Firefox is a stalwart of the web 2.0 era. It was the first real competition to Internet Explorer in terms of browser-share and mindshare. It standardized the web for users of Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems and was probably the first time people heard of free open source software. Firefox was blazing the trail toward a unified web experience... and then 3.0 happened. At first it was cool to be part of that world record 8 million+ downloads back in ’08. But nearly three years later we were still on 3.x. The experience wasn’t as nimble as we had become accustomed to. The browser hung up on startup. Opening new tabs and loading web pages seemed to take forever. Many jumped ship to Chrome, the younger, slimmer and sexier web browser (I went back to Safari).
Most people know whether or not they like a web browser within the first few minutes. Upon using Firefox for the first time I remembered why we all loved Firefox in its heyday. Firefox 4 instantly felt faster, lighter and looked better than its predecessor. This is a weird way of putting it but here goes: going from Firefox 3 to Firefox 4 felt like going from IE 6 to Firefox way back in 2004. Personally, this Poor Mac doesn’t use many Firefox extensions: just AdBlock Plus and Easy Youtube Downloader. Both extensions have worked seamlessly from the beginning, as well they should considering Firefox 4 has been in beta for ages. Also if you’re in uni and need to use Blackboard or a similar portal, chances are it is optimized for IE and Firefox. For those on the Mac trying to get their college assignments in, it is nice to not have to experience the pain of using Firefox 3 and Blackboard.
While its still working like the old Firefox there are cool new features as well. For one the UI is entirely overhauled, the most noticeable difference being the tabs-on-top look. Where before Firefox looked and felt like the IE of the non-Windows world, it actually looks quite attractive now by default. Of course you can tweak the UI to your hearts content - put a button here, extend/contract the address/search bar - and skin it just as you always could. Also, you can now pin tabs that you use regularly much like you would in Chrome. The bookmark manager is one of the best I’ve seen for the default setup on a browser. There is a bookmark button on the window from which you can bookmark a page, view all your bookmarks. It may seem like a redundancy considering you could do that from the bookmark menu but it proves to be quite useful for whatever reason. I found this strange because the “Other Bookmarks” button on Chrome has always annoyed me because it takes the place of the “Bookmark Menu” found in most browsers but is less useful. Also, arguably the coolest feature is the ability to sink Firefox on your desktop to Firefox on your mobile.
Firefox 4 is a great browser. It finally closes the gap between itself and browsers like Chrome and Safari (and Opera, for all the Opera zealots out there). The only negative thing that can be said is that it does not work with PPC machines. So we’re pretty much at the very end of that era in terms of support from 3rd parties. Also, for many this may be too little too late. Many of us, myself included, have developed a workflow that no longer incorporates Firefox. Personally I use Safari as my default/“main” browser - I have my Google accounts linked there, my Twitter and other “real” email/Dropbox/misc. website accounts. There are probably many more of you who use Chrome as your “main” browser. My browser for social-networking sites has become Flock. My browser for “junk” browsing is still Camino. As much as I like it, I just got used to life without Firefox, as have many others. And that’s pretty unfortunate.
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