iamthewalr.us— Firefox developer Colin Barrett reaches out to the Firefox-using Mac community for suggestions on how to improve the Firefox experience on the Mac.
Apr 21, 2007View in Crawl 4
Hands-down, the #1 gripe I have about FF is that it doesn't integrate the system-wide dictionary and thesaurus. In any Cocoa-based apps, you can right click on any word and get the definition for it. FF doesn't do that and I'd love to see it. I have no complaints about FF other than that.
The Firefox team needs a Windows Branch, a Linux/Unix Branch, and an OSX Branch (though it could be part of the Unix Branch, OSX heavily relies on it's Aqua).
Here are my suggestions as a user of all browsers on OS X.1) Support the XUL extensions made by amateur but nice people, help those extensions which would provide more OS X like experience to Mac users. A professional developer tweak to them would make them great. In future when you decide they are all stable and essential for a more complete experience, bundle them with the Application. 2) BE POLITE, be nice to Mac users. You aren't dealing with Unix nerds here. Mac community is generally polite people with some idiot loud mouths who are still minority. Telling user to "rtfm" or acting like that will result in a single thing: Drag Firefox.app to trash. Webkit is open source too, see how they treat to good willing but not advanced end users .
I use Firefox on the Mac because of all the cool plug-ins. However, it crashes about once a day. That is not cool. My advice to Colin is to fix the performance issues.
The two major areas Firefox on the Mac needs to improve in are speed and UI. FF takes noticeably longer to launch on my PowerBook than Safari, and the interface isn't too Mac-like (no native form widgets, for example). It's a LOT faster on Windows and the UI fits in much better.
Bookmarks organizing doesn't work for me. I can rearrange things all I want in the "organize" window, but what I do there doesn't change the browser bookmarks toolbar. Very annoying. Otherwise I like Firefox because I can use it with website content management systems for work. It may not be as pretty as Safari, but it seems to be more compatible with Windows platforms.
wow this comment fits my situation perfectly. I heard google released something similar.. can't wait.my biggest gripes in firefox are the memory bug, and horrendous scrolling. I have a laptop w/ a core duo processor and a 256mb x1600... why the hell are my webpages rendering like i'm running in 8bit vesa mode after a nightmarish windows xp upgrade?
I have grown fond of the addons in FF, but with the last 2-3 updates it has been very heavy on the processor (IntelC2D 2.1gb 4gbRAM). The symptoms which had me googling for a remedy and brought me here are FF hanging for 1 second every 10 (average), this interrupts video, page scrolling and really gets irritating after a while.FF @ idle reads about 13% cpu, but by just scrolling this page up and down or even just moving the curser about the page, the load reaches 70%! It sure is a hog considering how slow it is, I shall be going back to Safari soon I think.FF a few versions ago had no such problems, what happened?
inkswampApr 22, 2007
Hands-down, the #1 gripe I have about FF is that it doesn't integrate the system-wide dictionary and thesaurus. In any Cocoa-based apps, you can right click on any word and get the definition for it. FF doesn't do that and I'd love to see it. I have no complaints about FF other than that.
grubesteakApr 22, 2007
Dear Mr. Barrett,Use Firefox on Windows. Then, use it on a Mac.Note how the Windows version is vastly superior to the Mac version.Fix.
supersunnyApr 22, 2007
The Firefox team needs a Windows Branch, a Linux/Unix Branch, and an OSX Branch (though it could be part of the Unix Branch, OSX heavily relies on it's Aqua).
ilgazApr 22, 2007
Here are my suggestions as a user of all browsers on OS X.1) Support the XUL extensions made by amateur but nice people, help those extensions which would provide more OS X like experience to Mac users. A professional developer tweak to them would make them great. In future when you decide they are all stable and essential for a more complete experience, bundle them with the Application. 2) BE POLITE, be nice to Mac users. You aren't dealing with Unix nerds here. Mac community is generally polite people with some idiot loud mouths who are still minority. Telling user to "rtfm" or acting like that will result in a single thing: Drag Firefox.app to trash. Webkit is open source too, see how they treat to good willing but not advanced end users .
shanmacApr 22, 2007
I use Firefox on the Mac because of all the cool plug-ins. However, it crashes about once a day. That is not cool. My advice to Colin is to fix the performance issues.
daguyApr 22, 2007
The two major areas Firefox on the Mac needs to improve in are speed and UI. FF takes noticeably longer to launch on my PowerBook than Safari, and the interface isn't too Mac-like (no native form widgets, for example). It's a LOT faster on Windows and the UI fits in much better.
gills62caApr 23, 2007
Bookmarks organizing doesn't work for me. I can rearrange things all I want in the "organize" window, but what I do there doesn't change the browser bookmarks toolbar. Very annoying. Otherwise I like Firefox because I can use it with website content management systems for work. It may not be as pretty as Safari, but it seems to be more compatible with Windows platforms.
mpeters13Apr 25, 2007
wow this comment fits my situation perfectly. I heard google released something similar.. can't wait.my biggest gripes in firefox are the memory bug, and horrendous scrolling. I have a laptop w/ a core duo processor and a 256mb x1600... why the hell are my webpages rendering like i'm running in 8bit vesa mode after a nightmarish windows xp upgrade?
tmanstarkApr 25, 2007
I did not know about those commands. Digg it up for usefulness :-)
winobieJul 30, 2009
I have grown fond of the addons in FF, but with the last 2-3 updates it has been very heavy on the processor (IntelC2D 2.1gb 4gbRAM). The symptoms which had me googling for a remedy and brought me here are FF hanging for 1 second every 10 (average), this interrupts video, page scrolling and really gets irritating after a while.FF @ idle reads about 13% cpu, but by just scrolling this page up and down or even just moving the curser about the page, the load reaches 70%! It sure is a hog considering how slow it is, I shall be going back to Safari soon I think.FF a few versions ago had no such problems, what happened?