Faster fox

[andrewducker]

I've just upgraded to FF5 (available here - it's the release candidate), and the main thing that I'm liking about it so far is that it's faster to start up. Not that I restart it that often - it's generally very stable. But it's still nice to have it start up in less than three seconds, even on my laptop. Still not quite as fast as Chrome, but seeing as I still can't alter the default tab behaviour on Chrome, I'm not switching to it any time soon, and it's nice to have FF catching up, speed-wise.

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Is it less glitchy than firefox 4 - because ever since I upgraded to 4 I've had stability problems I never had before.

[andrewducker]

There are lots of fixes in there. I've not found FF4 glitchy though (except for it swallowing lots of memory if left open for days - which I have had an issue with).

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Me too, I've gone back to 3.x, so I'm pretty wary.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

FF5? Blimey, already?

Then again Chrome is on version 406 or something.

What do you change about the tab behaviour on FF / dislike about default tabs on Chrome?

BTW, link goes to a white page.

[andrewducker]

Link goes to an FTP server. If your browser doesn't handle ftp servers then I can see it not working.

And yeah, FF has moved to a much more efficient way of working, where they can release functionality regularly, rather than making people wait a year before releasing masses of functionality at once.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

My browser's FF 4, same as yours...

[andrewducker]

How odd!

[andrewducker]

Oh - and I want stuff opened in new tabs by default - if I click a bookmark, or type a URL or search I don't want it overwriting something I have open.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

What's the plugin or setting for FF?

I'd like that, though I've got the habit of CMD-T, CMD-K quite grained in.

[andrewducker]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/

Loads of options, but the one you want is under Events->Tab Opening.

I also tend to turn off the New Tab button on the end of the tab bar, tell it to never hide the tab bar, go to multiple rows of tabs when the tab bar gets full, and I have "undo tab close" set up as well - but I can't remember if that comes as standard with FF nowadays.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm still on 3.6.17. Whatever happened to x.y.z releases, is it just x now? Damned inflation.

[andrewducker]

There are still point releases - but not the multiple point releases, so far as I understand.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Opera? I've always found it faster than anything else. And many of the features that other browsers publicise in new versions are ones that Opera has had for years. The only downside is that there are still sites out there seemingly written just for IE or Firefox.

[andrewducker]

I've tried Opera a couple of times, and it's just never really gelled with me. Nothing I can explicitly point to. There are a few extensions I use that aren't on Opera though (like the one that saves things to Delicious).

I'll no doubt give it a go at some point again!

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I've always used Opera Mini (NOT Mobile!) on my phones - it did zoom in/out when nothing else did. The very latest version was no good on a non-touchscreen though, I had to go back. But with the new phone it's all very slick.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

see, I found Chrome slower than FF4 - both boot and operation...

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it says the file cannot be read. Any ideas?

[andrewducker]

Try here?
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Mozilla-Firefox-v5-for-Windows/1032985422/19

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I found the latest build link actually. Thanks!