Firefox 4 ~ anyone using it?

[MrJim]

Curious how it is working out~I'm waiting until maybe 4.3

 

[Qyöt27]

Switched to it as soon as I realized it was out (which was really early on the 23rd, so it was probably out for less than 16 hours). Most of the extensions I use were already updated, and two of the stragglers were updated within a day or two, leaving one experimental extension and a theme not working. The theme still hasn't been updated AFAIK, and I had to manually adjust the version support in the experimental one.

I'm not crazy about the interface changes, but the good news is that it's rather easy to switch it back to the pre-4 look (although to get the old status bar functions back, you need to use the Status-4-Evar extension). The 'do you want to save this password' prompt change is also rather annoying, but that can be turned off.

Despite the talk that it's supposed to be faster, I'm not seeing it* - and it actually seems to take more time starting up. Really only noticeable because my computer is closing in on the decade marker, though. Users with fairly recent computers probably won't see a huge difference there.

On the whole, though, I've not had any problems with it. What I listed were merely nitpicks.

*this may have a lot to do with the fact that I run XP, and the hardware accel feature is only usable with Vista and Win7. I'm not sure if my graphics card is new enough to take advantage of it either...if it is (which I doubt), then it'd only be on Linux that I'd see the benefit. Not that said benefit wouldn't be appreciated, though.

EDIT: It seems that, after checking about:support, it's reporting that I am getting GPU Accelerated Windows with my GeForce 6200, but Direct2D isn't enabled - and it's the Direct2D portion that Vista and Win7 use. Unless of course there's some faulty reporting going on. Always a possibility for that (and a possibility that a lopsided GPU pipeline could be causing the startup lag I described earlier). I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 on the Linux side, so the OpenGL stuff should be up-to-date.

 

[Sketcher]

Running it on my XP partition. Page rendering appears noticeably faster.

 

[James.a]

I started using it 2 days ago. Wasnt to pleased with the interface at first but after playing with it, i realized I could change it abit. As far as performance it runs great!

 

[SithDoughnut]

I'm using Minefield (currently 4.2a1), so I've been using this for a while. I've noticed a significant increase in page load times with some of the updates, and multiple tabs run a lot better for me than on Chrome (they load faster and don't hog the CPU as much).

 

[MrJim]

Did anyone lose bookmarks when they upgraded? That's mostly what I'm concerned about.

 

[sea oat]

Nope. I still have all my bookmarks.

 

[ChrisWiegman]

I've been using it for a couple of days now but with Chrome 10 on my machine FF will still be the secondary browser.

 

[Qyöt27]

Did anyone lose bookmarks when they upgraded? That's mostly what I'm concerned about.

Well, as a rule I completely uninstall and scrub out the existing version before installing a new major version, and Mozilla obviously won't put 4.0 in 3.6's update pipeline. So without taking some precautions, yes, I would lose them. Key word there being 'would', not 'did'.

(If updating to 4.0 on Ubuntu using the Firefox-Stable PPA, then yes, bookmarks are retained; I don't do a purge on there because of shared dependencies)

If you go to the Organize Bookmarks area and select Import and Backup, you can use the Backup option to create a JSON file. After installing Firefox 4 you'll go back to the same area (now called Show All Bookmarks) and use the Restore option to load the JSON backup. All the bookmarks and RSS feeds are back the way they were.

The backup/restore feature also is handy for synchronizing bookmarks across OSes and physical setups.

 

[Sketcher]

I didn't lose my bookmarks when I upgraded.

 

[James.a]

I'm using Minefield (currently 4.2a1), so I've been using this for a while. I've noticed a significant increase in page load times with some of the updates, and multiple tabs run a lot better for me than on Chrome (they load faster and don't hog the CPU as much).

Hmm, never heard of Minefield, I'll have to check it out.

 

[SithDoughnut]

Hmm, never heard of Minefield, I'll have to check it out.

It's just the pre-release version of Firefox, which means that it occasionally acts up (it has the name for a reason) but generally you get the updates fastest, as it's built nightly. If you have a lot of add-ons, then you'll probably find that many of them don't work at various points, because the makers generally build to the latest release candidate.

 

[freezerman2000]

I'm on Opera.

 

[WalksWithChrist]

I've been running it for a few days now. It really is faster and I'm loving it so far. No complaints.

I also loaded IE 9 just for the lolz. It is so trying to be Chrome or Firefox...it's not even funny.
Ok, yes it is.

 

[MrJim]

Well, as a rule I completely uninstall and scrub out the existing version before installing a new major version, and Mozilla obviously won't put 4.0 in 3.6's update pipeline. So without taking some precautions, yes, I would lose them. Key word there being 'would', not 'did'.

(If updating to 4.0 on Ubuntu using the Firefox-Stable PPA, then yes, bookmarks are retained; I don't do a purge on there because of shared dependencies)

If you go to the Organize Bookmarks area and select Import and Backup, you can use the Backup option to create a JSON file. After installing Firefox 4 you'll go back to the same area (now called Show All Bookmarks) and use the Restore option to load the JSON backup. All the bookmarks and RSS feeds are back the way they were.

The backup/restore feature also is handy for synchronizing bookmarks across OSes and physical setups.

Cool ~ better safe than sorry. My 10 y/o son uses FF and he would be heartbroken to lose all his hard-earned bookmarks.

 

[James.a]

Well I tried out Minefield, but I didnt notice any speed difference between it and Firefox 4.0.

 

[SithDoughnut]

Well I tried out Minefield, but I didnt notice any speed difference between it and Firefox 4.0.

I just downloaded Firefox 4 (figured I should have a stable version too) and I agree. There were noticeable improvements over 3.6 but seeing as Firefox 4 is what Minefield was a few weeks ago, it's not that far ahead now.

 

[~Tuesday~]

I just downloaded FireFox 4 for Mac OS X. I was using Safari, then I tried Chrome but I think I like FF4 better. It seems faster than Chrome to me.

 

[larec_jv]

Ive been using FireFox 4 since the day it came out, i havent had any serious issues so far. All my addons work, well there was one which didnt work but it got fixed within a few days.

The only small annoyances ive had would be the moving of the reload button and the 2 top options when rightclicking a link (Tab/Window). Oh... the removal of the "check for updates" under the Help option was a bit weird at first, it's now part of the "about" option instead if anyone didnt notice.

 

[skcin7]

I am using Firefox 4.x and very happy with it. The interface is slightly different than version 3.x. It took me a little bit (like a few days) to get used to the new interface but overall I think it is an improvement over version 3.x.