Firefox: Mozilla successfully rethinks its browser

Feb 24, '04 11:45:00AM

Contributed by: robg

Firefox imageThe macosxhints Rating:
8 of 10
[Score: 8 out of 10]

Browsers, browsers, everywhere ... even with Safari dominating the Mac landscape, there are still lots of alternatives out there. Mozilla has long been one of my favorites (it has a spot in the hall of fame), but I'd stopped using it as my primary browser due to its strange UI on the Mac, its slow initial loading speed, and a few other such quirks. Then along comes Firefox...

Firefox is the second release (the first was called Firebird) of Mozilla's next generation dedicated browser. Whereas Mozilla (the product) was a browser, news reader, mail client, and HTML composer all rolled into one program, Firefox is just a lean, mean, browsing machine. The first time I loaded it, it took quite a while to launch, and I thought "Oh no, shades of Mozilla..." However, all subsequent loads have been quite speedy -- while it's not quite as quick to load as Safari, it's only about a half-second behind on my machine. Once loaded, you'll find all the usual "leading edge browser" features, such as tabs, tab groups, a good bookmark manager (including bookmarks in the sidebar, which I like), decent image blocking features, "type to select" link activation, and support for the most popular browser browser plug-ins (including the indispensible PDF Browser Plugin).

To test Firefox, I put it to use on my daily macosxhints' updates. I post the stories each day by working on a local copy of Geeklog and working through the submissions queue. I'll command-click 10 to 12 stories at a time, opening each on a background tab. Using Safari, this maxes both CPUs in my box for three or four seconds while it loads all the tabs, and the fans in the G5 will spool up a notch from their normal idle levels. With Firefox, the CPUs max for under a second, and I never hear the fans spool up -- this is an amazing difference in CPU utilization (previously, I had thought Geeklog/MySQL were responsible for the CPU spikes, but it seems it was all browser-driven).

One of the nice features of Firefox is its support for third-party themes. There's an extensive collection of themes available that let you customize the look of the browser. One minor issue I've found is that most of the third party themes seem to have scrollbar issues on OS X; the current exception to that rule (and my current theme of choice) is Abstract Mac. Abstract Mac has small icons (which I prefer), and since it's based on the OS X standard Firefox theme, the scrollbars work well. Themes can be downloaded and installed directly within the browser, though you'll have to re-launch it to activate a newly downloaded theme.

Just as Firefox supports third-party themes, Firefox also supports third-party extensions (153 of them as of today) that can greatly extend the feature set of the browser. As with themes, you install extensions directly within Firefox, and then manage them through the Extensions panel of the preferences dialog box. With 153 to pick from, you can probably find one to do whatever it is you think that Firefox should be doing :). Personally, I use Adblock (a powerful ad blocker), Flash Click to View (turns any Flash animation into a button that you click if you want to see it), and Download Statusbar (puts your downloads in a tabbed bar at the bottom of the browser window). Another powerful extension (though it can slow down the browser if you enable all its features) is Tabbrowser Extensions, which takes tabbed browsing to another level entirely -- for instance, you can rearrange your tabs by clicking and dragging.

NOTE: Some of the above URLs are directly pointing at the author's web pages; the easiest way to install any of these extensions is through the Extensions section of Firefox's preferences.

While there are still some inconsistent UI bits in Firefox, and the third-party themes need some help to work well with OS X, this is an amazingly powerful and fast browser. I can't say it's completely replaced Safari yet as my default, but it's only at version 0.8; by the time it hits 1.0, I suspect it may have assumed that role on my machines.

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