Once upon a time, there was a browser which was fast, reliable and customizable. Then, year after year this browser became sluggish and cumbersome. Until I dropped it because its competitors were so much better. That’s my tale with Firefox. I started using it because it was better than IE on Windows and the only usable option on Linux. Then, when I moved to Macs, I also used it because Safari 3 wasn’t very good. But years have passed, and we now have Chrome 5, Safari 5 and IE8. And Firefox has fallen behind the flock. Now, Mozilla is preparing a new release. Let’s see what’s what.
First, the new features. Firefox 4 comes with better support for HTML5 and CSS3, including Google’s WebM video codec (opposed to H.264, supported by Apple and Microsoft). It also has some performance improvements on loading dynamic web pages, hardware acceleration support and Out-of-process-plugins (OOPP), which means if Flash crashes, it won’t take your browser down, just like Safari 5 and Chrome. And there are some OS-specific features, which I’ll cover next.
I tested Firefox 4 on Linux (Ubuntu 9.10), Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Let’s start with Linux.
At first glance, this looks exactly the same as Firefox 3, except by the themes I had, which don’t work. Some extensions work, which is good. It’s a bit faster than the old version, but much slower than Chrome. Interface-wise, it still feels like a 1990’s browser, but the OOPP feature is nice, since Flash for Linux is bloated at best. For now, I’ll keep using Chrome on Linux. Let’s check out OS X now.
Like the Linux version, it’s visually the same as Firefox 3. This is by far, the worst version of Firefox of the three. It’s very slow to load, very slow to render pages and when a plugin kicks in, CPU becomes a hot grill. It’s actually so bad, that I couldn’t stand it for more than half an hour. I’ll really have to retest this after it’s GA to make my final opinion.
On the other hand, the Windows version is the best of all by miles. The interface is cleaner than ever and reminds Chrome a bit, but the transparencies give a special touch. It’s faster than Firefox 3, but a bit slower than Chrome and Safari 5. Ironically, the open source guys delivered the best version of their browser on Microsoft’s OS. It’s usable and I’m tempted to use it more often than before. As any Beta, it’s still crashing quite a lot – and not due to Flash – but that’s normal for now. Let’s wait for the final version.
So, summarizing:
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Linux – okay, but an interface rework would be welcome.
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Mac – sucks. Needs to improve a lot on performance, resources consumption and interface.
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Windows – good, with nice interface and decent performance. It’s the version that looks more like a finished product of the three.
And OOPP is a great addition in all of them.