ALMOST acts like an OS X app. There are still outstanding issues regarding the widgets. Take for instance the <select> element, which still looks freakishly non-native when you click on it:
It's not, but I think the efforts should be focused on making the OS X version feel like an OS X version, rather than making the Windows version, which already feels at home, better.
To continue, how FF never looks like its in the background (the tab bar color never changes, for example) — actually, scratch that, the app itself doesn't look or act like it belongs, period. But, thats what you get for using XUL instead of Cocoa.
Even more, how it takes 2-3x longer than Safari to launch and feels sluggish to use (because it is, compared to Safari, which I can use without any effort on my part), how it continues to eat up memory, despite having the problem (apparently) fixed on windows and linux, etc. Take a look through the most duped bugs for FF/Mac. Then fix them, instead of ignoring them for years.
Oh, and the "you are using free software" thing on first launch (if thats still there) and the hilariously inaccurate chart comparing FF to Safari when downloading — it feels incredibly condescending to read.
On my Mac, both FF and Safari take exactly the same time to launch. This is with many addons (7 or 8 at the last count). Also, FF is very snappy. In fact, it works better with large pages having a bunch of media content than Safari. Except for a few very small glitches, FF 3.5 is as native as you could want it.
I just switched back to FF from Opera. I chose Opera over FF for my Mac because it looked native and was snappier than the OS X version of FF. Now Opera seems to be going in the opposite direction (choosing a horribly non-native skin, adding everything and the kitchensink to the browser, becoming painfully unresponsive with every new version).
Whoops, wrong version. You're right, it was FF3 that didn't change the color at all. Sorry about that mixup.
In FF 3.5, it just makes the background tab bar color the same color as the foreground Cocoa titlebar color. So it's still irritating to see what's in the foreground and what isn't; especially when the window is partially covered up.
I really can't understand the sense of entitlement people feel towards free software other people write. If you don't like something, report it. If the maintainer decides something else is more important, you have three options:
Firefox is not some 17 year old's side project. It is a product, and a product that makes a lot of money from its customers btw, and the goal of any product is to satisfy users (as a means to and end to generate additional profit). I can guarantee you that Mozilla wants to make people happy, not to tell them to "hit the road" if they don't fix the bugs themselves. You can't on the one hand evangelize like crazy and get people to switch over to your product and then on the other tell them tough luck when they don't get what they want.
"a product that makes a lot of money from its customers"
They make a lot of money from Google, not from you or me. Their job is to prevent Internet Explorer from gaining too much market share and to provide a usable browser on those platforms that wouldn't otherwise, have one.
Also, they work on limited resources. They have to prioritize. They are also human. You can get a whole lot more done if you just ask nicely.
They can't send their users packing, but I understand if they don't prioritize a fix that would be noticed by about half a dozen users (the intersection of the "Mac users" with "users who change default keyboard shortcuts") however verbal and vitriolic they are.
Actually, they do make their money from us. If no one used FireFox then Google wouldn't continue sending them checks because the money comes from you and me doing Google searches. Saying they don't make money from us is like saying that ad supported sites don't make money from us, they do. More Firefox users = more money for Mozilla.
It turns out every single company works on limited resources, is human, and has to prioritize: these are not unique shortcomings of open source software.
No one is asking they do exactly what we say, in fact if you read the post that you responded to, it was not mean spirited in any way and simply listed a number of bugs upon a Mozilla workers' request, so I don't really understand the "fix it yourself" response.
Also, the idea that their job is to provide a usable browser for platforms that wouldn't otherwise have one is somewhat silly and particularly ironic in the context of a conversation about not providing a good enough experience for "half a dozen users". Windows is arguably the platform least lacking in browsers, and Mozilla has clearly demonstrated through their actions that their primary concern is Windows market share, and this is fine and a good strategy in my opinion. All I'm saying is to not paint them as white knights for the minority in one sentence and then complain about vocal minorities in another.
If I gave off a sense of entitlement, thats the last thing I feel, concerning FF. However, I don't feel like its that big of an expectation to want software that works well. Am I mistaken here? Or did you mistake my responding to a dev asking "whats wrong?" and listing the problems I had as something else?
My problem with reporting issues to Mozilla is that they seem to fall on deaf ears. Every issue I've mentioned I've discussed with people on irc.mozilla.org or seen a number of bugzilla tickets for. None of them have been completely fixed.
And, I don't use FF. I would like to have it as a secondary browser, incase Safari acts up, or for testing websites. But, that doesn't work; it doesn't even render content the same on Windows, Linux and Mac. So that's out the window.
As to why I don't go and fix it myself? I don't use it. I'm happy with the browser I have. There are more interesting (to me) projects to contribute to. I have more interesting ideas to hack on then a web browser that has a company dedicated to working on it.
"I don't feel like its that big of an expectation to want software that works well."
Define "working well". Firefox is far from perfects, but good enough is good enough.
"they seem to fall on deaf ears"
Developers have the right of assigning priorities when fixing bugs. You only feel this way because their priorities are not the same as yours.
I have a collection of old computers, mostly Unix workstations from mid to late 90's and several earlier Macs and Firefox support is somewhat sparse for them. You won't see me complaining 3.5 was not released for AIX 3 or MacOS 7 or Solaris 2.6. I assume, if they did, they would have one download each, from me.
"it doesn't even render content the same on Windows, Linux and Mac."
Here is an interesting point: you complain it doesn't "blend" into the GUI as native apps do, but you complain it does not render pages the same way on the three platforms you mention. All three platforms have different fonts and their users expect a different look (crappy from Windows, less crappy from X, good-looking from OSX) when they render text. So, would it be fair to break user expectations on one side and address them on the other? It's supposed to run on all possible platforms (and, mind you, there is Firefox for really tiny user-bases), not to be the same on all of them. Not even Webkit looks exactly the same on all browsers that use it. You will still have to test for pixel accuracy on your target platforms. That (and for doing internet banking for one of my accounts) is why I keep a couple Windows VMs around and a Mac on my desktop to the left of the Linux netbook I am writig this on.
"As to why I don't go and fix it myself? I don't use it. I'm happy with the browser I have."
So, if you are happy with what you have, please use it and stay happy. You don't _have_ to frustrate yourself with software that mis-behaves in some narrow (or, to be fair, not-so-narrow) corner-cases.
Everyone who uses Firefox has the right to inspect its code, to modify it, to improve it and, if they want, to release another browser based on that code. This far outweights the "blending-in" problem in my book. If someone feels so strongly about them, it's only a question of time someone will submit a patch that fixes it.
Can you implement a method of scrolling that actually works with a multitouch pad? That is, 2d scrolling that's smooth and lets me scroll pixel-by-pixel rather than in chunks?
There is NOTHING worse than a web browser that can't scroll correctly. It makes the Internet feel fucked-up.
I can see both actually. The dual icons in the top right started with Chrome, and then showed up in Safari. It's much better than the original poorly-implemented IE 7/8 top right icon bar.
In the second shot there are two icons that use stars, and neither is immediately apparent what they are. I'm assuming its for bookmarks, but they're both too far from the URL. I don't know why they're using separate buttons for Stop/Refresh either. Safari ditched the two buttons a long time ago, IE 8 has them (again poorly implemented) and Chrome has a single button. Two buttons may help learnability, but not day-to-day usability.
Separate Stop and Refresh buttons prevent the mistake of clicking Stop right at the moment a page finished loading, causing it to refresh instead. This can be a problem if you clicked stop because the page was loading too slow so you just wanted to look at what had already downloaded, but you end up discarding all of that progress to redownload the page.
The buttons look nice. Can't say I know why "Tools" has become so important or what happens when I click the "Page" drop-down but I'm sure it's all very cool. Unsure why there are two stars for bookmarking but I'm sure there's a reason too. I better be able to enable a fixed "close tab" button as an option or plugin. Finally, where's my toolbar and home button?
Good point. In a related note I really wish the download manager was implemented differently anyway. Having it as a seperate window is a nuisance and all of the addons that try and solve this seem to be buggier than a native solution. Particuarly on Windows 7, getting to that Downloads window seems tedious (forever hitting ctrl-j).
Secondly, do people need to customise their addons often enough that tools is given such visual importance?
Nice nice, they removed the menu bar, it's a great thing (for the screen estate freaks like me).
I'm not sure how well it's received by the non technical people, Microsoft already did that with IE7 but I haven't read anything revelent about it. Speaking of them, a print button is going to be missing : they just love to print stuff.
and yet they have so much whitespace in the chrome that they could have easily fitted a compact file menu in. Sure, make it look as good as you can, but whitespace is not as important as screen real-estate in browser chrome. I'm guessing these are designers not engineers - the same sort that go for unreadably small fonts to make things look slicker.
This upcoming design really excites me - this and the experimental stuff they've got Aza Raskin doing. I've spent the last two years really being annoyed at Firefox for being a subpar browser beyond plugins/being open source, and I think it's uglier even than Internet Explorer. Now they seem to be making a concerted effort to look prettier. I only hope they fix the ugly Mac functionality.
I, for one, get extremely nauseous when I have to use WinVista with Aero. I'm used to the neutral monochrome of OS X and the warm brown of Ubuntu Human, and any interface with too many wild colors makes me feel tired after a few minutes of use. If ever I have to use Windows, I always change the theme to Windows Classic.
