[documentexaminer97405]

I Love Mozilla i hate internet explore too many viruses. Keep up the good work can't wait too hear about updates.

[Nyhthawk]

It appears that Firefox 3.5 has no real Apple Event (AppleScript) support, not even the default commands and objects found in most Cocoa applications. Its scripting dictionary is a master class in minimalism, devoid of even a single term. Wow.

[ReeceTarbert]

LSlugger said:

The increased emphasis on performance is interesting to watch, but I'd like to see more realistic benchmarks.

Exactly my thoughts: the tests contained in the much advertised SunSpider Javascript benchmark have nothing to do with the way a page is rendered and, as a consequence, the user's perception of how "snappy" a browser feels. I mean, bitwise operations? Binary trees? Cryptographic functions?!? As if web pages were full of that stuff! ;)



RT.

[griffman]

AppleScript support in Firefox has always been problematic. It's never been officially supported, as I understand it. Previous releases had a partially-working implementation, but only because of the efforts of a couple of programmers on the side. There's a general "add AppleScript" bug that's been open for over seven years now:

https://bugzilla.moz...g.cgi?id=125419

There's also a newer bug that discusses a broken feature in FF3 that it least made it possible (in FF2) to get some basic window information:

https://bugzilla.moz...g.cgi?id=427448

The good news, I guess, is that support is coming in Firefox 3.6 (also support for Keychain, Services, and Dictionary). The bad news is that this is slated for "early to mid 2010," so we'll have to wait a while.

-rob.

[griffman]

While it's doubtful those specific functions are used on many pages, Javascript is used extensively on the web today. As such, gross improvements of 2x to 3x (as seen in the latest versions of both Safari and Firefox) are welcomed, and should have an impact on performance.

As this was just a First Look and not a review, I just wanted to run a quick sanity check on Mozilla's speed claims. The full review will look at performance in more detail.

-rob.

[griffman]

Quote

{quote:title=Impish2 wrote:}3.5 still can't view pdf files within browser, a long-standing feature that disappeared several versions back.{quote}

As I understand it, that's because Adobe stopped making the plug-in compatible with Mac Firefox. However, there's a great plug-in that does the job very nicely. I've been using it for a while now, and it's indispensable:

https://addons.mozil...efox/addon/7518

Tweaking Apple's iPhone slogan, that's one of the things I like about Firefox. If it doesn't do something you want it to do, more than likely, "there's an extension for that."

-rob.

[bousozoku]

documentexaminer97405 said:

I Love Mozilla i hate internet explore too many viruses. Keep up the good work can't wait too hear about updates.

I'm guessing that you haven't learned to use Firefox's spell checking yet or that the (8 year old?) Mac OS X version of Internet Exploder doesn't do much with those viruses.

[newuser1980]

after one month of using sarfari 4, I finally stopped using it, just too buggy, too much stalled, too much no reponse, and too much slow down after hours of use, now i settle down to firefox 3.5 which is very perfect for me.

[ReeceTarbert]

griffman said:

While it's doubtful those specific functions are used on many pages, Javascript is used extensively on the web today.

Of course, but my point was that the Javascript commonly used by websites has close to nothing to do with the Javascript used in the SunSpider Javascript benchmark -- outperforming other browsers can give you bragging rights, but the users won't really benefit from the extra speed.

griffman said:

As such, gross improvements of 2x to 3x (as seen in the latest versions of both Safari and Firefox) are welcomed, and should have an impact on performance.

While Safari 4 is clearly faster than Safari 3 and, to some extent Firefox 3.5 is faster than Firefox 3, I don't find Safari that faster than Firefox in everyday use and, if it really is, the margin must be a lot smaller than the benchmark would lead you to believe.





RT.

[whitedog]

Firefox 3.5 still scores only 93 out of 100 on the Acid3 test - Safari scored 100 even in version 3. This has to do with standards compliance and web site compatibility. Nevertheless, I have also experienced bugs and crashes with Safari 4. Of all things, it consistently hangs trying to navigate Apple's own web site. Firefox, on the other hand, runs smooth as silk down the isles at Apple.com. Based on this experience, I'm not sure how relevant the Acid3 test is after all.

Of course, Firefox's strongest feature has always been its extensibility. You can find a plug-in for almost anything you want the browser to do - like reading PDFs. And plug-ins are easy to download and install - and uninstall. What's more, if you get a new version of Firefox, it will disable incompatible plug-ins and check for updates if you ask it to.

Compare this to the hacks that are necessary to extend Safari's capabilities and the compatibility problems that arise every time people update the browser - having lost track of the Input Managers, SIMBL and Internet Plug-ins they've added over time. Safari is supposed to be a closed ecosystem, but because its feature set is limited compared to most other browsers, including Firefox, many people find it desirable to break into that ecosystem to get the functionality they need. Thus the stability Safari seeks to provide with it's closed architecture is far less a reality than Firefox provides with its open, but self-aware, architecture.

Fortunately, we are not obliged to use Safari if we don't want to. Whether Apple will learn from the problems their closed system model encounters remains to be seen. In the meantime, Firefox is keeping pace and providing Apple with plenty of competition and, one hopes, incentive to improve.

[myudelson]

My major criticism of FF 3.0 was that whenever I open Flash-rich sites my fans go nuts hitting 6000 rpm in under a minute (it all disappears as soon as I quit FF).
Safari doesn't do it. Let's see how FF 3.5 compares in that regard.

[egelb]

Even when browsing with the new private browsing option, Flash movies that play in the browser leave cache files in two directories. They are: User Folder/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Shared Objects and
User Folder/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Macromedia.com/Support/Flash Player/Sys

[rockwall]

I had the same problem with Safari 4. I removed Cooliris (if you have it installed) from Safari and the crashing stopped. I hope this helps.I still use FF3.5 as my default.

[vicden]

I am using 2.0.0.20 and I can drag tabs all over the place.

I kind of like 3, but still have a few websites I need for work that don't really like it