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Post by TexasBlue Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:44 pm

Firefox 4 available to download a day before its official release

John Vinson
WebProNews
March 21, 2011


Hot on the heels of the Internet Explorer 9 release, Firefox 4 is officially releasing tomorrow (March 22nd). However, for those who can’t wait another minute, the unofficial download is available. As with things of this nature, WebProNews doesn’t condone unauthorized downloading, and so on and so forth.

It was discovered that the final release for Firefox 4 was up on their FTP server, which was then subsequently provided to users though numerous websites. Mozilla strongly discourages these direct downloads, as the current location isn’t equipped for massive traffic. So if you feel like being courteous to Mozilla, wait until tomorrow.

If you visit the index.html file on the FTP server, you’ll be met with the following message:
Firefox 4 Firefox4

According to the website Fileforum, they’ve already had over 60,000 downloads for Windows since releasing the links on their site. There are also clients for both Linux and Mac.

It’s been nearly eight months since the original Firefox 4 beta was released publicly. Mozilla has been scrutinized for pushing back their initial release date which was supposed to happen last fall. We’ll all be able to find out either today, or tomorrow, whether or not the wait was worth it.

The battle for our browser usage has a new chapter, and it will certainly be interesting to see who is able to gain and who will fall back.


Last edited by TexasBlue on Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:14 am; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Edited Title)
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Post by TexasBlue Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:45 pm

It came out today as scheduled. Anybody that tries it out, let us know how it is. I'm skeptical of trying it since they seem to have decided to go the route of Chrome user interface, which I didn't care for.
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Post by dblboggie Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:20 pm

TexasBlue wrote:It came out today as scheduled. Anybody that tries it out, let us know how it is. I'm skeptical of trying it since they seem to have decided to go the route of Chrome user interface, which I didn't care for.

Aww crap. I like the interface I now have. What's the difference between what I have now and Chrome?
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Post by TexasBlue Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:26 pm

Do you have the new one that came out today? 4.0? If not, don't worry. You don't have to take the change unless you want it.
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Post by dblboggie Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:48 pm

TexasBlue wrote:Do you have the new one that came out today? 4.0? If not, don't worry. You don't have to take the change unless you want it.

No, I'm still on 3x... I never use anything when it is first launched. I like to wait and see what the feedback is and what bugs emerge.
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Post by TexasBlue Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:52 pm

dblboggie wrote:
TexasBlue wrote:Do you have the new one that came out today? 4.0? If not, don't worry. You don't have to take the change unless you want it.

No, I'm still on 3x... I never use anything when it is first launched. I like to wait and see what the feedback is and what bugs emerge.

That's how I feel. The browser has been beta testing for quite some time but it still unnerves me that they changed the interface so much.
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Post by dblboggie Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:15 pm

TexasBlue wrote:
dblboggie wrote:
TexasBlue wrote:Do you have the new one that came out today? 4.0? If not, don't worry. You don't have to take the change unless you want it.

No, I'm still on 3x... I never use anything when it is first launched. I like to wait and see what the feedback is and what bugs emerge.

That's how I feel. The browser has been beta testing for quite some time but it still unnerves me that they changed the interface so much.

I guess I'm going to have to get a look at this new interface.
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Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:38 am

dblboggie wrote:
TexasBlue wrote:Do you have the new one that came out today? 4.0? If not, don't worry. You don't have to take the change unless you want it.

No, I'm still on 3x... I never use anything when it is first launched. I like to wait and see what the feedback is and what bugs emerge.
Sensible approach. Even after such a lengthy beta test I refuse to believe that all bugs will have been discovered and sorted.
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Post by TexasBlue Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:14 am

Firefox 4 outruns foes

Martin J Young
Asia Times
Mar 26, 2011


HUA HIN, Thailand - The battle of the browsers waged on this week as Firefox 4 hit the net and gave Microsoft's rival browser Internet Explorer a pounding. In its first day of availability on Tuesday, Mozilla proudly announced that the latest iteration of Firefox, the world's second-most popular web browser, had been downloaded almost 6.5 million times. The figure easily eclipsed the 2.35 million downloads of IE9 within its first 24 hours last week.

A website (http://glow.mozilla.org/) has been set up by the creators of Firefox to display a real-time counter of downloads and locations across the globe. The figure, though impressive, still wasn't enough to beat the previous record set by Firefox 3 in 2008, which clocked 8 million downloads in its first day.

Europeans made up 44% of the first day total, remaining the biggest users of Firefox, the US accounted for 26%, while Asia, where IE is still very dominant, only managed 20%.

Microsoft's myopic decision not to allow Windows XP users to run IE9 would have benefited Mozilla, which did not have such restrictions with Firefox 4. According to analysis firm Net Applications, Windows XP still accounts for over 60% of all versions of Windows currently in use.

Microsoft defended its decision not to support the diehard operating system in a statement this week; "The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on, and a browser running on a 10-year-old operating system tethers the Web to the past."

The fourth edition of Firefox is loaded with new features, security and privacy options, and boasts six-times faster Javascript rendering. It also supports a wide range of video and graphics standards in contrast to Apple and Microsoft, which are still squabbling over which one standard to lock their users into.

The initial response is good news for Mozilla, which needs the boost after losing ground to Google's Chrome in recent months. Firefox accounts for 21.7% of the global browser market and the fourth edition of it can be downloaded here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/fx/
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Post by TexasBlue Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:24 am

Firefox 4 adds speed and tames your tabs

Preston Gralla
Computer World
March 24, 2011


It's been a long wait for Firefox 4; it was nearly two years ago that Firefox 3.5 was released. A lot has changed in the browser world since then. But though the wait has been a long one, it has paid off for those with patience: Firefox 4 is a winner.

It features a clean interface, competitive speed, HTML5 compatibility and two of the best browser features to be unveiled in a long time: the tab-wrangling prowess of Panorama, and the multicomputer synchronization power of Sync. Given all that, plus some other extras it offers, you'll want to try it right away.

Firefox goes lean

With Firefox 4, the "Chrome-ization" of the browser world is complete -- all of the major browsers now use a variation of the simple, stripped-down interface pioneered by Chrome. Firefox doesn't go quite as far as Chrome in its leanness, and it adds several new features of its own. By and large, the basic look and feel of browsers seems to have crystallized around simplicity, with Web page content the focus, and menus and navigation scaled back.
Firefox 4 Ff4_ma10

The visual changes in Firefox 4 are quite substantial. Tabs now live along the top of the browser, above the address bar (which Firefox calls the "Awesome Bar"). Menus have vanished; to get at all of the browser's features, you click a button labeled "Firefox" at the top left corner of the browser and a menu drops down. (If you're a big fan of menus, you can always get them back by clicking the "Firefox" button and choosing Options --> Menu Bar.)

The height of the address bar and navigation buttons has been reduced so that Web pages get more screen real estate. The navigation buttons are rounded and softer-looking and have been simplified. In addition, there are fewer navigation buttons, and some have been relocated. The once-separate Reload and Stop buttons have been combined into a single, small button at the right end of the address bar. This new button changes its appearance and function depending on whether a page is currently loading or has already been loaded.

The Home button has been relocated to the far right of the search bar. To bookmark your page, you click on a star icon on the right side of your address bar. To browse through your bookmarks, you click a small button to the right of the Home button instead of using the Bookmarks menu that was previously at the top of the window.

To browse through your bookmarks, you click a small Down arrow just above the Home button instead of using the Bookmarks menu that had previously been at the top of the window.

The result: a cleaner-looking browser with simplified navigation and more room to view Web page content.

A new Panorama

Firefox 4 may have borrowed some of Chrome's basic design ideas, but it has also introduced some useful new features as well. Key among them is Panorama, which helps solve the problem of tab proliferation. If you're the kind of person who tends to have many tabs open, making it hard to find the one you want quickly, Panorama may well be the best new feature of Firefox 4.

Let's say you've got 20 tabs open. Some are open to technology sites such as Computerworld, others to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and so on. With so many tabs open, it's difficult to quickly find and switch to the tab you want.
Firefox 4 Ff4_pa10

Panorama does all this by using a feature reminiscent of Mac OS X's Exposé and Spaces. Click the Panorama button (a square icon composed of four smaller rectangles) in the upper right of your Firefox window, and you'll come to a screen that shows thumbnails of all of your open tabs grouped in a single box against a blank background.

(Note: If you don't see the Panorama button in Firefox right away, click the small down-arrow icon at the far right of your row of tabs. You'll see a menu listing your open tabs. Select Tab Groups from this menu to get to the Panorama screen. Subsequently, the Panorama button will appear in your browser.)

You can then put those tabs in groups -- a social networking group, a news group, an entertainment group and a technology group, for example.

Drag any tab out of the box, and Panorama creates a new tab group. Drag another tab out of the box and place it on top of the first tab that you dragged out, and those tabs form their own tab group in their own box. You can keep creating new groups this way. You can also drag a tab from one group to another.

Double-click any of those groups in Panorama, and you go back to normal Firefox -- but the only tabs visible are those in that group; the tabs in the other groups are hidden. Go back to Panorama, click on a different group, and you'll be working with only those tabs. When you browse the Web and add new tabs, the tabs get added to whatever tab group you're currently using.

Panorama includes a lot more features, including the ability to close tab groups, resize them and rename them. You can also perform a limited search of all of your open tabs. Panorama will search only the URLs and titles of open tabs, not the content on the pages themselves, but still, it's a useful little feature.

There's so much to Panorama that it will likely take some time to get used to. But if you're a frequent user of multiple tabs, you'll never want to give it up.

More tab-taming

Firefox 4 introduces another feature, called Switch to Tab, to help you tame your tabs. As in the previous version of Firefox, when you type text in the address bar, Firefox searches through your history, previous searches and sites you've bookmarked and shows likely matches in a drop-down list below the address bar. Now, however, it also searches through any tabs you have open.

If it finds any matches in your open tabs, it shows a "Switch to tab" icon below the Web page's title in the drop-down list. To go to the tab, click the icon. As with Panorama, this feature searches only the URLs and words in the titles of open tabs, not the content of the sites themselves.

Although the feature is useful, it could be improved. Any search results that match open tabs get mixed in with your history list, previous searches and so on. So it's difficult to see at a glance if your matches are in open tabs.
Firefox 4 Ff4_sw10

In addition, you may get multiple matches for the same Web page. If you type "cn" into the address bar, for example, and you have CNN.com open, you may see two matches for it: one from your history list, and another showing it's an open tab. Switch to Tab would be more useful if it showed matching tab search results separately -- on the top of the list, perhaps.

With Firefox 4, you can also permanently pin a tab to the left of the tab bar. That way, the tab is always there, even when you restart Firefox. It's a moderately useful feature, but doesn't go as far as similar Chrome or Internet Explorer features, both of which also let you pin tabs. In Chrome you can also create a shortcut on your desktop to launch a site, while in Internet Explorer 9 you can pin a site to your taskbar in Windows 7.

Firefox Sync

If you use Firefox on different computers, operating systems and/or devices, you'll be pleased with Firefox Sync, introduced in this new version. Firefox Sync can synchronize bookmarks, browsing history, passwords and open tabs.
Firefox 4 Ff4_sync_508

If you use Firefox on a Mac and a PC, for example, Firefox Sync will automatically keep all of that in sync between them. And it will also work with the Firefox mobile browser, currently in beta. To do this, you'll have to first set up a Firefox Sync account, and then follow the instructions for using multiple devices. It's a simple and straightforward process.

You can even simultaneously display open tabs from another computer running Firefox. You click the Down arrow at the right of all of your open tabs and select "Tabs from other computers," and you'll see a listing of all of your open tabs on another computer or device. Double-click any of them to open it.

But the tab-sharing feature can be confusing to use. If you are displaying the tabs from another computer, and new tabs are added or closed on the other computer, your display won't update -- it will only show the tabs that were open at the time you asked to see them. In order to see the currently opened tabs, you have to close the page and then ask to see the tabs from another computer again.

Firefox Sync is not completely new to Firefox. In 2007, Mozilla began a syncing project called Weave that is available as an add-on to previous Firefox versions as well as for iPhones, BlackBerry phones and as a beta for Android phones. However, with Firefox 4, it's baked directly into the browser for the first time.

Firefox Sync may not be that useful to those who use different browsers. For them, a better bet is Xmarks, which synchronizes browser bookmarks and passwords for Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Chrome.

The need for speed

Web pages are becoming ever larger and slower to load, and Web-based apps are proliferating -- so browser speed is more important than ever. In tests, I found that Firefox 4 didn't rate as fast as the current versions of Internet Explorer, Opera or Chrome on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, although it rated significantly faster than Safari.

In my tests, I used a Dell Dimension 9200 with a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows Vista. I ran three sets of tests on each browser and averaged the results.
Firefox 4 Ff4_su10
Firefox 4 is slightly slower than Internet Explorer, Opera and Chrome but beats Safari by a wide margin. (Lower numbers are better.)

Firefox 4 clocked in at an average speed of 319.4 milliseconds (ms) to complete the tests, versus the fastest, Internet Explorer 9, at 277.3ms. Opera 11.01 came in at 308.7ms, Chrome 10.0.648 at 312.1ms and Safari at 417.1ms. That said, it's unlikely that you'll notice a speed difference among Firefox 4, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera -- a few milliseconds difference here or there won't likely be apparent.

Firefox, like IE9, uses your computer's GPU to accelerate processing-intensive work such as for playing games and displaying 3D graphics. Mozilla and Microsoft have been trading barbs over which browser is superior in this respect, but there are currently no standard tests for measuring this.

HTML5 support

Firefox 4 does an excellent job of supporting Web standards, including the upcoming HTML5 standards. On the HTML5 test page, which tests overall support of HTML5, it scored 240 out of a possible 400, second only to Chrome 10's score of 288. Opera came in just behind Firefox at 234, followed by Safari with 228 and IE9 at 130.

Firefox did well but not perfectly on the Acid 3 Test, which rates the degree to which a browser follows a number of Web standards, especially JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM). It scored 97 out of 100 and rendered the test page perfectly except for showing a box as gray when it should have been blue. Opera, Safari and Chrome all scored 100 and rendered the page perfectly. IE9 scored a 95 and made the same error rendering the page as Firefox 4 did.

Firefox 4 also did an excellent job of playing HTML5 video on every page that I visited, except for a website that Microsoft set up for demonstrating HTML5 -- the videos there either didn't display properly or didn't work at all. Otherwise, Firefox displayed every page I visited without any errors.

Other features

Firefox first gained popularity (at least in some part) because of its many add-ons. In this version, the Firefox Add-Ons Manager has been given a moderately useful facelift. The manager now opens into a full window in its own tab, rather than into a small pop-up window, which makes it easier to navigate.
Firefox 4 Ff4_addon_508

In addition, when you click the More link next to any add-on, you'll get much more information about it than previously, including the date the add-on was installed or updated, a link to its home page and a full description.

However, when you install or uninstall add-ons, you'll still have to restart Firefox -- unlike Chrome, in which no restart is required.

Firefox 4 also introduces a do-not-track feature, which lets you tell websites you visit that you don't want your behavior tracked. To turn it on, click the Firefox button and choose Options (on a Mac, go to your Firefox Preferences), click on the Advanced tab, then click the General subtab and check the box next to "Tell web sites I do not want to be tracked." In addition, Mozilla has also made an array of other behind-the-scenes tweaks to improve security.

Turning this on does not guarantee that websites will not track you, because there's no requirement that sites adhere to it. Still, some should respect it, so it's a useful feature.

Speeding up the revision cycle

Firefox 4 is a big improvement over Version 3, but it took Mozilla far too long to get there. Firefox 3.5 was released in June 2009, which means that it has taken nearly two years to produce a major upgrade. That's as glacial a revision cycle as Microsoft's -- the company took two years to upgrade Internet Explorer from Version 8 (released in March 2009) to Version 9 (March 2011).

It's an eternity in browser time. Mozilla has recognized that, and says that it will dramatically speed up its revision cycles. If it doesn't, it may well be leapfrogged by Chrome, which has a much more aggressive revision cycle.

The bottom line

With Firefox 4, the browser has gotten a significant overhaul, offering improved speed and a cleaner interface that gives more screen real estate to Web content. Most useful are Panorama's superb tab-handling features and the cross-platform, multidevice synchronization power of Sync.

For those who frequently keep many tabs open and want a way to tame them, it's clearly the best browser out there. But even ignoring Panorama's capabilities, Firefox users and those who may have stayed away because of Firefox's cluttered interface will want to give it a try because of its increased speed and clean interface -- and because Firefox still has the largest collection of add-ons of any browser.
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Post by TexasBlue Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:57 pm

Anybody try it yet?
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Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:32 pm

No, I'm still on 3.6.
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Post by TexasBlue Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:53 pm

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:No, I'm still on 3.6.

So am I. I'll eventually convert but I'm waiting to see if everyone is happy. I'd hate to have to reconvert back.

One thing that's nice is that one can make the tabs go back to the old way. I don't like the tabs on the top like Chrome. In fact, I hate that.
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Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Wed Apr 06, 2011 11:48 am

I don't generally tend to d/l new versions until it has been going a few months (and generally when the problems have been ironed out)
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Post by dblboggie Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:38 pm

That's my strategy as well. I've been burned being an early-adopter before... never again... No
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Post by TexasBlue Wed Apr 06, 2011 5:11 pm

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:I don't generally tend to d/l new versions until it has been going a few months (and generally when the problems have been ironed out)

dblboggie wrote:That's my strategy as well. I've been burned being an early-adopter before... never again... No

Most of the bugs are out (from being in Beta for so long) but I tend to wait for the usual ones that always rear their heads. Plus, I want to see how the rest of FF users like it.
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Post by dblboggie Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:13 pm

TexasBlue wrote:
The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:I don't generally tend to d/l new versions until it has been going a few months (and generally when the problems have been ironed out)

dblboggie wrote:That's my strategy as well. I've been burned being an early-adopter before... never again... No

Most of the bugs are out (from being in Beta for so long) but I tend to wait for the usual ones that always rear their heads. Plus, I want to see how the rest of FF users like it.

Thumbs Up Then we are all agreed... wait to see what bugs may yet emerge (and hopefully get fixed, if any) and see what the community verdict is before making the switch. A wise move IMHO.
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Post by TexasBlue Sat May 14, 2011 8:31 pm

I decided to take the download. A few tweaks later and things are basically as I had them. I hate the "tabs on top" idea. I didn't like it with Chrome and don't like it with Opera. I spend time opening and closing tabs, so why the fuck should I have to go to the top of the browser to do it?

Aside from a handful of extensions not working, it's a safe bet to grab it.

Here's a look at what I have now.........
Firefox 4 92123d
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Post by dblboggie Mon May 16, 2011 10:25 pm

How does Flash work with it? And can you open .pdf files with it (I still can't open them with my current version of FF for some reason)?
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Post by TexasBlue Mon May 16, 2011 10:39 pm

dblboggie wrote:How does Flash work with it? And can you open .pdf files with it (I still can't open them with my current version of FF for some reason)?

Flash works fine for me. You might need the plugins installed for whatever format doesn't work. They're here. But if you can view different formats of video already, you won't have to do a thing as long as you install over the top of what you have. That's what I did. Just go to the Help tab at the top, click Updates and you'll get the download.

To get PDF files to work, read this.

Btw, I use the free Foxit Reader.
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