Comments on: Beta Watch: Firefox 3.5 Beta 4

By: Apple News » Firefox 3.5 Released

Apple News » Firefox 3.5 Released — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:54:42 +0000

[...] Here’s a brief list of some of the highlights of the new version to whet your appetite (and more here): [...]

By: Firefox 3.5 Released

Firefox 3.5 Released — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:05:52 +0000

[...] Here’s a brief list of some of the highlights of the new version to whet your appetite (and more here): [...]

By: nemo

nemo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:30:52 +0000

When oh when will Mac Firefox be done CORRECTLY in Cocoa, so it runs full screen via Megazoomer like Safari does??? : (

By: Beta Watch: Shiretoko Firefox 3.5 Intel Optimized Browser

Beta Watch: Shiretoko Firefox 3.5 Intel Optimized Browser — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:55:13 +0000

[...] week I posted a Beta Watch mini-review of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, Mozilla’s sixth development milestone and fourth beta release of what [...]

By: mojo

mojo — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:23:19 +0000

@ kckman: have u ever heard about LastPass? ;)

By: kckman

kckman — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:09:42 +0000

I like it greatly. But, am disappointed that it won’t retain saved passwords and logins. It is a known bug, but I am hopeful that it is corrected any day now.

By: Chris Latko

Chris Latko — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:59:35 +0000

You can grab an Intel-optimized version of FF3.5b4 at http://www.latko.org/downloads/

By: Boris

Boris — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:11:28 +0000

Victor, the comparison for Safari is almost certainly to whatever is installed with the OS, which is NOT Safari 4. It’s 3.2 or so, last I checked. Might want to double-check exactly what browsers people are comparing before declaring them to be smoking anything.

(That’s not even mentioning the fact that Sunspider doesn’t measure “browser performance”, but specifically performance of JavaScript execution on a particular rather narrow set of benchmarks; it does not test DOM performance, layout performance, UI performance, etc. My personal experience is that Firefox actually starts up faster than Safari (either 3.2 or the webkit nighlies), if I measure time to being able to type in a url as opposed to the window appearing.)

By: Charles W. Moore

Charles W. Moore — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:21:13 +0000

Hi Folks;

I’m mystified as to why Camino is faster (a lot) on all three of my production Macs (a unibody MacBook 2.0, a 1.33 GHz 17″ PowerBook, and an old 550 MHz G4 Pismo PowerBook) than any of the Firefox 3.1/3.5 betas, but it is, consistently. Actually old Netscape Navigator 9 is as well. I;m guessing that it may have something to do with the fact I’m on a dialup connection (no broadband available in this neck of the literal woods).

I’m not referencing startup times, for which which Safari has an edge on every6body else. Safari and Opera are faster than the Firefox 3.1/3/5 betas too on my rigs.

I lake the Safari 4 interface better than the version 3 interface, but I’m not blown away by either.

Charles

By: Josso

Josso — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:21:44 +0000

On my Uni MBP Fx3.5 is definitely faster than previous versions of Firefox.

But you have forgot the main reason to use it: Support for multiple finger gestures.
3-finger-swipe left/right = back/forward
3-finger-swipe down/up = go to bottom/top

@Kennon:
Thanks for those great themes. :D

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:44:14 +0000

you’re smoking some good stuff if you think ff3.5b4 is faster than safari 4. some seriously hardcore stuff.

According to sunspider the total for safari 4 is 878.0ms, ff3.5b4 is 1363.4ms.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:08:44 +0000

I think a lot of people mistake the slower launch-time of Firefox compared to Safari to mean that the browser itself is slower. I’ve found that not to be true. FF 3.5b4 is easily faster than Safari on my MacPro, and as fast or a bit faster on my MacBook Pro.

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:01:36 +0000

I think more people like the new Safari 4 ui that dislike it, it’s just that the dislike it crowd is more vocal. I’ve found it’s been much easier to surf the web and manage tabs with the new system.

By: Kennon

Kennon — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:37:16 +0000

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 has been nothing but stable for me. I’m one of the few that actually likes the new Safari 4 UI, so when I found the following theme (GrApple Crisp) for Firefox, I’ve been sold! http://www.takebacktheweb.org/

I think Firefox 3.5 is bringing a lot of great features to Firefox. It’s the first version that has made me switch from Safari, and I won’t be going back any time soon.

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:59:16 +0000

Camino… lively…. seriously?