Firefox 4 is out... sorta

J

Joe Average

Ad Blocker - Banned
Joined
Apr 6, 2008
Messages
15,459
It's out in the sense that it's officially done, and a day early so, take that in mind if you decide to grab it from this link (Mozilla.com link, redirects and downloads from the FTP where the installer is, they just haven't updated the main page yet):

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-4.0&os=win&lang=en-US

Grabbed it myself and made a new portable version and it's working as expected, but I've been using the betas and the two RCs so far so it's not like this is "new" to me, but there it is... :p
 
Just did a checksum and it's identical to RC2

If you already had that then there is no reason to download other than to help them break the download record which would mean holding off until release day tomorrow.
 
Yah, I did some hash checks with HashTab and it's basically the same stuff aside from a few config files that allow it to identify itself properly (not as the RC), so...

I'll probably grab it again just to help bump the count when the time comes too.
 
The RC2 build is the final - they didn't locate any big "showstopper" bugs to complain about, and so they chose that build to become the final one.

http://canweshipyet.com/

That pretty much covers it... :p
 
Never really used the older versions, but I like 4.0, might make it my default. Nice UI, fast, good extensions, I'm impressed.
 
I'll wait until all my extensions work.

Some non working ones:
Aging Tabs: I like this to put stronger highlighting on the active tab.
All in one gestures: I love the instant flick top/bottom of the page (among others).
Newsfox: My Rss reader of choice.
 
Last edited:
Snowdog said:
I'll wait until all my extensions work.

Some non working ones:
Aging Tabs: I like this to put stronger highlighting on the active tab.
All in one gestures: I love the instant flick top/bottom of the page (among others).
Newsfox: My Rss reader of choice.
Click to expand...

I have been using All In One Gestures for years, but at this precise moment while it does work with the defaults in Firefox 4, I can't get it to create new gestures, of which I have several that I created with Firefox 3.x and AIOG. Some editing of the .xpi file to allow for installation on Firefox 4 was done, but that's about it.

Because of that issue - not being able to create new gestures meaning the default ones all work perfectly, it's an issue with how Firefox 4 "starts" the options for the addon, that's the problem so far - I recently switched (like 2 weeks ago) to using FireGestures which does effectively everything that AIOG does but it's natively Firefox 4 ready to go and has no issues at all.

Again, you can get AIOG (that's All In One Gestures, of course) working but you won't be able to create new or custom gestures - the Options ability simply won't start, and the developer of AIOG has not announced any intentions of updating it for Firefox 4. If he does, fantastic, but I'm pretty accustomed to using FireGestures at this point.

Top of the page? Easy, I do RLD, which looks like a T on the page, T for Top. Bottom? DURDL, drawn like a lowercase b, and that's that. ;)

Works for me... as for the other two, I just checked and it looks like neither of them is being actively developed or updated for Firefox 4, sadly.

Of the 23 addons that I use almost daily that were perfect in Firefox 3.x, only one of them doesn't work properly without any issues in Firefox 4 and that's All In One Gestures.
 
If it were only AIOG and I could hack it, that would be fine.

Your gesture for top bottom sound complex to me. I simply use an up motion for top, and down motion for bottom. I am so addicted to that simple gesture that I try to do it in other apps.

There also others I have that aren't working. Like Lazarus, form recovery and BBcode helper.

Another annoying thing, is after running, FF 4 and switching back to 3.6, some of my extensions are showing up as incompatible in FF 4. Annoying...
 
They still haven't fixed the problem with the tab restore function causing the browser to periodically lock up. Something you'd notice quite heavily if you leave the browser running overnight and try playing a flash game or watching a streaming movie.

Other than that, they added the UI sleekness of Opera to Firefox. It's actually a quite blatant rip-off of the opera UI. When I get home, I'll find the screenshot I took of Firefox 4 beta and Opera 11 side-by-side.
 
AIM9x said:
They still haven't fixed the problem with the tab restore function causing the browser to periodically lock up. Something you'd notice quite heavily if you leave the browser running overnight and try playing a flash game or watching a streaming movie.

/QUOTE]

Might be your pc, I have 20 tabs open and when I restore, it'll hang my i7 920 for about 20 seconds before I can do anything
Click to expand...
 
AIM9x said:
They still haven't fixed the problem with the tab restore function causing the browser to periodically lock up. Something you'd notice quite heavily if you leave the browser running overnight and try playing a flash game or watching a streaming movie.

Other than that, they added the UI sleekness of Opera to Firefox. It's actually a quite blatant rip-off of the opera UI. When I get home, I'll find the screenshot I took of Firefox 4 beta and Opera 11 side-by-side.
Click to expand...
That's not necessary. We already know.
 
Just discovered Newsfox is updated for FF4 on it's mozdev page,but addons.mozilla.org has added a bunch more requirements so the update isn't propagated there.

I will have to try and track down my other non working extensions and see if they have updates elsewhere.

Edit:

Got updated Lazarus, newsfox and switched to firegestures, colorful tabs for more pop on the current tab. Essentially new versions, or replacements for everything.

So FF4 working perfect now with same extentions I depend on.

Do fonts on [H] look slightly different now?? Basic text font here looks obviously bolder to now.
 
Last edited:
I wonder why they have tab previews still disabled by default. They added the feature in like 3.5. Anywho, Toms recently did round 3 of their browser comparison. I ran the benchies they ran and FF 4.0 stands up quite mighty to everything they threw at the browser. It probably would have won this round. Yes, even beating out everyone's precious Chrome. Toms only tested 3.6 for the comparison.
 
I did some more testing. FF 4 with HW acceleration on renders fonts fairly awful(on Win7). So I turned it off and now fonts look normal again. So much for HW acceleration.
 
Last edited:
It renders fonts the same way IE9 does. If it doesn't look good, change your ClearType settings?
 
Snowknight26 said:
It renders fonts the same way IE9 does. If it doesn't look good, change your ClearType settings?
Click to expand...

Yes it is a DirectWrite problem and any app that uses it has the same problem:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/938412-ie9-fuzzy-font/

Cleartype won't fix it. Fonts spacing/sizing is even changed. Fonts are fuzzier and run together.

Edit:
I found a FF plugin (Anti-Aliasing tuner) that lets you change the rendering back, but one problem remains. Kerning. Space between letters has been shrunk so that many letters run directly together. It might work in print, but in pixels it makes it harder to read for me. The tuner doesn't touch the kerning.
 
Last edited:
Until this POS browser can support MSI deployments (silent deploy) and being controlled/managed via Group Policy I will NEVER recommend this browser.
Mozilla has had bug reports for both of my above issues open since 2004!!! That's right, 6+ years and they still can't figure it out. Even though they have gone from version 1.x to version 4 in that time frame. Plenty of time to implement something.
 
If people are that interested in start up speed, there's an addon now that will boost the start up speed considerably by preloading some of the files even more efficiently than Superfetch is capable of, but it loads a service in Windows (not sure if it's available for other platforms, aka Linux or OSX, however). Here's the addon page:

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

And there's a secondary addon that measures the actual startup time so you can do comparison testing:

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

In my own testing, a truly cold start of Firefox 4 happens in about 7 seconds (that's from a total powered off state of the computer, booted to the Desktop, then running Firefox 4).

After installing that addon and allowing the service to be put into effect, and a cold start the same way, Firefox 4 loads completely in about 2.5 to 3 seconds, if that much, so in my experience it most certainly makes a difference.

But, I do that for testing and informational purposes - I don't really give a shit how long it takes to open because once I open Firefox it typically stays open for days on end... :)

Snowdog: As for the T and B gestures for top and bottom, I mean, that's the idea, drawing a gesture or a letter and the addon treats it as a command so... in actual practice, the mouse moves about 1/4 inch in any direction, so it's nothing at all, and as you noted, once the gesture becomes habitual it's done without thought.

I have U(p) set to open a new tab, U(p)D(own) to open a new browser window, and R(ight)L(eft)D(own) to open the sidebar for bookmarks. All in all, the mouse barely moves, it's not like I have to draw huge gigantic swaths of gestures to do all this. I've got about 20 different things mapped to mouse gestures, as well as having proper side buttons for Back/Forward on the mouse (which is a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical). I can use the mouse rockers (use the two primary buttons) to do that but, this mouse is superior in that respect. ;)

YMMV, as always... and it's nice to see some of those addons you like have been or will be updated so you can keep 'em around.
 
MOTHER F#@!

I've been using v4 just today and I kept accidentally opening links in a different window. When I'm browsing news sites I typically right-click and open in new tab and then read the stories later after I've opened up what I want. Curious about this new problem, I open up v3 on another computer and notice that they swapped around 'new window' and 'new tab' selection in the god damned right-click menu. WTF, assholes?

RAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGEE

edit: Rage averted. I have discovered middle-click.
 
Last edited:
Text looked horrible, so I turned off Hardware Acceleration. Fixed the on-page text, but text on tabs and bookmarks looks bad.

5zfyn9.png



Also, I want to show my bookmarks toolbar without the Bookmarks button Firefox appends on the far right. Possible?
 
GJSNeptune said:
Text looked horrible, so I turned off Hardware Acceleration. Fixed the on-page text, but text on tabs and bookmarks looks bad.

Also, I want to show my bookmarks toolbar without the Bookmarks button Firefox appends on the far right. Possible?
Click to expand...

Hmmm. That might be something to do with your theme. I don't bother using one, my text looks MUCH better than that, but it is standard black on light blue.
 
It isn't a theme. Just a Persona.

Oh, but you're right. Going back to default makes the text look normal.
 
It's okay. Some things bother me and I've had to get some fixes/addons. One thing that might annoy me to no end is the right-click menu. When you do it on a link the "new tab" is first. That's just like chrome (dunno about opera) and I'm not a fan of that.
 
Almost 4 million in 12 hours ... gonna be a close one to break that record.

As for the text, yes, black text against a light background looks a little too anti-aliased. I'm getting used to it though. The hardware acceleration is worth it. I'm also forcing myself to get used to the orange button up top to give me more screen real-estate.
 
Last edited:
what the fuck did they do to firefox? all the text is fucked up. :mad:


oh shit, it was hardware acceleration. i didn't have this issue on my work laptop since hardware acceleration doesn't really exist on it.
 
Last edited:
GJSNeptune said:
Text looked horrible, so I turned off Hardware Acceleration. Fixed the on-page text, but text on tabs and bookmarks looks bad.

5zfyn9.png



Also, I want to show my bookmarks toolbar without the Bookmarks button Firefox appends on the far right. Possible?
Click to expand...

If you right click in the URL bar area you will see a menu with the option "Customize...". Click it. Now click on and drag the Bookmarks button from the bookmark toolbar to the customize box that pops up. The button should no longer be on the toolbar. Click "Done".
 
computer said:
If you right click in the URL bar area you will see a menu with the option "Customize...". Click it. Now click on and drag the Bookmarks button from the bookmark toolbar to the customize box that pops up. The button should no longer be on the toolbar. Click "Done".
Click to expand...
This was the first thing I tried. You must not've tried it first. ;)

It removes the whole bookmarks toolbar if I remember correctly.
 
GJSNeptune said:
This was the first thing I tried. You must not've tried it first. ;)

It removes the whole bookmarks toolbar if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...
Just got home from work. To clarify, it actually doesn't work because under Customize, the toolbar is cleared and only one button is shown, and if you remove that button, the whole toolbar is disabled from view.
 
computer said:
No, I did try it. It was the first thing I did after adding in the bookmark toolbar, and it worked just fine.. Maybe you're doing it wrong? ;)

Edit: Check it out here http://img854.imageshack.us/f/firefoximg.gif/
Click to expand...

So hit the Alt key on the keyboard, when the menu appears, click View - Toolbars - and make sure you get or have a check next to Bookmarks Toolbar, like so (and no, the menu bar is not visible by default on my install - it only appears when I tap Alt):



This post could probably be directed at GJSNeptune, I'm not sure who's asking or looking to do what at this point... :D
 
When I click Customize, the entire toolbar is cleared except for one button. If I drag it away, the entire toolbar goes with it.

2h86zv8.png


EDIT: Wow. The trick was to also remove the Bookmarks navigation button. How silly. You can only have both or neither. :(
 
GJSNeptune said:
When I click Customize, the entire toolbar is cleared except for one button. If I drag it away, the entire toolbar goes with it.

2h86zv8.png


EDIT: Wow. The trick was to also remove the Bookmarks navigation button. How silly. You can only have both or neither. :(
Click to expand...

Glad you got it working. I see what your problem was. You were trying to drag the button on the far left that contains all your bookmark toolbar items off instead of the icon in far right like you had first mentioned.
 
A few questions:

1. Is there anyway to put your tabs below the address bar? I like my tabs like this:
Untitled-1.jpg


2. Tell me which of these add ons will work:

Adblock Plus.
bug489729
BugMeNot
CacheViewer
ChatZilla
Download Statusbar
Element Properties
FEBE
GameFox
Greasemonkey
IDM FlashPlugin
Image Zoom
Java Console
Linkification
Microsoft.net framework assistant
Noscript
SearchLoad Options
Tab Mix Plus
 
I know Adblock Plus and Linkification works (you actually have to go to the programmers website and get the new version, it wont download with the automatic download). Noscript, greasemonky, tab mix plus also works. Not sure about the rest on your list.

Yes to your first question, all you have to do is goto view > toolbars and unselect tabs on top.
 
Okay, went ahead and did it, few things I need help with:

1. How do I get the bottom bar back that shows like my adblock/no javascripst stuff back?

2. As you can see the top has lots of extra space and I'd like it to look more like what it was before. How do I change it?

Untitled-2.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top