Second go
The first one greeted me with the 'sorry we couldn't re-conect your session' (or whatever it says) each time I fired it up.
Second one has cleared it up.
So far -- seems O.K. and I've put the tabs back underneath the address bar.
Mozilla squeezed out a second Release Candidate version of Firefox 4 over the weekend, just days before the open source outfit's planned final browser code splurge on 22 March. Originally, Mozilla expected to go directly from just one Release Candidate version of Firefox 4 before finalising the build for everyone to download …
One Bookmarks icon is a dropdown list just like in the menu bar with a little arrow to the right of it showing that it's a dropdown list. That's the default icon that's on the toolbar. The other is a button that toggles the Bookmarks sidebar, the same as it's always been. The behavior of the former depends on what toolbars you have visible. Bookmarks toolbar? It's now on it instead. Menu bar? It's now only visible on it from the Bookmarks option. It's a dynamic interface that changes based on what is visible to the user. The other one shows regardless.
Been using FF4.0 since beta 8 and it's addressed all the shortcomings that appeared during development.
Biggest gripe is that beta really should mean feature complete, not some extended period of unabated development as was the case.
Topics for 4.1 should be fixing the largely useless app tabs & tab grouping and really going to town fixing the HTML5 performance. It's not bad already but it wouldn't hurt to take demos put out by Google & Microsoft and systematically set about trying to beat their own browsers running those same demos.
It's just not ready for prime time. The first to RCs were a frakkin' PITA and the third is not worth my time. I've given them a chance and this old fart is staying with 3.6.15 until good comments about FF4 far outweigh the bad. No brand loyalty here, just want the best for my situation and FF 4 is simply not it. Big frakkin' deal.
You mentioned two RCs followed by a third one in your post.
As there have only been two RCs (RC2 only released 48hrs ago), are you perhaps referring to the initial Betas?
If that's the case, then you're right, the first three Betas were pretty ropey but the latest RC is pretty stable and fast.
Firefox 4.0 is better than 3.6. It's faster in operation, more standards compliant, supports HTML5, and is still Firefox. It works great. Of course if you are conservative or risk averse you might wish to wait for a few updates to appear, but there should be no worry about switching. It's a good browser.
So far, it's fairly decent...
Tabs on top took some getting used to, but not too bad. The 'pop-up' method on URL previews and loading is better than putting them in the address bar, and since mine are popping on the right rather than the left, it's a little easier to eye-catch than if they were on the left.
App tabs... Well, I still have utility for the Bookmark Toolbar, for sites that are 'too active', but given that Panorama displays your active tab group as if it were the only window, it's nice to have those tabs be common across groups while only having one tab open.
On Panorama itself - I like the tab group previews, I like the ability to search tab groups with active search term matching highlighting the remaining matches. I like the ability to 'send to tab group' when I open a tab to a new site, but I could wish for the ability to 'auto-filter' certain content based on title or domain. I would, in some cases, like an ability to 'group the groups', tree-like, but that might be a bridge too far.
Overall, not a bad browser, and I look forward to the 64-bit version.
Couldn't decide whether to post STOP or GO....apparently they didn't know either. Monkeys are still hoping to push 5.0 merely 3 months from now. Er, good luck? I don't really feel like complaining about feature changes in the beta; Opera has to do it since the nightlies aren't very public.
Dev channel was bitching about useragent, apparently some sites were sniffing for beta and are broken with RC.
"Dev channel was bitching about useragent, apparently some sites were sniffing for beta and are broken with RC."
That there was UA sniffing indicates the site developers were other than the best and brightest of breed. That users blamed the UA indicates they are no brighter than the site developers.
cheers,
gary
Well, I use Noscript to block flash, so can't comment there, but I have been using Adblock Plus, Noscript and Better Privacy with no problems on beta versions of four. Although I still have the current release FF installed, the four pre-release is now my main browser on my machine at home, and doesn't seem to be causing me problems.
It seems quicker, tidier, and has some nice features. I was pleasantly surprised.
Since they're releasing 4 versions this year, I'm waiting for Firefox 7.
I'm hoping that by FF7 they will have at least (don't forget web workers) one process per tab for stability and non interference (especially pages slowing the interface), sandboxing for security and other features that IE and Chrome have now already.
I'm sure there's another browser that omits these features too, but I can't think what it's name is, something beginning with... O? No, I honestly can't remember :P
Automatic Save folder - no
AVG - Sorta for b6
Blocksite - no
CAG Toolbar - no
dragdropupload - no
FireFTP - no
HeaderControl - no
Linkification - no
Logmein - no but should get updated
QuickJava - no
Save Image in Folder - no
Screengrab - no
Shorten URL - no
Unless I can force those to work somehow then it looks like I may be wating a while. My main faves are Save Image in Folder and dragdropupload. I can wait for the rest.
Is quite simply go to "Tools > Addons > Plugins" and select each Plugin that starts with "Windows" or "Google" or "Microsoft" and click disable next to each one.
Most people will find they just have VLC (et al) and Flash left.
Restart and watch the speed increase
The automatic plugin-scanning was one of the core bugs that Mozilla 2 didn't address ;-)
about:plugins might just scare you.....
I know I gave Firefox a hard time! I don't retract what I said, it's simply true, but I do have some love for the new browser. The hardware acceleration is particularly good.
Also as a web developer FF4 puts a smile on my face. I'm hoping the stats for migration will look as good as they have done in the past for previous version upgrades.