Why Firefox 4 Is Winning the Browser Battle

PC World ^ | 03/23/2011 | Katherine Noyes

[OldDeckHand]

Microsoft may have seen fit to boast about the 2.35 million downloads its new Internet Explorer 9 browser received in its first 24 hours, but Mozilla's Firefox 4 has since essentially blown such figures out of the water.

In fact, not only did Firefox 4 claim a million downloads in its first three hours and almost 7 million in its first day--surpassing by far Internet Explorer 9--but by Wednesday, the day after its official release, it had already claimed almost 2 percent of the worldwide Internet browser market, according to research firm StatCounter.

[Capt. Tom]

When I first put my website up many years ago; over 95% of the browsers viewing it were MS browsers.

Today many people use FireFox and I recently did my site over to make it viewable on both MSIE and Firefox.
There is a slight difference. Not much, but on some other browsers, it is so bad you can't straddle the difference.- tom

[OldDeckHand]

'as a developer, I have to use FF. However, I find it a memory hog. Does FF4 address this?"

I have noticed that FF suffers from (my phrase) "memory creep". It seems that from the time that you launch it, it uses an increasing share of available memory (and I have 8GB). I have not found that the latest release remedies it, thus far. This is one of the reasons I liked IE9 64-bit - IE9 doesn't suffer this ailment, and was hoping FF4 would be available in 64-bit.

[Sarah Barracuda]

Thanks..yes I also notice that it seems faster..another difference I notice is the refresh button, I don’t see it here anymore, if I want to refresh a page I have to go on the top where you put in a link there is a little refresh button but I’m used to it when it used to be on the left side, next to the stop and home button..is there a way of getting that back?

[TomGuy]

as a developer, I have to use FF. However, I find it a memory hog. Does FF4 address this?

FF has had that problem since as early as version 0.7. Mozilla claimed in their various forum discussions that the memory leak was caused by some unknown extension(s). They have never accepted responsibility.

From version 2 to 3, the problem was reduced. However, FF 3 can still eat up memory even when it is just open but not in use.

I tried several Windows ram/memory releasing programs. The only one that seemed to work was a little program called CleanMem from pcwintech.com/cleanmem.

I haven't tried version 4 yet. I am back at 3.6.3, because later 3.6 series created havoc on my computer.

[Calvin Locke]

I was reminded that control-r was the keyboard refresh command when I mentioned about having to get used to the address bar location.

[Calvin Locke]

...even though I have automatic updates enabled.

Mine popped up with a notice that 4 was available.

[Straight Vermonter]

The worst problem I have with IE is that it doesn’t like a blank cell in a table. I always have to remember to go back and put something, like the space symbol, in each empty cell. Drives me crazy.

[ken in texas]

Thanks for the reminder. I had already seen the update, but held off until this afternoon.

Thanks to some tips, I moved the tabs bar to the previous layout.

As SB said, there is no reload button. It also looks like they've removed the "Stop Page Load" button.

I understand there might be keyboard shortcuts for these things, but when I browse web sites most of my activity is with the mouse. I don't want to use the keyboard for something I used to do with a click. Unless the option is buried somewhere, someone really goofed on the User-Interface.

[knews_hound]

F5 is also the refresh button.

I tend to be more keyboard-centric and use it rather than the mouse most of the time.

Cheers,

knewshound

[thatjoeguy]

Well I’ll be, since FF 4 is out why the heck is my FF 3.x.xx downloading another 3.x.xx+1??????

Didn’t know 4 was out, you’d think that 3 would at least mention it or something.

[SamAdams76]

I switched to Chrome a few months ago and it has turned out to be the best browsing experience I've ever had. At first, it seemed kind of sparse but once I got the hang of it, I came to appreciate the simplicity of it. It's fast and seems to load every page properly.

I'll have to check out FF4 however.

[SamAdams76]

I switched to Chrome a few months ago and it has turned out to be the best browsing experience I've ever had. At first, it seemed kind of sparse but once I got the hang of it, I came to appreciate the simplicity of it. It's fast and seems to load every page properly.

I'll have to check out FF4 however.

[thatjoeguy]

I’m likin’ it. Seems to be a bit quicker (then 3.x) on page loads.

[Cyber Liberty]

That is way cool. I just added it.

[Straight Vermonter]

I probably should have mentioned that there is an addon for “tree view” and for youtube embedding as well. I don’t know what freeper made them but they are very cool.

[Windflier]

Speaking of the forms on here, do you use the user script addon for FreeRepublic? It makes posting much easier.

How so? Brief description before I download it? Thanks.

[Tainan]

I have been a Firefox user since 1.0. Been happy with it. Rarely use anything else. I've tried Safari and a few other browsers - not happy with them. Back to Firefox.

Yesterday, my auto notice informed me that a Firefox upgrade, 3.6.16, was available. I did the upgrade.
As soon as it was finished a screen came on that pretty much demanded that I should upgrade to the new, improved, faster, funner 4.0.
I did....and the trouble began. 4.0 SUCKS...SUCKS BIG TIME

I lost all my add-ons....All my bookmarks...all my 'helper' links in my tool bar. GONE!

I use these items extensively...EVERDAY...ALL DAY.

Then the long process of trying to get back to where I was began. XP has its 'restore' feature....yeah...I used it. Finally, after 3.5 hours of lost time, I got 3.6.16 installed and operable....BUT STILL NO ADD-ONS, BOOKMARKS AND HELPER LINKS IN MY TOOL BAR.

I still like and use Firefox...but 4.0.....FUHGEDDABOUTIT FOR NOW!

[Tainan]

The ‘Gresemonkey’ add-on makes posting a LOT easier also.

[Straight Vermonter]

The box for posting is much larger (about 99% of your screen width) and there are buttons for the most commonly used HTML tags. If you post images or links or just like nicely formatted posts then it is definitely worth downloading.

[Windflier]

...there are buttons for the most commonly used HTML tags. If you post images or links or just like nicely formatted posts then it is definitely worth downloading.

That sounds very interesting. I've wanted a rich text editor for FR for a long time. This sounds like something close to that.

Question: do you have to activate it manually for each FR session, or does it automatically supplant the normal FR posting window after it's installed?

Thanks!