The
last time
we looked at
Mozilla Firefox
, it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they've changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition... and this is putting it mildly.
Mozilla Firefox (
release notes
|
roadmap
) is a completely modular browser consisting of a basic, streamlined framework upon which users can add '
extensions
', which (just as the name implies) are essentially plugins for the browser. The idea of less is more has been taken to the next level with this browser. With the default browser, you have just enough browser to do pretty much anything you can on the Internet, while more advanced, custom functionality is reserved to the extensions. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.
When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are
Mozilla
(of course),
Opera
, and
Konqueror
.
Safari
is also coming along nicely on
OS X
. The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality... it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under
Linux
(GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX,
Sun Solaris
SPARC/x86, Sun
JDS
2003,
Microsoft Windows
(all versions), and
IBM OS/2
, so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU (
system requirements
)
The Mozilla Firefox 0.9 browser
What's new in version 0.9?
This is the last preview release before Firefox comes of age at milestone version 1.0, so what new features have been implemented? Well, at first glance all you will notice is the interface has been redesigned with an updated theme. At first I didn't quite know how to take it, but now that I've used it for a while it's grown on me. The new look is very minimalistic, clinging tightly to the focus of the browser itself. Anyway, here's a more complete listing for those of you who are skimming:
-
New default theme -
Like I said, it sports a new sleek skin (seen in the screenshots of this review).
-
Redesigned theme/extension managers & SmartUpdate -
Newly redesigned interfaces make it even easier to manage your browser, as well as keeping it up to date with smart notifications .
-
Installer updates -
Linux now has an installer for GTK2, and the Windows package has gotten smaller – to the tune of 4.6MB.
-
Easier migration -
Migrating your important information and settings from other browsers has never been easier. Firefox can now import settings from previous versions, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. This includes favorites, settings, cookies, history and saved passwords.
-
Help -
An updated online help system is now available. This is in addition to the wonderful
Firefox Forums
and
existing help material
.
-
Linux look and feel -
Much work has gone into the UI, making it adhere better to GTK2 themes. Menus now look like they belong in the desktop scheme like they were meant to be.
Not only were new features added to this release, work continues to keep bugs squashed, past and present, so the browser feels far more stable than it has in the past. Don't get me wrong, this browser has always been ahead of its time in terms of vision and scope, but it has had its fair share of bugs, but so far as I can tell by running this release constantly for the past week or so it looks pretty solid. It hasn't crashed once, and let me tell you this is a definite improvement over the previous versions. For instance, the biggest annoyance from previous versions involved tabbed browsing. Every so often (and I could almost set my watch to this) when clicking on an existing tab or opening a new tab the browser would simply exit. No complaints, no errors, just a silent
stage left
. The new version hasn't done this to me yet and I've been using it constantly.
Importing settings from other browsers is a snap
Redesigned management and update utilities
On the browsing side of things, Firefox couldn't be faster. It hums along at top speed, never hesitating on pages that other browsers might hang on. One good example of this is
Vonage.com
, which seems to load notoriously slow on
any
browser, and even though it's still slow, it's a far sight better than other browsers. This, among others, serves as one of my benchmarks... the sites I go to immediately to see if a new browser is going to sweep me off of my feet. So far none of them have, but Firefox comes closest in terms of raw speed. This is after installing the
latest Macromedia Flash Player
, which loaded flawlessly into Firefox. Of course, with a few
tried and true tweaks
, you can nudge the browser even closer to the edge (some of these 'enhancements' might come at the expense of stability and broken standards of course).
One small thing that I'd like to point out is that the home directory has changed since the last release. This info might help to relieve a little stress as you struggle to find out where exactly the browser placed all of your personal files. These are the new locations of Mozilla Firefox files:
Linux -
~/.mozilla/firefox/
Mac OS X -
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
Microsoft Windows -
C:\Documents and Settings\
username
\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox (wow! now
that's
a mouthful)
This is actually a much better layout than what was previously used if you ask me. If all Mozilla products follow this same standard, then all we need to be concerned with during backups is one directory. This also goes a long way for organization, especially on Linux. As we all know, our home directories quickly get cluttered with a new
.packagname
for every package we install, and sometimes a new directory for updates to those packages. I've seen it many times. While on that subject, wouldn't it be nice to see a standard put in place which would force apps to categorize themselves and place their data in appropriate directories. In example,
Gaim
and
Kopete
would be placed in
~/.messaging/gaim
and
~/.messaging/kopete
respectively. In that same light,
OpenOffice.org
and
KOffice
preferences and user data would be located in
~/.productivity/OpenOffice.org
and
~/.productivity/koffice
respectively. This way, application data would be found quickly when it was needed, and the overall filesystem structure would be more organized. If anyone would like to discuss this topic further, please feel free to
email me
and we can chat.
Managing bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox
|
