As what appears to be a direct attack on IE7, Mozilla has released Firefox 2 about 1 week early. So far, so good. I have yet to see anything too major that bothered me(Some interface changes I am not very happy with). The spell checker feature has already proven itself worth the update alone.
The search bar now suggests things as you type(using Google's Search API, no doubt). This is great for people like me who live off the search bar. I am still playing around with it, but so far so good.
On the IE 7 side of things, we have still not decided to make the switch to IE 7 office wide. The interface is too much of a change. I think people will react negatively.
ID:277192
 Oct 24 2006, 2:33 pm
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Oct 24 2006, 3:19 pm
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Xx Dark Wizard xX
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I've been using 2 for like a month, it's not new.
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Xx Dark Wizard xX wrote:
I've been using 2 for like a month, it's not new. Preview release: 2.0 RC 3 (October 16, 2006) [+/-] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_2 | |
Major step backwards in the usability of tabs. Now the close buttons are on each individual tab, rather than in the corner where it used to be. That makes it a moving target whenever you want to close multiple adjacent tabs. Previously I could click the same close button multiple times without having to move the mouse around. Now I have to hunt for each tab's close button as they all rearrange themselves after each click. Horrible, horrible UI design.
Also, the close-tab keyboard shortcut no longer closes the whole window when only one tab is open. Terrible. I can't see myself using this much when it introduces two major annoyances that only inferior browsers used to have. | |
As for the tab close location, that can be changed(I have already changed mine: Tools>Options>Tabbed...>Closure Options
I really don't like the scrolling tab list. I tend to have around 10-15 tabs open at a time, so scrolling through them is almost impossible, but the drop down tab button might get more use from me as time goes by, or I might download an extension to fix it the way I am used to. | |
Mike H wrote:
Major step backwards in the usability of tabs. Now the close buttons are on each individual tab, rather than in the corner where it used to be. That makes it a moving target whenever you want to close multiple adjacent tabs. Previously I could click the same close button multiple times without having to move the mouse around. Now I have to hunt for each tab's close button as they all rearrange themselves after each click. Horrible, horrible UI design. If I download Firefox 2 (which I probably will soon), first thing I'm doing is removing all of the new "features". :) | |
Well, almost all the changes can be changed back. The only one that has given me any troubles was the stretched out search bar. It took up all the free space it could. I had to manually insert spacers until I got it to the length I wanted.
I still haven't attempted to tackle scrolling labs yet. I really don't care for them, so I will look into it tonight. | |
Mike H wrote:
Major step backwards in the usability of tabs. I agree. Firstly, I can't find this option that Danial speaks of, as far as changing the Closure method. Another pain is that the option for "Force sites opened in a new window to be opened in a new tab." >:( I keep trying to like FF2, but it's just not working out. I'm sad to see negative progression. Hiead | |
Danial.Beta wrote:
As for the tab close location, that can be changed(I have already changed mine: Tools>Options>Tabbed...>Closure Options Hell Ramen wrote: Keep on looking, you'll find it. :p Okay, so I got to Tools>Options. Didn't see any "Tabbed..." and so I clicked on the "Tabs" tab. Feel free to navigate me from here. :P http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/5619/mhmmyf5.png Hiead | |
You have different menus than me. I might have an extension that is giving me these options, let me check when I get home.
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Hiead wrote:
Mike H wrote: It's apparently not exposed in the default Options UI. Type about:config in the address bar, then search for browser.tabs.closeButtons (you can also type any part of this to filter the results). Set its value to 3 to get the old behavior. More info: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons What blows me away about this change is that it's actually advertised in the release notes as a "refinement". LOL! Turning a static button into a moving target is better?? Ridiculous. Clearly, they mindlessly stole this horrible misfeature from Safari, simply because Apple used to have a reputation for gui excellence. The truth is that Apple's recent offerings have been like a clinic in how to make a horrible, disjointed user interface, but apparently the Firefox team didn't get the memo about that. They can have the new options if they want, but the old behavior needs to be the default for usability. In other news, I still don't know how to get the previous behavior where the tab-close keyboard shortcut closed the whole window when only one tab was left open. Extremely annoying. | |
Mike H wrote:
It's apparently not exposed in the default Options UI. Type about:config in the address bar Wow, I learned something today! Thanks, Mike. :) I'm loving the added flavor of customization that that little menu offers. Hiead | |
Mike H wrote:
In other news, I still don't know how to get the previous behavior where the tab-close keyboard shortcut closed the whole window when only one tab was left open. Extremely annoying. Alt + F4 when you know there is only one tab left open. This will probably be fixed though. If it's not, that's another negative for Firefox. I do like the spell-checker somewhat, though. | |
Woot it doesn't install on my PC!
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I went through it and it seems the extension that I have is "Tabbrowser Preferences". It adds a lot of customization to the tabs that probably should be packed in by default.
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Yeah I'm not sold. Luckily I installed this on the work PC first. I'll play around with it tonight then decide when I get home if I'm better off with the previous version.
I must admit though the spell checker will come in handy (provided I can set it up to Australian English instead of American). | |
DarkView wrote:
I must admit though the spell checker will come in handy (provided I can set it up to Australian English instead of American). Please do post back once you've checked that out, because I might give it a go if it has an Australian dictionary (and if most of my extensions are compatible). I've never been happy with Firefox's default tabs behaviour anyway, so I'm okay with having to customise it. =) | |
It's got an Aussie dictionary
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