Can Firefox Be Saved? Two Proposals

Datamation ^ | 4 April 2011 | Serdar Yegulalp

[ShadowAce]

[abb]

I loaded up Firefox 4 a couple of days ago. A much superior product. Seems to handle the various flash conflicts better than the 3.xx version.

Definitely faster to load. I’m impressed.

[ShadowAce]

I have yet to investigate it. I keep hearing conflicting reports.

[Psycho_Bunny]

This guy sounds exactly like someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

[ShadowAce]

LOL! As I mentioned above, I haven’t tried it yet. What’s he got wrong?

[mnehring]

I am not happy at all with 4. The performance is far worse than previous and it is buggy. Caret browsing, for example, keeps toggling keeping me from being able to use pg up and pg down when browsing (among other things). I have caught myself going back to IE.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I have no idea....I'm been slapping 4 on machine after machine and have yet to have a problem with anything other than 3rd party Add Ons that haven't been updated, yet.

I'm guessing that being a "Tech Writer" his machine is junked up with early release software he's played with, and that's creating problems.

Considering AdBlock Plus and Flash Block, there's really no reason to use any other browser.

[ShadowAce]

The performance is far worse than previous and it is buggy.

I've heard this, but I've also heard the performance is better.

What platform/configuration are you using?

[ShadowAce]

Considering AdBlock Plus and Flash Block, there's really no reason to use any other browser.

That's been my experience as well with Firefox since the days of Firebird.

Thanks for your input.

[mnehring]

Windows 7, I don’t have any special add-ons running in the background other than the usual Flash. Something else I just noticed. It doesn’t seem to like Adobe Acrobat Pro. In other browsers, if you click a .pdf link, it will open in Acrobat Pro. With version 4, it doesn’t recognize Pro as a replacement for Adobe Reader and just gives an error message.

[DManA]

I loaded it a month ago and have not had even one problem.

[Second Amendment First]

I went to 4 last week from 3.6 and have been quite happy with it. The old version had become buggy and was crashing. I haven’t had any problems at all with 4. I like Firefox for the addons that keep out the junk. Haven’t tried Chrome.

[abb]

I was very dubious, as I’m running a ten-year old installation of XP with limited hard drive space (there’s never enough).

Performance has definitely improved. I’ll probably put it on my laptop this week.

[ShadowAce]

Thanks guys. A couple more positive reviews for 4.

Since I don't run Win7, I may go ahead and try it out.

[Second Amendment First]

I finally gave up on Adobe; too bloated and too many problems. I’m using PDF-XChange Viewer and am very happy with it.

[taildragger]

Considering AdBlock Plus and Flash Block, there's really no reason to use any other browser.

I have more for you in a moment. But I am on 4 and it is slick IMHO.

I will do anything to stay away from anything Google given their relationship with "The One". No Crome, no-GMail, but I still looking for a better search engine, maybe Screwgle (spelled correct?) just to piss Google off.

Other Add-Ons....

* BetterPrivacy ( a must, "LSO's" are bad)
* Cooliris ( ah so so...)
* FasterFox Lite ( makes it faster)
* Ghostery (a must, stop them tracking for marketing purposes)
* NoScript (again like Ghostery, a must )
* PDF dowload (neat)
* Startup.Service 0.2 ( opens Firefox Faster)
* Vacuum Places ( cleans up sqlite files, increase speed )
* Tweak Network (maybe redundant w/ FasterFox, but try it...)
* Morning Coffee ( for your regular surfs, I have it off @ the moment, it's ok...)

[oh8eleven]

I am not happy at all with 4. The performance is far worse than previous
I disagree 100%. I started using FF4 Beta 6 right through FF4 RC and I saw an incredible increase in performance.
In fact, installing the beta versions never overwrote the old version (3.6?), and comparing the two was easy.
The only "bug" I found in the beta versions was a loss of some bookmarks which were easily retrieved and reloaded.

[Second Amendment First]

Agree about NoScript and Ghostery as a must. I’ll have to try some of the others you mention. Thanks.