1st 2 hours with: Firefox 4

Well the time at the start of typing this post is 01:30am 24/03/2011 GMT. Which means that I have spent around 2 hours with Mozilla’s Latest and Greatest Browser, Firefox 4. Now I had read quite a bit about it on the BBC news site and things like that, but hadn’t really payed much attention to it, until tonight, where I was a little bored of Uni assignments and decided to progress with the update.

Installation

First things first, I went onto Mozilla and downloaded the installer. Now I remember when Firefox 3 came out, and how it ended up erasing all of my bookmarks, passwords and things like that, so I was a little cautious when it came to upgrading this time, and I created a backup of my bookmarks and things to make sure I was covered. I double clicked the installer and it loaded up andit seemed the same as if I was using installing firefox for the first time, which in my opinion is always a good thing.

Went through the installer, and it even came up with the word ‘Upgrade’ a couple of times. And sure enough Mozilla have worked hard to make a seemless install, because all of my bookmarks and things were still there. It even popped up with a message saying that some of my add-ons weren’t compatible, would I like to search to see if there is a compatible version. This it did, with some success and managed to keep my Gorillaz style Persona for the styling of the new browser: Result.

First Thoughts

Now like anything new, human beings tend to hate it. And Firefox 4 was no exception. I found myself puzzled by the new style user interface, but after taking the tour had found it reasonable straight forward. The main things that stand out at first are the placing of tabs and the Firefox button. The tabs, unlike previous versions are at the top, similar to Google Chrome. This may seem an odd place to place these, but seems to make a fair bit of sense for two reasons. 1) It makes the address bar, etc. seem part of that tab, and probably most importantly 2) Saves space. I mean I have a large 23” monitor with a 1920 x 1080 resolution so space is rarely a consern for me, especially with the fact that the title area probably only took up around 200px of the 1080 height, leaving around 700 (after taking into consideration the windows stuff) for web pages. But having the tabs at the top has made much more space, its like having someone opening a curtain on the top and bottom of the screen, using probably around 100px of space at the top. The firefox button does strike as odd at first. But again its something that seems logical as there is now no need for the menu buttons at the top of the browser, again using up room. Inside the Firefox button is everything that you would ever need to access, held in one easy to find place.

The Nitty Gritty

There are several new features in this new version of firefox, some of which I have yet to come across, so for this section I will go over the new features I have used, rather than the whole list which can be viewed on Mozilla’s Website.

As well as tabs being placed at the top of the browser, Mozilla have also brought in a new type of tab. The App Tab. This tab is designed for those times when you have a particular website that stays open 24/7 (in my case Facebook and Twitter). The idea is that you pin the tab containing the website you keep open, and it converts the tab into the size of the websites Favicon, and removes the title and close button. This means that you can keep those website open the whole time you have the browser open without having to worry about them taking up the space for the tabs you currently need. This is also great on little screens on netbooks and things as they take up very little room.

Another feature that I have used is Firefox Sync. The first thing that became obvious to me when I saw there was Firefox Sync, was that Firefox was available for Android. And as you all know I have a Dell Streak, and so I installed Firefox to replace my current Dolphin HD Browser. I haven’t really used this much, but the sync feature is very nifty. You basically select what you would like to sync with other Firefox browsers on your other machines, and Firefox handles the rest. Simple. It even works on my Android version. So this means I can get the full web history from my phone, on my desktop. Enabling me to continue going through those bits and bobs that I was searching through during the odd lecture or on the train.

Conclusion

As I say I have used Firefox 4 for little over 2 hours, but I feel that it will build on v3’s successes and introduce key features, like app tabs and syncing that we wonder, just how did we live without it.