[ChasingApple]

I have been testing out and using Firefox 2.0 RC2 since it was released, and by testing I mean in Windows XP and in OS X Tiger. I have been impressed with the features set it had and enjoyed the full compatibility / stability of it. Well last night Firefox prompted me that RC3 was out and ready for install, so I fired it up.

Bloody brilliant software is all I can say. The latest theme / UI is very mac like, and fits well in the Tiger environment well. Pretty much RC2 was bug free and RC3 seems to be rock stable for the 6+ hours I have been using it. I know a lot of people say Camino is more "mac like" but this latest version of FF is really really good. I find Safari to be a little slow and not fully compatible with everything so I don't use it so much.

Check out the latest FF 2.0, I am sure you will agree it is quite well done.

[webmonkie]

This is great news for PC user I guess. It looks like is going to be ready for IE 7 from Microsoft.

[webmonkie]

This is great news for PC user I guess.
It looks like is going to be ready for IE 7 from Microsoft.

[wataru]

I hate the new theme, but Kevin Gerich has an updated version of Pinstripe (the default FF1.0/1.5 theme) and some of Arronax's stuff is updated as well.

Incidentally all of my extensions are already 2.0-ready.

[wataru]

dp.

[ChasingApple]

Theme is nice in OS X as well, nice and clean.

[Gee4orce]

Shame it still doesn't use native Mac OS X toolbars, text inputs, contextual menus....the list goes on.

Until it does, FFX will always be an inferior experience to Camino or Safari, in my book. Sure, it's the best browser on the PC, but there are better options on the Mac (at least, in terms of the look and feel).

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce 

Shame it still doesn't use native Mac OS X toolbars, text inputs, contextual menus....the list goes on.

Until it does, FFX will always be an inferior experience to Camino or Safari, in my book. Sure, it's the best browser on the PC, but there are better options on the Mac (at least, in terms of the look and feel).

Seconded. It can serve as a decend secondary/backup browser, but it just feels icky to use it for a long time.

V

[Millennium]

FF uses widgets that are actually suited to the Web, in that they respond to styling. In 3.0 they'll be written in Cocoa (this is already in the 3.0 nightlies), but it will still use real Web widgets, not the set-in-stone appearance of Aqua.

[Turias]

Originally Posted by wataru 

Incidentally all of my extensions are already 2.0-ready.

Now that greasemonkey runs on 2.0, only one of mine still needs updating -- the del.icio.us extension.

[ChasingApple]

Hmm, I will never truly understand the mac crowd. All the functionality can be there but if there is one interface that is different then COCOA it's unusable, hehe. Seriously, do you people surf the net or stare at the UI? The UI is fine, contextual menus work well, and the whole browser is clean and fast. It renders almost 100% of the pages perfectly and boots fast. Ahh never mind, I already know this will fall on deaf ears.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce 

Shame it still doesn't use native Mac OS X toolbars, text inputs, contextual menus....the list goes on.

Until it does, FFX will always be an inferior experience to Camino or Safari, in my book. Sure, it's the best browser on the PC, but there are better options on the Mac (at least, in terms of the look and feel).

Personally, I'll take efficiency, functionality, compatability, speed, and usability over having pretty widgets any day of the week.

The other issue with Safari using its own widgets is that they do not inherit CSS characteristics, aside from dimensions of the overall widget. Frankly, I dont see the point of making web applications look like OS X applications, rather than what the designers had intended and created. I suppose Mac UI consistency is nice, but there is no way of making the conventions of web applications themselves consistent with Mac interface guidelines, so why not just treat web applications as their own platform?

OS level integration such as spell checking is nice though (although this is a feature provided by FF 2.0 now). I suppose it's a mixed bag.

[TETENAL]

FF 2.0 does not integrate with the OS spell-checker afaik. It has its own dictionary, its own user dictionary etc. I don't call that "OS level integration".

Also I don't think many people are complaining that the widgets within websites don't look like native widgets. What people are complaining about is that the widgets of the program itself ("chrome") are not native widgets. That creates many little inconsistencies in look and feel that contribute to the "icky" feel of Firefox.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

FF 2.0 does not integrate with the OS spell-checker afaik. It has its own dictionary, its own user dictionary etc. I don't call that "OS level integration".

Also I don't think many people are complaining that the widgets within websites don't look like native widgets. What people are complaining about is that the widgets of the program itself ("chrome") are not native widgets. That creates many little inconsistencies in look and feel that contribute to the "icky" feel of Firefox.

I wasn't trying to suggest that FF uses the OS spell checker, sorry for being unclear...


Like I said, I believe making web apps to use the native widgets is a completely fruitless venture that Mac heads should just give up on. What is the point of a web app looking superficially like a Mac app when the app and its behavior itself do not conform to Mac UI conventions?

Ajax will help bridge this gap, but until web apps use widget types and conventions that remotely resemble OS controls, I say let web apps be web apps and let OS apps be OS apps. Trying to marry the two is exactly what Microsoft tried to do starting in Windows 98 (or whenever Windows Explorer became IE and vice versa). To me, this concept has always been dumb.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I believe making web apps to use the native widgets is a completely fruitless venture that Mac heads should just give up on.

Seems like you didn't understand what I was saying at all.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Seems like you didn't understand what I was saying at all.

you wrote:

What people are complaining about is that the widgets of the program itself ("chrome") are not native widgets. That creates many little inconsistencies in look and feel that contribute to the "icky" feel of Firefox.

Chome is not native to what? The OS? What else could it be native to?

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Chome is not native to what? The OS? What else could it be native to?

The browser chrome is not native. That's what people are complaining about, not that web widgets aren't native.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

The browser chrome is not native. That's what people are complaining about, not that web widgets aren't native.

native to what? I still don't get it.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

native to what? I still don't get it.

Native to the operating system of course. What's so hard to get about that?

[Turias]

TETENAL wants the Firefox UI to use Cocoa instead of chrome.

It'll never happen, and I don't really see it as a big deal. Chrome is nice enough.

[P]

It's not developed in Carbon or Cocoa, no. It's not using Cocoa textboxes on the web, which is a very nice feature in Safari. The interface isn't terrible though - it's not like going to gnome or something. The regular interface is themed anyway, so you can set it as you wish. I could wish for a better Aqua theme, but then Safari isn't Aqua either. Not native, but decent.

As for native widgets on the web - you can compile Firefox 1.5 to use them, if you wish. I tried it, and the web still works. No biggie. Put it as an option in the Preferences so people don't have to recompile and I'm happy.

[amavro]

I have been using RC2 and RC3 on my PB 1.67 G4 .
I must say that it is the only browser that is so faster than Safari.
Also for the scrolling , opening tabs and rendering speed.

I was wondering on how it works on mac intel machines, it should go turbo fast !.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Native to the operating system of course. What's so hard to get about that?

THat's exactly what I was going on about when you claimed that I didn't understand you.

Native to the OS would give you native widgets, right?

[Sage]

Not necessarily. Widgets are within the webpage itself, while chrome is outside of the webpage (that is, the UI of the browser itself). One being “native” does not necessitate the other being so too.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Sage 

Not necessarily. Widgets are within the webpage itself, while chrome is outside of the webpage (that is, the UI of the browser itself). One being “native” does not necessitate the other being so too.

Oh, so he simply wants his pref and extension dialogs to not be Chrome?


I'm used to extensions and add-ons having funny interfaces, this seems to be the case with most in any sort of program. The prefs in Firefox already seem OS X native to me *shrug*

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Oh, so he simply wants his pref and extension dialogs to not be Chrome?

No, I want* the browser chrome (all of it, not just dialogs but of course the main browser window as well) to use native widgets.

The prefs in Firefox already seem OS X native to me *shrug*

There are actually quite a few things wrong with the preferences window which make it feel not quite right and alien. Maybe you don't notice them, but that doesn't make it good, just good enough.


*
Actually I don't want anything from them. That is just the reason why Camino exists and why I would prefer Camino over Firefox.

[Curiosity]

Originally Posted by Millennium 

FF uses widgets that are actually suited to the Web, in that they respond to styling. In 3.0 they'll be written in Cocoa (this is already in the 3.0 nightlies), but it will still use real Web widgets, not the set-in-stone appearance of Aqua.

Firefox cannot use the Aqua appearance and still be themable. The scrollbars are Aqua, though. One thing that I like a lot about Firefox is the fact that one can change its appearance with themes.

[RedHerring]

Originally Posted by wataru 

I hate the new theme, but Kevin Gerich has an updated version of Pinstripe (the default FF1.0/1.5 theme)...

The new theme is a bit clumsy, in my opinion. But I love this updated Pinstripe. The tabs alone are worth the install.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by Curiosity 

Firefox cannot use the Aqua appearance and still be themable. The scrollbars are Aqua, though. One thing that I like a lot about Firefox is the fact that one can change its appearance with themes.

Actually Safari 3 has themable aqua elements for in-page widgets; they drop the aqua appearance when a style is applied.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man 

Actually Safari 3 has themable aqua elements for in-page widgets; they drop the aqua appearance when a style is applied.

Safari 3? Is that the version included with 10.5?

V

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

No, I want* the browser chrome (all of it, not just dialogs but of course the main browser window as well) to use native widgets.There are actually quite a few things wrong with the preferences window which make it feel not quite right and alien. Maybe you don't notice them, but that doesn't make it good, just good enough.


*
Actually I don't want anything from them. That is just the reason why Camino exists and why I would prefer Camino over Firefox.

Why are you fussy about the browser application, but not the contents of webpages (including form widgets and controls)? Shouldn't the interface within the application itself be more or less consistent?

[JonDeck]

good to know firefox is on the right track.

[ChasingApple]

As you can see some people just refuse to use FF because of chrome instead of cocoa, does it impede using the software? NO. Does it work? Yes. Are people anal? Yes. Have fun with Camino, it is far behind Firefox's functionality but it USES COCOA, YAY!

*rolls eyes*

For the rest of you with working brains, FF 2.0 RC3 is fantastic, give it a try if your in the market for a new browser.

Cheers

[Tomchu]

Firefox is slow -- on either Windows or OS X. Plus it leaks memory like a sieve. I gave up on Firefox when I found it using almost 400 MB of physical RAM one day.

[ChasingApple]

Originally Posted by Tomchu 

Firefox is slow -- on either Windows or OS X. Plus it leaks memory like a sieve. I gave up on Firefox when I found it using almost 400 MB of physical RAM one day.

Never EVER has that happened to me in Windows XP or OS X Panther / Tiger.

[Tomchu]

System had 2 GB of RAM, and Firefox had been up on it for about 5 days.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Why are you fussy about the browser application, but not the contents of webpages (including form widgets and controls)?

Didn't you already answer that question yourself?

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I dont see the point of making web applications look like OS X applications, rather than what the designers had intended and created. I suppose Mac UI consistency is nice, but there is no way of making the conventions of web applications themselves consistent with Mac interface guidelines, so why not just treat web applications as their own platform?

[Gee4orce]

I don't care if the widgets are 'cocoa' or anything else. What matters is whether or not the browser I'm using is leveraging the power of the built in OS controls. A good example is the system wide spell checker - if I add a word to the dictionary when checking the spelling in Safari, that word is available in every other application that utilises the same system service. Firefox has it's own home brew version of the spelling checker, so it's dictionary isn't integrated.

The toolbar editing controls are faux-OS X, and feel clunky. Why not just use the ones the OS supplies you ?

And, no, I don't want buttons and inputs in a web site to be styled according to the vagaries of the web designers whim. I want my buttons to look like buttons, like they do in the rest of the OS. Why is that such a bad thing ?

For the record, I think AJAX and Web 2.0 are the big red herrings. Here we have these powerful OSes with extremely powerful APIs that make like a dream for developers - and what are people suggesting we do ? Rewrite applications in friggin Javascript ! Worse, most AJAX apps look and feel like Windows apps - the ability to restyle the input controls are a big part of that. If windows apps are what you want, then you're reading the wrong message board !

Firefox is good. It's great in fact - especially if you're a windows users stuck with IE. But it's not what I would call a 'first class OS X citizen'. The same goes for Thunderbird. They both feel like dodgy Windows ports - which is exactly what they are. I want to see the FFX team start wrapping the browser in a genuine Cocoa interface, a-la Camino.

As far as the rendering engine goes, its fast and good - with good CSS support. I'd put it on a par with Safari in terms of overall layout accuracy, but quite a bit less on overall appearance. Pages just look better in Safari (or, rather, WebKit).

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce 

And, no, I don't want buttons and inputs in a web site to be styled according to the vagaries of the web designers whim. I want my buttons to look like buttons, like they do in the rest of the OS. Why is that such a bad thing ?

Well, I've given my theory. It's not a bad thing, but it's pretty superficial as long as the web is the web. Don't hold your breath in hoping that web apps will behave more like OS X apps either, if any they'll start to mimick Windows. Flash already includes default widgets such as a scrollbar which resemble Windows more than they do OS X, all of the gazillion Flash-based interfaces out there will also be a bottleneck in you obtaining what you want.

For the record, I think AJAX and Web 2.0 are the big red herrings. Here we have these powerful OSes with extremely powerful APIs that make like a dream for developers - and what are people suggesting we do ? Rewrite applications in friggin Javascript ! Worse, most AJAX apps look and feel like Windows apps - the ability to restyle the input controls are a big part of that. If windows apps are what you want, then you're reading the wrong message board !

Do you know what Ajax is? It is not a way of styling web apps. In fact, it has nothing to do with the look and feel of web apps.

No offense, but integrating web apps with the OS like you want is retarded. For one, there are security issues. Secondly, it would force every developer to write several versions of the same app to conform to the controls and guidelines of each OS. If this were to happen, guess how often we'd get the short end of the stick in developer resource allocation? Take all the websites that don't work in Safari now, and multiply this by a gazillion.

Finally, how would you bridge the OS managed front-end to a middleware language, to a backend? Right now this happens by form variables or via Javascript event handlers. How do you propose a PHP script is supposed to interpret an event handler from an OS which could be running anything? What about OSes where window/field focus occurs on mouseover as opposed to click? How would an "onclick" kind of event handler work if the user wasn't even using a mouse? If you don't do away with Javascript, many of the advantages it sounds like you desire would be lost.

No offense, but this is an incredibly bad idea.

Firefox is good. It's great in fact - especially if you're a windows users stuck with IE. But it's not what I would call a 'first class OS X citizen'. The same goes for Thunderbird. They both feel like dodgy Windows ports - which is exactly what they are. I want to see the FFX team start wrapping the browser in a genuine Cocoa interface, a-la Camino.

No, they are Linux ports. It's a matter of resource allocation and even having resources to allocate at all. If there were more Mac developers and Mac users, perhaps we'd have what we want - at least as a choice.

From a support perspective, what they have done is a real blessing. It is nice to have software that looks, feels, and behaves *exactly* the same way across multiple OSes. The web was intended to be a platform agnostic platform. I don't want to have to test stuff in multiple versions of Firefox on multiple browsers, and I don't want to provide separate instructions for doing things such as turning on cookies for the Windows/Mac/Linux version of Firefox. It is a PITA as it is to say things like "option click to download this if you are on a Mac, right click on Windows", and to look for browser user-agents to make other determinations.

The web was designed to be platform agnostic, and that's exactly what it should be. Mozilla was very smart in making their apps similarly platform agnostic.

As far as the rendering engine goes, its fast and good - with good CSS support. I'd put it on a par with Safari in terms of overall layout accuracy, but quite a bit less on overall appearance. Pages just look better in Safari (or, rather, WebKit).

Firefox is the gold standard in web development. Usually when a page works in Firefox, it works in Safari too, but people don't care a whole much about Safari. Firefox is the browser used for testing, and the rendering engine pages were designed to work with if not IE. As well it should be, Firefox leads the way in web standards. It has been more than one occasion where I've noticed things that work in Firefox (as they should) but not Safari. Go ask the Wordpress developers why the WSYIWYG toolbar is disabled in Safari, for instance.

[Gee4orce]

Actually, I work full time as a web developer, and have done so since - ooh - 1996-ish. So I do know what I'm talking about.

What you're saying here is that Firefox is the gold standard in rendering, and that it provides a consistent experience across all platforms. I don't dispute that. Unfortunately, it's not the best looking renderer. Like I said, it's accurate, but it frequently doesn't look as good as a WebKit rendition. It's good - it's a pretty high common standard - but it's not the 'best browza evah !' - not even close.

The reason some sites don't work in Safari is often more to do with Javascript support. WYSIWYG toolbars and that kind of thing do a lot of funky javascript, and JS is cross browser compatibility minefield that makes CSS look like childsplay. That's why even the big boys like Google only support FFX and IE at first, and extend into Safari support later. It's a lot of work to code for all the browser peculiarities.

I'm absolutely not opposed to open source projects - WebKit itself is open source. I just don't think Firefox offers a gold standard user experience. I keep it handy for the odd site that doesn't support Safari well enough (which are few and far between for my browsing preferences) and for my development work. But at best it gets about a 90% 'mac look and feel' rating from me.

For comparison, I'm writing this in OmniWeb, using it's expanded text input window, with native spell checking (which will probably upgrade to grammar checking too in Leopard). It has visual tabs down the side of the browser window, site specific preferences, RSS support, fast and accurate rendering, a Mac toolbar that I customised 'just so', auto saved workspaces...in short it's the genuine Mac experience.

You missed my point about AJAX. What I'm saying is there seems to be this drive towards web 2.0 apps which are in fact Javascript and DHTML reproductions of applications that we already have on the desktop. The difference is that they can't leverage the APIs in the OS, so everything is being recoded again from first principles.

Oh, and since Javascript is interpreted (or at best, JIT compiled, but I'm not sure any browsers do this even) an AJAX app will always be an order of magnitude slower than a native app in the OS, as well as adding a whole-nuther layer of abstraction. Now you have an application running within another application within the OS - that's a nightmare to debug - SHARK ain't going to be any use for profiling these AJAX apps.

Of course, the big advantage is that you can access the app from any computer. Whoopee. Don't know about you, but I have a laptop already thanks, and it tends to travel with me most places. All the apps I need, right there.

The biggest downside for me as a Mac user is that every AJAX app (except for Apple's Webmail ?) is designed to ape the appearance of a Windows XP app. If I wanted to use Windows XP, I would. But I have reasons for using Macs over XP : one of them is the consistent (and superior) look and feel, the other is the power of the APIs and frameworks. AJAX gives me neither.

AJAX apps have their place - Google Maps is a good one - but replace Word or Excel with something running on a webpage ? No thanks.

Strangely, Microsoft had the best idea here with .Net - which in essence is web enabled APIs. Shame it hasn't really caught on like they intended, maybe because the of the typical MS lack of elegance in the implementation ?

[besson3c]

There needs to be a layer of separation between the web and the OS for security reasons alone. I agree that what Omniweb does is very cool, I have no problems with a browser providing that sort of experience. I understand the Mozilla team focusing their resources elsewhere though.

The web provides an infrastructure that Desktop applications cannot right now. WHy are there more Groupware web applications then there are application connectors? In part because protocols such as GroupDAV (or CalDAV, can't remember the name for sure) are still not mature. How can an application authenticate securely to a server, and how can these data structures be organized so that they are usable by any application, regardless of platform, OS version, etc.?

The web essentially solves this problem for now by hosting content on a server, and in providing a means to develop applications that users, regardless of platform or any other local characteristics, can access, providing their browsing app matches the open specs. It too has its share of problems and limitations, but it is the best (only?) bridge that we have built so far. All I'm saying is, don't defeat its design. You're best off designing something else (like a Desktop application) if you want tight OS integration and access to local frameworks.

Moreover, like I said, security will continue to be where all of these hopes and desires begin and end. It's bad enough that a compromised website can affect a client workstation (i.e. ActiveX), what what do we do when the client needs to control the server? There is no way in hell you'd want to give a client the direct access it needs without putting careful (and often complicated) controls in place. There needs to exist layers of separation.

Well, layers of separation are exactly what we have now.


I'm a web developer too, but it sounds like your idea is contingent upon several other problems being solved before it is feasible. In the meantime, Omniweb and the like can provide some nice OS hooks for doing certain things that can improve the web browser as a local application, but it can only go so far, as we've discussed.

[aronnax]

Hi,
i think FF 2.0 has two faces - on the one hand many features that are greatly improved and a lot of special Mac stuff is solved or improved.
On the other hand the new default theme has many unnecessary bugs that even destroys most of the Mac improvements - for example: the tab close button on the wrong right site and others details, the icons sizes for example

And i think nearly all the guys here should stop talking about Carbon, Cocoa, Chrome, XUL and so on. It is more or less all wrong here.

Firefox use now a mixture of MachO-Carbon and XUL (Chrome is another name for it) for the GUI part.
Nearly all GUI parts are mixed with capabilities from the system (Carbon) and features that are not "native" respectively Firefox own stuff (XUL) - it is more or less impossible to say - there is only XUL and there is only "native" stuff.
For XUL is only one part important to know - without XUL are extension not possible and Firefox will always use XUL therefore.

And more or less the whole GUI from every app. is build with pictures - for the background, for buttons and so on - it makes for the visual impression no difference, if it is included with XUL or Carbon or Cocoa or whatever code.
Therefore, when some parts looks not like a native Mac app. the reason behind it is only in some parts the debt of missing "native" capabilities - much more would be easy possible in Firefox, but this is another story.

Someone mentioned here that Safari 3.0 will have more capabilities with in-page widgets - "they drop the aqua appearance when a style is applied"
Firefox 3.0 will have the same stuff - an aqua appearance and the known style capabilities.
In up to date FF 3.0 developer builds, the in-page widgets are build with Cocoa. They had an aqua appearance some days ago - now they removed the aqua appearance temporarily (it looks like in FF 2.0 again) - maybe a good example that Cocoa, Carbon or whatever is only one part - Cocoa has nothing to do with the style, it makes only some stuff easier or even possible.

Other examples where Cocoa makes it easier or even possible are the: OS spell checker, the service menus, an unified toolbar design. The reason behind these missing features are in the first place, that build with Carbon it would be very, very expensive and up to now (up to FF 2.0) only Carbon and XUL solutions were possible in Firefox.
Firefox 3.0 will have therefore all these stuff - and many other changes for the Mac as well - Quartz instead of Quickdraw will be another big change.

Regards
Aronnax

by the way,
some Firefox themes from me: GrApple - Aronnax`s Firefox Themes

[Tomchu]

Firefox is the "gold standard"? Hardly. My boss and the web designer at work are constantly working around bugs in Firefox's CSS implementation. Granted, they're not nearly as bad as what's in IE, but there have been a good few cases where Firefox clearly does something different from what the standard dictates.

KHTML/WebKit is probably *the* most correct rendering engine right now.

Just look at Acid2: The Second Acid Test

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Tomchu 

Firefox is the "gold standard"? Hardly. My boss and the web designer at work are constantly working around bugs in Firefox's CSS implementation. Granted, they're not nearly as bad as what's in IE, but there have been a good few cases where Firefox clearly does something different from what the standard dictates.

KHTML/WebKit is probably *the* most correct rendering engine right now.

Just look at Acid2: The Second Acid Test

Whether a browser passes Acid2 or other tests does not necessarily indicate that it is the browser developers are targeting their apps at. The fact is, there are a lot of sites and services that work (and render correctly) in Firefox that don't in Safari. I could give you some examples.

[zerroeffect]

I wonder why the Firefox team doesn't seem concerned with the Acid test? Hasn't this been an "issue" for a while? Perhaps because it's a very small worry amongst all these other things, like memory usage and cross-platform ability. I don't know.

99% of the pages I've visited in Firefox have worked well. I guess when the whole web is trying to play catch up to "standards" and STILL being coded incorrectly, a browser that can handle that bad code is a good thing.

I use Safari as my backup for the VERY rare occasion when Firefox doesn't work. And Firefox doesn't look bad when properly skinned:

[aronnax]

Originally Posted by Tomchu 

Firefox is the "gold standard"? Hardly. My boss and the web designer at work are constantly working around bugs in Firefox's CSS implementation. Granted, they're not nearly as bad as what's in IE, but there have been a good few cases where Firefox clearly does something different from what the standard dictates.

KHTML/WebKit is probably *the* most correct rendering engine right now.

Just look at Acid2: The Second Acid Test

There are many Web developer, who test there stuff only with one Browser all the time.
When is more or less ready and works perfect with their browser of choice, then all the other ones will be used for testings as well.
If the site is not correct coded, bugs will be only then visible - but not anymore in the browser of choice.
And this is by far the most important reason, why so many have a different opinion which Browser has the most correct rendering. They have simply no idea , but a different experience with browser bugs. It depends only on the browser of choice.
FF, Safari or Opera have simply an equal standard in this part - only the IE has greater inadequateness.
Which one is really the best knows likely nobody.

[aronnax]

Originally Posted by zerroeffect 

I wonder why the Firefox team doesn't seem concerned with the Acid test?

One simple reason - FF 2.0 has more or less no changes in the rendering engine capabilities (Gecko) and it was never intended to change something there for this release.
FF 3.0 will have updates in the rendering engine part as well - and then very likely with fixes for these (small) test as well. Possible that 3.0 test builds have already these fixes.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by aronnax 

One simple reason - FF 2.0 has more or less no changes in the rendering engine capabilities (Gecko) and it was never intended to change something there for this release.
FF 3.0 will have updates in the rendering engine part as well - and then very likely with fixes for these (small) test as well. Possible that 3.0 test builds have already these fixes.

I may be mistaken, but I believe that current Minefield builds feature Gecko 1.9, Mozilla's latest-and-greatest web renderer, which itself is also still under development.

As for me? I agree that 2.0RC3 is magnificent (especially on Windows), but just not integrated into the OS well enough yet. I'm still on Safari for OS X, but will probably end up switching back to Firefox for 3.0 if it's as great as they say it's going to be.

[TheMosco]

So I have 2 windows open, each with a few tabs. So I start pressing apple-w to close the tabs one by one as I go through them. When I get to the last tab, I press apple-w and what happens? I closes the tab but doesn't close the window. Press apple-w, still doesn't close the window. How do I close the window?

[Gee4orce]

Just to throw something totally random out here - have you guys tried OperaMini for your mobile phone ? It is brilliant - and free !