Anyone tried Firefox 4 Beta?

I was using firefox 4 beta when beta for it first started. Then I accidently downloaded Chrome and haven't gone back since. The beta and the v3 were so slow at opening compared to Chrome it is ridiculous. Firefox really need to sort it out now or I won't return, and I have been using firefox for years.
 
Stryda09 said:
I was using firefox 4 beta when beta for it first started. Then I accidently downloaded Chrome and haven't gone back since. The beta and the v3 were so slow at opening compared to Chrome it is ridiculous. Firefox really need to sort it out now or I won't return, and I have been using firefox for years.
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It is slow because prior to Beta7 it was still using the old 3.6JS engine. Since beta7 there is Trace Monkey included and GPU acceleration turned on by standard, it is more comparable to Chrome in speed now.
 
Stryda09 said:
I was using firefox 4 beta when beta for it first started. Then I accidently downloaded Chrome and haven't gone back since. The beta and the v3 were so slow at opening compared to Chrome it is ridiculous. Firefox really need to sort it out now or I won't return, and I have been using firefox for years.
Click to expand...

Yup, main critiscm aimed at FF at moment. It's due to the add-ons and plugins system, and the stuff you've installed. Newer plugins should be better, but in general, avoid sync plugins and plugins that wait for a server response. They can add serious time to the start up. Chrome's plugin system is quicker, but you can do far less, but this keeps it snappy. Horses for courses....
 
If it's the speed of chrome you like (opening mainly) then you will be disappointed. Otherwise it's a solid browser with excellent support and customisation. Chrome's plugin system is faster but a hell of a lot more restrictive.
 
This is what I recently posted on my clan forums when someone there asked me about the beta...
Me said:
Decided to try the beta.

Quite like it. Very fast, looks good, seems stable, etc. Don't know if it will tempt me away from Chrome though.

EDIT: No, don't think it can.

Don't like it's font rendering. Bold and fuzzy. Looks nice, especially on forums, but it's a bitch to read. Chrome uses ClearType, which is so much easier on the eyes.

I don't really like the annoying orange button thing at the top left. Also don't like that you can't see extensions unless you enable the ugly bar at the bottom. I'm not really a fan of the split address/search bar. It still only loads one thread so can't make use of my CPU properly and if something crashes the entire thing falls over. On top of all that it's slower than Chrome in general day to day browsing too.

But damn, hardware accelerated browsing is SWEET. Too bad it has no real use what so ever. Might try it on my laptop though...

EDIT 2: Just tried Chrome 9 beta. It's even faster (!) and has the hardware accelerated thingie too. Sorry Firefox, you fail
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FF 4 has hardware rendering too my friend. Not turned on by default until post 8 beta.
The text is because hardware rendering currently doesn't use truetype/cleartype to render with.

I think the browser wars are hotting up. Won't use Chrome just yet as I have several extensions that I use that are not ported to Chrome yet...
 
So Beta 10 is out....

Feels a little smoother than before.....

Also some of the UI has changed minor details.

Tabs aremore easy to see when you use the minimised UI.

However anyone know what is the default Firefox UI? When you install the Beta 10 after having deleted all previous firefox installations it install the browser but not in the new reduced Firefox 4 UI, but something similar to Firefox 3.6...
 
AFAIK the reduced UI is the default. Must be something up with that installation, as everytime I've installed it that what I've got. However, I've not done a clean install of b10!
 
I can't test atm but have you tested it btw? the problem I had forcing the current version on FF4 was that the connect/edit buttons etc did nothing!

Will test tonight either way :p
 
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