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Firefox 0.8 is the release that won me over
Since I dropped Netscape 4.78 in late 2001, I've been happily using Galeon, a Gecko-based browser for GNOME. My web use is heavy (my days are spent in a web browser: reading news sites, developing PHP code, etc) and I need a browser that is stable and fast. Has Mozilla Firefox finally broken the speed and stability barriers in order to bring about a browser change to this long-time Galeon user? My rule of thumb is this: the computer should try to be faster than I am. If I find myself waiting for the computer to do something, then I need to find out what's the bottleneck. My view is this: the bottleneck should always be the human. Speed As a result of the XUL language used for the full Mozilla browser suite, the slow speed has been its biggest drawback. The great features found in Mozilla, but missing in my Galeon, are not worth the additional wait time. Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) tried to fix the speed issue, but never got it quite snappy enough.
With the latest 0.8 release of Firefox, however, things appear to be changing. This browser version is not built with XUL, but with GTK2, a native toolkit for Linux, which gives a tremendous performance gain at the loss of portability. It is finally fast enough to be my regular browser, nay, it is the fasted browser I've ever used. It is actually exciting how fast it is. New windows snap open, the bookmark editor does not crawl, and local webpages load instantly. Firefox is a 100% winner in the speed department, as it has finally surpassed my Galeon in this area! On a related note, a freshly opened Galeon used 120M of RAM, while a freshly opened Firefox used 86M. I don't really know exactly what that means, but a lower RAM usage number is always a good thing to see. Stability I've been using this browser all day long and I haven't had any problems with it yet. Previous versions have never gone more than an hour without crashing. I have not added any new extensions or themes, yet, and I expect that those will have the potential to introduce some instability. Still, the features on this browser are sufficient for my needs without adding any third-party extensions. User friendly features One nice feature seems to be a automatic installer program for plugins. When I visited a web page that contained an embedded Java applet, the system opened up a dialog box and offered to download and install Java 2 for me.
Auto-installer downloading Java (click for full image) Alas, this feature did not completely work for me with the one plugin I attempted: Java. LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library /home/drw/firefox/plugins/java2/plugin/i386/ns600/libjavaplugin_oji.so [/home/drw/firefox/plugins/java2/plugin/i386/ns600/libjavaplugin_oji.so: undefined symbol: __vt_17nsGetServiceByCID] There was no automated uninstaller for plugins, that I could find, so in order to get rid of it, I had to drop to an xterm, change directory in my firefox/plugins directory, and rm the files. Most plugins are shipped as binary modules, unfortunately, and thus might not be compiled against the same libraries that you have on your system. As a result of this incompatibility, the module may crash. For me, I am currently using White Box Enterprise Linux 3.0 on my desktop, and neither the Java plugin from Sun, nor the RealAudio rpnp plugin, would work, both complaining of undefined symbols. This failure is not Firefox's fault, it's Sun and Real Networks' (or, perhaps, my distributions) fault. I think that if the plugin had worked, the automated plugin installer would have worked, too. It looks like a friendly (and necessary for some computer neophytes) utility. The themes and extensions are as good as always, although the texturizer.net website is currently down from the heavy load that this recent release has generated, and their mirror was returning error 404s. Smooth scrolling is no longer a separate extension, but is now built into the browser. To enable it, go to the Tools/Options/Advanced/Browsing and checkoff smooth scrolling. It's a nice touch.
There is no close button on every tab, which is a feature I miss from Galeon. To import my bookmarks from Galeon to Firefox, I had to open Galeon, export my bookmarks as HTML, and then import them in Mozilla. There are two image handling features that are missing. In Galeon, from the right-click menu, you can send an image to the Gimp. Also from the right-click menu, you can open that image in a new window (or in the existing window). Both of these features are missing, and both are sorely missed. Some of the keyboard shortcuts are different between Galeon and Firefox. For example, when in Galeon you press Shift-Middleclick to open the link in a new window, in Firefox you must Shift-leftclick. There is no "fast scroll" (shift-wheel) that I can find in this browser. Popup and Ad blocking Popup works fine, and even gives you some notification when a website delivers one (something Galeon didn't do). The ad filtering works as expected, giving you a "Block images" and then a "Accept images" options when you left-click an image.
XFT and GTK2 Anti-aliased fonts are beautiful, and Firefox now has a version that is built against these libraries. The difference is astounding, as you can see from the screenshots below: (Click for a fullsize version)
If your browser looks like the one on the right, it's time for you to upgrade. All told, this browser is an excellent piece of engineering and the Mozilla team must be very satisfied with the work that they are contributing to the internet community. It takes a lot to get me to switch software packages (I'm still using WindowMaker!), but after over 2 years I have finally found my new web browser.
(See also: The Tide Has Turned in the Battle of the War) |
Comments (29)
Another missing feature
(Moved this up from the thread to its own subthread) This message was edited Feb 23, 2004 7:00 PM
XUL correction
Apparantly, however, it is still XUL! The performance of this XUL app is quite encouraging for XUL and I stand (sit) corrected. :)
dave
Mozilla has always used GTK on Linux (well, they used Motif for a while, and there's been a short-lived Qt port). The mistake you made is to assume that they use these toolkits to render the widgets. XUL just uses features like windowing and font rendering from the underlying toolkit, and uses them to render its own widgets. The "GTK2" in the filename indicates that it's the GTK2-based version rather than the outdated GTK1 version (the GTK2 version adds anti-aliasing, for one, so it's not really Mozilla using XFT but rather it benefiting from a system-wide GTK improvement).
Just as both of you have experienced, the JRE plugins from IBM, Sun, and other vendors were assembled with just slightly different versions of compilers than found with the most common distributions. This of course causes the plugin to fail and while the older Java plugins may load, they don't work with most content.
I've discovered, however, that the JRE packaged as part of Sun's J2SDK (the free developer version) was assembled using a compiler that actually works with Mozilla on RH9 and Fedora Core 1. Since J2SDK is a binary distribution as well, your results may well vary but it's well worth a try.
Right Click - View Image
I agree that an option to send an image directly to your favorite editor would be a great addition, but I'm very pleased with the functionality that's already there. Just wanted to point out that your second wish is already available via "View Image", which opens just the selected image in the current window and tab. (at least on the Win version, but I see it listed on your screenshot above)
Jonah Hex
1) View Image in a new window (I did miss the current window link, which is indeed there!)
2) Detach a tab (extension anyone? It's not in any existing ones. This is different than "Copy tab")
3) Send image to ... (gimp, ee, OpenOffice.org, etc) (Easier than dragging and dropping into an open gimp)
These 3 would be great, but the lack of them is not a deal-killer. I'm still using FireFox happily.
Dave
Performance = Opera
I'm not interested in Opera in the slightest for this singular reason.
dave
Close button on tabs
Dave
86 M?
$ ps auxw|grep firefox dave 8180 2.8 2.4 100736 24972 tty1 S 15:15 0:09 /home/dave/firefox/firefox-bin $
And took the "VSZ" column, which, according to ps(1), is the column that tells you how much virtual memory is used.
Bertram Bourdrez, however, emailed and told me that I should have used the RSS column, which is more reliable.
Whatever. ps confuses me and after countless google searches, I can conclude that if anyone out there really does know the real story on this, they haven't ever posted it on the internet (or else, I'm a poor googler).
Either way, Galeon was using slightly more memory than Firefox, regardless of which column was being used.
Dave
Alt-X to switch tabs?
Here's a tip: You can use Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn to cycle through tabs. That's what I usually do.
Dave
dave
I have a whole system of keyboard shortcuts that I use. I use alt-FX to go between desktops. Control-2 launcher the 'run a program' type app (depends on the WM), etc, etc....
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/userinput.ht...
In Galeon Alt+1,2,3,4,5... are shortcuts to TABs, but in Firefox they are Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5... Which way is the de facto standard way, or is neither? If we ever want to have Linux spread to normal homes and officies, those kind of guidelines should be strictly followed. Customization then after when user is an expert is another thing.
Browser shortcuts should really be standardized more, but still allow for customization.
Well it's really easy to just look and be able to count from 1 to at least 6 or 7. I really don't like to have to tab between all of my tabs to get from one to another. I'll just stick with Galeon for now.
An example: 1 [/. ] Slashdot | 2 [G] Google | 3 [X] LXer: Alt-X to switch... | 4 [(|)] Other site | (more TABs) (where [/.], [X], [G], [(|)] are those little icons)
Except I'd like to get rid of those dots "..." too in long truncated titles, useless.
Somehow Galeon, although it is older, or because it is older, has more matured and more practical TAB-interface than Firefox. Mozilla developers should had spent abit more time "reverse engineering" Galeon during the development. The Alt-I, or Alt-a + Alt-T, the list of the TABs, is something which Galeon could have also though.
If you have more than 5 or 6 tabs you would have a harder time just lookig though. I usually have to galeon windows (one on desktop 1 and one on desktop 2) each with about 5-6 tabs.
Firefox does have some tab extensions that work fairly well. You might try them out if you are using firefox. They don't let you use alt-x though to change tabs.
One thing made me wonder when installing those extensions. None of them were signed and although I installed Firefox from GPG signed rpm-package, those extensions then could had been any trojan code and no way to trace their origin back. (oh well, its not v 1.0 yet, so it is understandable)
Those numbers in the titles of the TABs could be optional. I have set width of TABs fixed 100 pixels wide, so my 1024x768 maximized window has 10 TABs visible. I've also read, 7 is the number of items one should "know" and identify without counting. Maybe, but at least with those 10 TABs I don't find without counting which Ctrl-(number) shortcut to press, and would turn that kind of feature on if there would be a checkbox for it in the options.
Some more notices about TABbed browsing in Firefox:
Firefox seems to make some extra unnecessary work when capturing pop-up windows to TABs. With Galeon those open as TABs immediately, but Firefox at first seems to open them as normal windows, and then after grabs them and converts them to TABs.
Pop-up windows does not seem to inhertit same TAB-group as the origin TAB. But those links which trigger pop-ups when opened by middle mouse click do inherit the same TAB-group. Abit confusing. (I am using the auto-coloring of TAB-groups option in Tabbrowser extension.)
Missing features. Not in Firefox, usable and found in Galeon
[FOUND] -TABs cannot be dragged so one could change the order of the tabs.
[FOUND] -PopUps cannot be configured to open as TABs.
[FOUND] -There is no open/save sessions feature as in Galeon. Very usefull feature.
-Galeon uses XML for all kind of configuration: bookmarks (XBEL), sessions, ...Firefox has many different formats for different purposes. Linking and using libxml would be nice.
-No GConf support?
[FOUND] -No autoreload
-Bookmarklets didn't work (I only tried few)
[FOUND] -Ctrl+ENTER in Location or in Google-engine text field does not open URI in its own TAB but inside the current one. That is a very usefull feature with tabbed browsing in Galeon. [Alt+ENTER in FF] I didn't try all the extensions yet. Maybe some of the missing features would be there? [YES, and FOUND] I will try the tab-extensions thing.[FOUND Tabbrowser ext.s] Right now I didn't find any reasons to change from Galeon to Firefox. [FOUND :] One thing missing in both Firefox and Galeon, which would be usefull, is the possibility to forbid embedded Flash from some sites. WWW-admins have started to use Flash instead of animated GIF89a. It is annoying and one cannot stop them! Also both could have list of active TABs (with their URIs and Titles) somewhere in the main menu [FOUND]. I use to have tens of TABs in one maximized Galeon-window and sometimes finding the right TAB is not as fun as it could be. Also some method of "grouping" TABs could be usefull, by perhaps just by creating separators between some tabs: [tab1] [tab2] || [tab3] || [tab4] [tab5] [tab6] [tab7] || [tab8] .... [TAB COLOR DOES THIS]
Firefox's only one closing-X and yellow hint boxes on TABs is a good feature which is missing in Galeon.
[when edited later] [OK, so I installed and tried Tabbrowser extension and it gave most of those features which I was missing, marked as "FOUND" now later. Most of the bookmarklets worked after all, but one which I use often didnt: javascript:window.resizeTo(640,innerHeight) Usefull when page has long unrestricted wide lines. It works in Galeon even in maximized window state. Autoreloading is easier in Galeon than in FF-Tabbrowser extension.] This message was edited Feb 23, 2004 9:22 PM
what about "flash: click to view" to control flash movies embedded in pages??
it's available for firefox
Don't forget that you can't use alt-x to switch tabs...
What's with the "..." dots in the labels of the TABs? Totally useless, as user already knows surely it must be truncated. It wastes space for 3 more letters. The options Galeon has how to truncate the title to the TAB's title bar could be in Firefox also. At least those "..." could be optionally taken off.
And as I wrote, new TABs when opened by middle-clicking in the current TAB now opens the new TAB as the last TAB. When there is already 10-20 TABs 24/7, it is non practical. [There was an option for this in Tabbedbrowsing extension (Tabbrowser/Tabs/Advanced_tabs), which actually also worked after I removed feature-overlapping TAB extionsions: TabWarning, miniT]
With Galeon I always had "Insert new tabs after current tab". Also when grouping TABs and opening a new tab with Ctrl+T I'd like it to be right next to the current one. I haven't yet quite understood how the TABs-grouping thing works. [This also has cleared up. Removing overlapping extensions helped. Overlapping extensions can cause strange behaviour in the future also, so Firefox-team may have to handle the issue somehow.]
There seems not to be --new-tab option in Firefox's command parameters. Once again useful feature in Galeon to have "galeon --new-tab %s" in Start(Alt+F1) | Preferences | Preferred_Applications. I made /usr/local/bin/firefox_--new-tab (sh-script) for now. (Having "-remote openURL(%s, new-tab)" straight there in the preferences didn't work, but it works in the sh-script which is then called from GNOME.)
[text in square brackets was added later] [Growing to like Firefox now, but still missing some features from Galeon concerning TABbed browsing, like different colors of TAB-titles whether the TAB is still transfering or has/hasn't been active (the toppest) ever after the latest rendering. And those ways how to truncate the TAB's title in Galeon.]
[URI about:plugins works but is not in the Tools-menu, nor (did I) found it in extensions.]
[Tab sessions doesn't seem to work beyond browser quit+start cycle. Haven't figured out why. Neither works "Flash click to view" extension yet in any pages which have embedded flash and which I've tried.]
This message was edited Feb 29, 2004 6:55 AM
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