Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Veltliner · Jun 27, 2011, 04:50 AM

What's the matter with Firefox.

Used to be such a good browser, but now it's collecting bugs like an ant eater.

1. There's a forum called webhostingtalk.com. You can no longer post with Firefox there. Anything you post will get turned down with the message "message too short. It must be 10 letters or more". Same reply even if you'd post "War and Peace".

Safari works fine.

2. Pop-up blocker craze.

When you go to Livebook websites and click on "blog", the pop-up blocker blocks the blog.

No problem with Safari.

What's going on? Is Mozilla changing so much code they are losing control? Has so much been rewritten?

ibook_steve · Jun 27, 2011, 03:59 PM

I unfortunately see Firefox heading down the Netscape path of too much bloat. I switched from FF to Chrome last year and I haven't looked back. Chrome's main problem is resource usage (just check it out in Activity Monitor), but it is still the fastest, easiest browser I've found.

Steve

Thorzdad · Jun 27, 2011, 06:18 PM

FWIW, judging by this thread at WHT, you aren't alone.

mduell · Jun 27, 2011, 06:59 PM

Is the error immediate, before the page is submitted? Sounds like a JS issue, either with Firefox's JS engine (unlikely) or WHT's JS.

Veltliner · Jun 28, 2011, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

I unfortunately see Firefox heading down the Netscape path of too much bloat. I switched from FF to Chrome last year and I haven't looked back. Chrome's main problem is resource usage (just check it out in Activity Monitor), but it is still the fastest, easiest browser I've found.

Steve

I'm thinking of switching to Safari. (Just have to find a way to get my extensive bookmark collection across).

But I'll take a look at Chrome. What do you like more about Chrome than about Safari?

Veltliner · Jun 28, 2011, 03:34 AM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

FWIW, judging by this thread at WHT, you aren't alone.

Yes, WHT sent that link to me, too.

The issue has still not been fixed, so Firefox really has issues.

Veltliner · Jun 28, 2011, 03:36 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

Is the error immediate, before the page is submitted? Sounds like a JS issue, either with Firefox's JS engine (unlikely) or WHT's JS.

in WHT: You write your post, you click "submit reply" - and get the error message. And your post is gone.

in Livebooks: You click on the link to the blog, and the yellow bar appears: "Firefox has suppressed a pop-up" (Only it's not a pop-up. It's a normal link).

Firefox still seems to have a very big share of the browser market. But this could change quickly with bugs like this.

besson3c · Jun 28, 2011, 03:58 AM

Firefox on the Mac may very well be a second class citizen to Firefox Windows where it is immensely popular.

Chrome handles having many tabs open better than Safari right now because of each tab being its own process. Safari will adopt this approach in its next major release, I believe, the debut of Webkit2. Chrome also has some extensions that Safari doesn't and vice versa. I've found Chrome's Javascript engine to be less buggy than Safari's, and its adoption of Webkit changes such as its developer tools more bleeding edge than Safari (although if you really want this you could run the Webkit Nightlies if you don't mind the instability).

Big Mac · Jun 28, 2011, 08:43 AM

Yeah, Firefox's quality seems to be declining but not just on the Mac side - I've seen unnecessary sluggishness on Windows too.

For me browsing on the desktop is starting to come to a combination of Opera and Chrome. Opera is excellent at running a lot of tabs in very little memory, but it has some compatibility problems. I still often use Safari on the OS X side, though.

Veltliner · Jun 29, 2011, 12:00 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Firefox on the Mac may very well be a second class citizen to Firefox Windows where it is immensely popular.

Chrome handles having many tabs open better than Safari right now because of each tab being its own process. Safari will adopt this approach in its next major release, I believe, the debut of Webkit2. Chrome also has some extensions that Safari doesn't and vice versa. I've found Chrome's Javascript engine to be less buggy than Safari's, and its adoption of Webkit changes such as its developer tools more bleeding edge than Safari (although if you really want this you could run the Webkit Nightlies if you don't mind the instability).

I heard so many good things about Chrome - I really have to give Chrome a trial run!