWare Iron. It's built of off Chromium, but has all the features that report back to Google disabled. Any add-on for Chrome will work on it too, and you can get a feature that I can't quite mention without breaking forum rules.
 
Bahamut said:
Sunspider/Javascript crap means nothing to me - all of them get the damned test done in less than one second so the excessive focus on that shit drives me insane, it's simply irrelevant.
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Thank you!! I am so fucking glad someone else sees this. Listening to browser fanboys rant on about how their browser of choice is "faster" is a joke. I mean we're talking milliseconds here. No one is going to be able to tell a difference.


MikeTrike said:
I happily don't have a browser replaced by any. I run firstly, Firefox, secondly Chrome and third IE. Depending on what i'm doing, what application I'm running, etc. I also have Safari and opera installed, but don't really ever touch those. Sometimes I may test a website in them when helping somebody.

But the quick breakdown would be 60/30/9/1 - Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari-Opera-Other (estimated percentage of use)
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Excellent. Please keep us updated if anything changes on your browser usage.
 
Jon55 said:
Thank you!! I am so fucking glad someone else sees this. Listening to browser fanboys rant on about how their browser of choice is "faster" is a joke. I mean we're talking milliseconds here. No one is going to be able to tell a difference.
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:eek: SHHHH! That's almost blasphemy your speaking. [H] is ruled by Chrome because it's noticeably faster.


;)
 
Do you know how to make the extensions work with this new version? None of my add-ons work.
 
ferrisnox said:
Here is a link to the only way I found to enable addons in the Firefox 4 beta.

http://www.techexplorer.in/2010/07/how-to-enable-all-addons-in-firefox-4-beta.html

Note I couldn't find any that I use that work. I use speeddial, xmarks, and fireguestures. Yea, Opera user at heart.
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Im not sure if this will work, but if you want to try it here is FireGuestures that I reworked. All I did was change the install.rdf max version. If it works let me know and ill try the other ones.

EDIT**

Tried it. Didnt work. Sorry.
 
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Jon55 said:
Thank you!! I am so fucking glad someone else sees this. Listening to browser fanboys rant on about how their browser of choice is "faster" is a joke. I mean we're talking milliseconds here. No one is going to be able to tell a difference
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I use a pretty slow browser (Firefox) on a fast computer and I can certainly tell the difference subjectively when using Chrome. I'm sure it's even more substantial and obvious on a slower machine. It's just not worth it to sacrifice the functionality. Performance matters, and it matters more now that some serious processing happens in the browser.

Yes the microbenchmarks show a pretty small scale difference, but I do feel it's noticeable. IE definitely feels slow even though we're only talking milliseconds. Ditto for Chrome feeling fast.
 
keenan said:
I use a pretty slow browser (Firefox) on a fast computer and I can certainly tell the difference subjectively when using Chrome. I'm sure it's even more substantial and obvious on a slower machine. It's just not worth it to sacrifice the functionality. Performance matters, and it matters more now that some serious processing happens in the browser.

Yes the microbenchmarks show a pretty small scale difference, but I do feel it's noticeable. IE definitely feels slow even though we're only talking milliseconds. Ditto for Chrome feeling fast.
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The placebo effect, hard at work I see. :p Firefox is probably the slowest of the browsers (save for IE) and even then it's still very damn fast. Again, milliseconds.
 
Jon55 said:
The placebo effect, hard at work I see. :p
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;)

I don't think so. The difference is stark and obvious enough that it's pretty clear. I use a very light webkit browser on my laptop because it is much faster there.

Simple somewhat unscientific benchmarking of a few random webpages (Google Maps, ArsTechnica, [H] etc.) shows it pretty clearly as well. Using a simple javascript page load timer and reloading a few times to freshen up the cache, Chrome is very consistently faster than Firefox 4b1, usually by at least a few tenths of a second, which is definitely a noticeable difference. Before FF4 I'm sure it was an even larger difference.

Still, it's not big enough to really matter, and if you want to write it off as placebo, go ahead, it won't make much difference either way.

But like I said, I only care on my ancient laptop. I still use Firefox for everything else because it's just a better browser.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
If you want all the advantages of Chrome but without having Google keeping tabs on you, try SRWare Iron. It's built of off Chromium, but has all the features that report back to Google disabled. Any add-on for Chrome will work on it too, and you can get a feature that I can't quite mention without breaking forum rules.
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And if Chrome loaded addons in incognito, I might have done that. Too late, though - my main benefit from Chrome was the amazing UI - not the speed (I have an SSD, everything is lightning-fast) - and FF4.0 has addressed those problems nicely.
 
Well, for whatever reason, it's no longer in "beta candidate" stage and here's Firefox 4.0 beta 1, the official one:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

Will be giving the portable version (as I only use that one, you can find FF 4.0 beta 1 portable here) a full workout later on...

After a full workout...

Ok, I don't like it. :) The change in the Add-ons manager is just irking the fuck right outta me. I installed the Add-on Compatability Reporter as a post above instructs and it says it's not compatible so that's a wash.

I'll still with Firefox 3.6.6 or whatever for a long time to come it seems. I know I should spend more time with it but in all the previous betas for Firefox, it never took me more than 5 minutes to get any of 'em set up and working as I use the browser; this one is a bit pooched from the gitgo.

I have to say I don't like the direction they're going in so, we'll see what happens but for now I'm sticking with "the old school" which does everything I require and it just works. And yes I know it's a beta but... it's not worth the hassles at this point, it may never be for me personally.
 
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Good. I think the compatibility reporter should have been enabled by default, that's the only problem I've found with it. It's nice that it gives the option of having the tab bar above or below the URL bar.
 
Just installed Beta 1. Very nice. I like the new interface. I'll probably only be using it at work and I certainly won't use it for anything sensitive.

PaHick said:
Im not sure if this will work, but if you want to try it here is FireGuestures that I reworked. All I did was change the install.rdf max version. If it works let me know and ill try the other ones.

EDIT**

Tried it. Didnt work. Sorry.
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Just open the XPI file using a zip program and modify the install.rdf file so the max is 4.* or 99.*.

Worked for all of my "incompatible" add-ons. The only one that doesn't appear to actually work correctly in Beta 1 is Better Privacy. Looks like there's a bigger issue somewhere for that one.

Jon55 said:
The placebo effect, hard at work I see. :p Firefox is probably the slowest of the browsers (save for IE) and even then it's still very damn fast. Again, milliseconds.
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While I do agree that over all it's hard to tell browser speed differences FF 3.6.6 is visibly slower compared to Chrome or FF4B1 especially when loading large pages like CNN or SI.com.
 
Bahamut said:
Ok, I don't like it. :) The change in the Add-ons manager is just irking the fuck right outta me.
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The add-ons manager change was the greatest thing I've seen so far. So much better than the old, separate window.
 
I'm liking most of this Beta 1, but stability isn't here yet. Going back to the last stable release.
 
Jon55 said:
The add-ons manager change was the greatest thing I've seen so far. So much better than the old, separate window.
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But when I open the Add-ons Manager, it IS a separate window... not a tab, a full blown separate window. :D
 
I cannot try it out for a bit yet so two main questions:
1. Does it seperate tabs and windows as new processes so that if I am playing a flash game on one window it wont destroy the performance of the other (Firefox 3.6 sure does).
2. Have they improved their absolutely TERRIBLE smoothscroll?
 
Cali3350 said:
1. Does it seperate tabs and windows as new processes so that if I am playing a flash game on one window it wont destroy the performance of the other (Firefox 3.6 sure does).
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I don't think each tab is an independent process, but each instance of a plugin runs in a separate process now. So buggy plugins can't (theoretically) crash the browser anymore, and your performance concerns should be improved as well.
2. Have they improved their absolutely TERRIBLE smoothscroll?
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I can't stand smooth scroll and always turn it off, so no comment.
 
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