[ioaz]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum, as you can tell and I'm also new to the mac os. I picked up a g3 500mhz powerbook at a local auction for a good deal. Anyway, i'm running os x 10.3.5 and loving it so far, except for a few problems with programs.

I installed firefox .9.3 and now the new 1.0pr and they both open a little square window whenever they are running, so if i hit F9 or F10 it displays my active windows as well as the little window that is, as far as i can tell, blank.

I thought it might just be a pop up, but thunderbird(.7 and .8) does it as well.

Does anyone else have this problem? I guess it's not so much a problem, but rather an annoyance.

Anyone have any idea/fix?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[TETENAL]

When you switched to Mac you probably noticed two differences to the operating system you used before: One is that the menu bar is on the top of the screen not inside the windows, and the other one is that you can close all windows of an application and it is still running. You can close all Mail windows and it will continue to run and fetch mail, you can close all iTunes windows and it will continue to play music etc. This can be very handy sometimes.

On other platforms however an application is tied to a window and the menubar is inside that window. So when the developers of Mozilla (of which FireFox later derived) designed the application they built it around this assumption that there always will be a window with a menubar. For the Mac port they then had the problem this assumption is not valid and to keep Mozilla/Firefox running when all windows are closed they created a dummy window that is hidden somewhere off screen. This window takes care of Mozilla/Firefox running and holding the top menubar when all regular windows are closed. This was a "hack" around a flaw in their application design. Unfortunately this windows shows to the user under certain circumstances.

Their flawed application design leads to other problems as well by the way, like dialog boxes that don't have a menu bar on other platforms leaving the Mac with a non-functional menubar.

[ioaz]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. Not really what I wanted to hear, but it explains a lot. I haven't found a suitable substitute for firefox yet, browsing just isn't the same without it. I guess i'm just too used to the mouse guestures. Even safari with cocoa suite just isn't the same. I guess I will just put up with it for the time being, at least I know why it is there. Thanks!

[thePurpleGiant]

One day that little window will be gone - they are aware of it, and it is possible to get rid of it, they just need to figure out a good way, given how the program was made.

In the meantime, you could try out Camino which is very Similar to Firefoz, but more 'OS X-like'. It has the same rendering engine as Firefox, but a different interface. Slightly less features than Firefox, but a very nicely made program, which doesn't have the hidden window.

[ioaz]

I really hope they do fix it, i'm a big fan of firefox and thunderbird as well, but it's definitely not the end of the world.

I tried camino, but i just couldn't live without the mouse guestures and a few other extensions that firefox has. I guess I will just have to wait.