Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Firefox 4 Opinions and Comments

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-09-2011, 06:35 AM:

Anyone try Firefox 4 yet? Any opinions/comments? As this version has significant changes to the graphical interface, I'm trying to decide if I want to upgrade from 3.6.17.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2011, 08:39 AM:

The only things they changed were the arrangement of the buttons, basically. It takes you a little bit of time to figure it out but, after a session or two, you probably won't notice anymore.

The new browser will run noticeably faster on most computers.

Go for it.

Posted by Jussi Siponen (Member # 5572) on 05-09-2011, 09:47 AM:

I've had less issues with rampant memory consumption (3.6.x had to be restarted a couple of times per week -- this has happened maybe once with 4.0.x so far).

This could be me imagining things, but Javascript performance seems worse than it was with 3.6.x. Logging in to Gmail occasionally pops up the "this is taking longer than expected..." message.

Javascript notification/dialog boxes are now layers on top of the web page which triggered them: you still interact with the browser and eg. switch between tabs even if one page has a dialog open.

Firefox is and - for now - remains my main browser: I'm a tab junkie and can't function properly without the Tree Style Tab extension anymore [Big Grin]

Having said that, I have to test out web apps on different browsers for work (currently: IE 9/8/7, Firefox 4, Chrome, Safari & Opera):

- IE 9 seems to lag behind times in performance (but is *worlds* better than any previous version)
- Chrome is the fastest browser for JS heavy web apps
- Safari on Windows feels sluggish (and has scary security issues)
- Opera is a bit quirky (and jaw dropping fast for general browsing)

One day, perhaps soon, I won't feel happy with FF anymore and jump ships. There are certainly plenty of good alternatives.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2011, 10:41 AM:

quote: Jussi Siponen
... Safari on Windows feels sluggish (and has scary security issues)...

Just take out the words, "...Safari on..." and you have pretty much summed it up.

[Wink]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-09-2011, 10:42 AM:

I used Firefox from its beginning and the Mozilla browser before that. Over the last year I pretty much switched over to Google Chrome.

Firefox just had too many performance issues, both on my old notebook computer at home and desktop machine at the office. It would take a long time to start. The Flash plug-in was prone to crash (and even dump my notebook off its WiFi connection). Various plug-ins (like NoScript) could be disabled with each point release update. I just got tired of it.

I don't know all the nuts about bolts stuff on the differences between Chrome and Firefox. On my computers Chrome works a lot faster and is more stable. Security-wise it seems a little more "sand-boxed" than Firefox. Although plenty of people are worried about what Google could be doing to track browsing habits. The only thing I don't like about Chrome is how its "minimalist" interface tends to hide all sorts of functions. For instance the built in PDF viewer has next to nothing in terms of a toolbar. I had to do some searching in order to find the secret "Ctrl-S" function to save a PDF file to the local hard disc.

The Mozilla folks have a little more work to do on Firefox to get me back into using it again.

quote: Jussi Siponen
Safari on Windows feels sluggish (and has scary security issues)

Sounds like a marketing scheme to get people to buy a Mac.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 05-09-2011, 10:44 AM:

You can make it look pretty much like 3.xx did by re-enabling certain menu bars if you want, but I've gotten used to the lean-looking default version and, after moving some of the buttons around, really like it.

Posted by Jussi Siponen (Member # 5572) on 05-09-2011, 11:57 AM:

quote: Jussi Siponen
Safari on Windows feels sluggish (and has scary security issues)

Hmm, let me re-phrase that:

Safari has scary security issues

quote:
During the first day of the competition Safari and Internet Explorer were defeated by researchers. Safari was version 5.0.3 installed on a fully-patched Mac OS X 10.6.6. French security firm VUPEN was first to attack the browser, and five seconds after the browser visited its specially-crafted malicious web page, it had both launched the platform calculator application (a standard harmless payload to demonstrate that arbitrary code has been executed) and written a file to the hard disk (to demonstrate that the sandbox had been bypassed).

PWN 2 OWN 2011

(Disclaimer: no Windows fanboying here, I own 3 Windows PCs and 2 Macs. And an iPhone & iPad.)

[Big Grin]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-09-2011, 03:58 PM:

I like FF4, but it doesn't seem to have the "Refresh" button anywhere. ()But, I'm used to pressing CTRL-R for that anyway.)

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2011, 04:27 PM:

The toolbar is customizable: VIEW > TOOLBARS > Customize...

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-09-2011, 05:13 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
I like FF4, but it doesn't seem to have the "Refresh" button anywhere. ()But, I'm used to pressing CTRL-R for that anyway.)

It's at the far-right end of the URL toolbar by default.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-09-2011, 05:27 PM:

Oh yeah, there it is....they changed the looks of it a bit. Sneaky bastids!

Posted by James Wallor (Member # 6154) on 05-09-2011, 05:54 PM:

Fx 4 is a worthwhile update. Miles ahead of Fx 3.6 (hell, Fx 3.x was awful). It still lags behind Chrome and Opera, however.

Bobby, Chrome should run faster on any machine. It's based upon Webkit for a rendering engine (for those that don't know, Webkit is what Safari is based off of and the Chrome programmers made it display pages exactly the same as Safari, even with the bugs, but refused to introduce security hazards with doing this), and it's amazing V8 javascript engine that only barely beats out Carakan (what Opera uses).

Also, Internet Explorer 9 isn't a modern browser, per se, but it's very close. Internet Explorer 9 is about on par with Firefox 3.6. So it's not bad at all, but it could still use better standards implementation and speed improvements (although it is quite faster than Fx 3.6).

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-09-2011, 06:08 PM:

Researchers Say New Bugs Can Bypass Google Chrome Sandbox

May 9, 2011, 3:40PM
Researchers Say New Bugs Can Bypass Google Chrome Sandbox
by Dennis Fisher

Researchers at the French security firm VUPEN say that they have discovered several new vulnerabilities in Google Chrome that enable them to bypass the browser's sandbox, as well as ASLR and DEP and run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine.

The company said that they are not going to disclose the details of the bugs right now, but that they have shared information on them with some of their government customers through its customer program. The vulnerabilities are present in the latest version of Chrome running on Windows 7, VUPEN said.

VUPEN published a video that demonstrates an attack that exploits the Chrome vulnerabilities, although there is no further clues about the bugs themselves.

"The exploit shown in this video is one of the most sophisticated codes we have seen and created so far as it bypasses all security features including ASLR/DEP/Sandbox, it is silent (no crash after executing the payload), it relies on undisclosed (0day) vulnerabilities discovered by VUPEN and it works on all Windows systems (32-bit and x64)," VUPEN said in its advisory about the bugs.
"The video shows the exploit in action with Google Chrome v11.0.696.65 on Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (x64). The user is tricked into visiting a specially crafted web page hosting the exploit which will execute various payloads to ultimately download the Calculator from a remote location and launch it outside the sandbox at Medium integrity level."

Newer versions of Chrome include a sandbox component that is designed to prevent exploits against the browser from being used to run malicious code in other applications on the machine. Google has been offering bounties for more than a year now to researchers who find and report new bugs in Chrome, and other applications, to the company. The highest reward, which is $3133.7, is reserved for the most serious bugs, including those that are able to bypass the sandbox in Chrome.

But VUPEN is reserving details of the vulnerability and sharing just with its customers. Government agencies and defense contractors have been consistent buyers of vulnerabilities for some time and some researchers say that the prices these organizations pay for bugs can be as much as 20 or 30 times higher than what most vendors offers.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-09-2011, 07:03 PM:

The only thing I don't like about Firefox 4 is that they went the Safari and Chrome route and moved the REFRESH and STOP buttons. WHY???? How does this enhance the browsing experience? Other than that it seems to be very fast, good and reliable. I use the Adblock Plus plug-in and I rarely ever see ads.

quote: Randy Stankey
The toolbar is customizable: VIEW > TOOLBARS > Customize...

Not seeing the ability to add Reload and Stop buttons anywhere.

I see only two issues with Firefox:

-The Bookmarks menu will get glitchy every once in a blue moon. This is fixed by closing the menu and re-clicking on it. Like I said, it's rare, but it happens, at least in the Mac version.

-Flash performance is less than optimal. Sometimes Youtube videos will seem to drop frames. But Flash is ancient and archaic and hopefully it will be dropped from existence in the future.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-09-2011, 08:01 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
Not seeing the ability to add Reload and Stop buttons anywhere.

That's because they don't need to be added. They're already there.

The reload/stop button is at the far end of the URL toolbar. When the page is fully-loaded, it looks like a 3/4-circle with an arrow at the end with a white background to represent reload and when a page is loading the button is shown as red-background with a black x to represent stop.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2011, 09:48 PM:

Just drag the existing buttons that are already on the button bar to the order you want them in.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 05-09-2011, 09:58 PM:

You can also reload and stop by using right-click. I also use "reload-every" add-on to refresh the weather radar screen during bad storms.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-09-2011, 11:53 PM:

Ah, OK I see. It won't let me add the STOP button as its own entity. It only activates in lieu of the refresh if a page is currently loading.

Now how do I get it back to default?
EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-10-2011, 01:08 AM:

No it does allow them to be separate icons. If you edit the layout of the toolbar and move the icons to being next to the forward/back arrows you'll have a separate stop and refresh button but if you put them back to the far right-end of the URL bar then you end up with one icon that changes accordingly.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-10-2011, 02:01 AM:

I'm fine with the default as I've gotten used to it. I'm not sure what the logic was behind the change, but whatever, I guess.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 05-10-2011, 08:24 AM:

If you prefer the original Firefox 3 tab bar, there is a free plugin to get it back:

Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+