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Krypton · Aug 31, 2006, 02:07 PM

If anyone else is about to download FF2.0b2 I must warn you that it has a pretty ugly, washed out looking theme; I'm thinking this can't possibly be the work of the same guy that has produced the previous two Mac themes.

Otherwise, they seem to have dropped all the notable features from this realease, and added some bizarre fade in/fade out for all of the menus.

TheoCryst · Aug 31, 2006, 07:28 PM

It's an interesting build, definitely. Having been using Minefield (the Cocoa build) more and more recently, this definitely feels like a step back. So in order to be fair, I went out and downloaded the latest stable release, 1.5.0.6. WOW! This new beta is a huge step forward in several ways. Granted, it still lacks native windows, widgets, spell checking, etc... but this is why I have no intention of making Ff my primary browser quite yet.

What it DOES boast is much better performance, both when first opening and when rendering web pages. I love the favicons in the main Bookmarks menu, a feature for which I had been asking for quite a while. I'm not a huge fan of the new default theme, but it may just be me not being used to it (not to mention the fact that there are about 5 bazillion themes out there for the picky user). And the smooth scrolling feels, well, smoother. I don't have my mouse with me, but I think that it reacts to scrolling (esp. acceleration) the same way that Safari and the Finder (plus countless other apps) have for a long time.

My opinion? The changes are welcomed, but not quite enough to tear me away from Safari + Camino. However, only time will tell whether I'll stick with Safari or switch back to Ff when they both hit their 3.0 this spring.

VValdo · Aug 31, 2006, 10:06 PM

If you get the Nightly Tester Tools extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/958/

it will let you use any extension, even ones that won't normally install because your Firefox is so new.

Anyway, I switched themes easily using this. 2.0b2 is an improvement over b1 in that my theme now looks right-on.

W

ghporter · Sep 1, 2006, 09:37 AM

I've heard bad things about the newest version of Firefox for Windows too. On the Mac version, is it just a change in the theme that makes it look bad? I don't want to change to the new version (which seems to have some neat new features and improvements) until I'm sure it won't look worse than it does already.

TETENAL · Sep 1, 2006, 10:08 AM

They did away with the rounded search fields. This was only a Mac convention anyway.

NeXTLoop · Sep 1, 2006, 11:24 AM

Aside from the square fields, I actually like this theme better than 1.5.

Obi Wan's Ghost · Sep 1, 2006, 11:27 AM

I read the final theme is being redone completely by some guy who has a design site.

Chuckit · Sep 1, 2006, 12:10 PM

Forget that, I'm using 3.0a1.

NeXTLoop · Sep 1, 2006, 12:56 PM

Chuckit, were you able to import your bookmarks into 3.0? I don't use Safari, so I tried to import from a file. But for some reason, I could never get it to work. Even taking a bookmarks.html file from my 1.5 installation and manually moving it into the appropriate directory didn't seem to work. 3.0 just overrides it.

Chuckit · Sep 1, 2006, 04:02 PM

I just downloaded Minefield and it automatically had my old bookmarks.

voo · Sep 1, 2006, 04:29 PM

Any pics?

Millennium · Sep 1, 2006, 06:07 PM

I was using the 3.0 builds, though I ended up going back to 1.5 because they were too unstable (which I suppose is to be expected for prereleases).

Frankly, though, I'm not a fan of the 2.0 series. I think they've dropped too many of their planned features to justify the version number change, and what they have kept reflects a set of priorities which, for a browser maker, could only be described as warped.

Chuckit · Sep 1, 2006, 06:21 PM

I don't find the 3.0 builds to be less stable than 1.5. It has yet to do that annoying not-crash-but-totally-lock-up thing 1.5 always does.

VValdo · Sep 1, 2006, 06:22 PM

Yeah, it seems this coulda been 1.6... but still nice to have something new

voo · 07:36 PM

I thought Firefox 2 was to be unified... or is that still planned? Flickr Photo Download: Messy

Theres nothing new with the menus though, typical osx menus.
Still ugly checkboxes and such.

the_glassman · Sep 24, 2006, 04:39 PM

The latest nightly builds of Minefield are pretty nice and stable for me. I think I just found a new browser to replace Camino in the dock. For now anyways.

Lateralus · Sep 24, 2006, 08:51 PM

I'm still surprised that Firefox is as popular on the Mac as it is.

For starters, Firefox really sticks out like a fish out of water in OS X. It just looks and feels like a really klunky port of a Windows/Linux application. And in my opinion, any rendering speed advantages it does have over the other OS X native browsers are pretty much cancelled out by that generally klunky feel of the UI.

As as for those 'rendering speed advantages' that I always hear so much about; I rarely see them and even when I do I wonder why they're worth using Firefox over something like Camino which is at least as fast on most sites, looks and feels far better, and has processor-specific optimized builds even more readily available then Firefox does.

Chuckit · Sep 25, 2006, 02:00 AM

Camino is sloooooow. I cut out a couple of os there for the sake of brevity, but I think you get the idea. I prefer the speed and nicer UI of the Firefox 3 alphas.

Curiosity · Sep 25, 2006, 02:31 AM

I am using version 2.0 of Firefox for Windows. My themes and extensions work. One thing I did not like was the arrangement of the search box. They put the icon for the search engine outside of the box. The search box also now is not limited by the space given to it by the theme, but takes as much room as it can. I had to move it to the menu bar to give the URL box enough length.

CharlesS · Sep 25, 2006, 03:10 AM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Camino is sloooooow. I cut out a couple of os there for the sake of brevity, but I think you get the idea. I prefer the speed and nicer UI of the Firefox 3 alphas.

Huh? Camino is using the exact same renderer (Gecko) as Firefox.

If you were talking about its UI, it's noticeably faster than Firefox's on my machine.

Chuckit · Sep 25, 2006, 03:31 AM

Not mine. Particularly when there are animated GIFs or any other sort moving content involved, Camino seems to get overexcited and has to take a break.

P · Sep 25, 2006, 09:25 AM

Originally Posted by Lateralus

I'm still surprised that Firefox is as popular on the Mac as it is.

For starters, Firefox really sticks out like a fish out of water in OS X. It just looks and feels like a really klunky port of a Windows/Linux application. And in my opinion, any rendering speed advantages it does have over the other OS X native browsers are pretty much cancelled out by that generally klunky feel of the UI.

As as for those 'rendering speed advantages' that I always hear so much about; I rarely see them and even when I do I wonder why they're worth using Firefox over something like Camino which is at least as fast on most sites, looks and feels far better, and has processor-specific optimized builds even more readily available then Firefox does.

I agree about all of this, but you forgot about one feature. The one and only reason I use Firefox on the Mac are the extensions - in particular Flashblock, but there are a few others as well. Get me that in Safari and I'll switch back.

ghporter · Sep 25, 2006, 10:18 AM

There are a lot of nice things in Safari, but I've never had the kind of problems connecting to various sites with Firefox that I did with Safari. And it never mattered how I set the user agent-Safari would NOT connect to some school sites, while Firefox (even the betas) would every time.

I still have some issues with some sites and the way Firefox renders them, but I'm attributing those issues to the sites' coding-probably using some sort of IE-specific stuff.

vsmsamples · 06:06 PM

2.0 is so cool. the phishing detector and spell check in fields is my favorite

NEW FLASH 2.0RC1 is out now
Find it here
Mozilla Firefox - Next Generation Browser - Release Candidate Downloads

Links found at the above url still lead to 1.5.0.7
Those who must have now download RC1 from http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozi...0%20RC%201.dmg

Cadaver · Sep 27, 2006, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by vsmsamples

2.0 is so cool. the phishing detector and spell check in fields is my favorite

NEW FLASH 2.0RC1 is out now
Find it here
Mozilla Firefox - Next Generation Browser - Release Candidate Downloads

Links found at the above url still lead to 1.5.0.7
Those who must have now download RC1 from http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozi...0%20RC%201.dmg

Improves upon several things I didn't like about 1.x, particularly the lack of spell check. Still uses ugly widgets, though.

KevinG · Sep 28, 2006, 03:48 PM

Originally Posted by Lateralus

For starters, Firefox really sticks out like a fish out of water in OS X. It just looks and feels like a really klunky port of a Windows/Linux application.

The updated Pinstripe theme might help out here:
Pinstripe for Firefox: Now with 20% more Macintosh : pretty widgets