Firefox

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FirefoxAs I’ve finally (finally!) gotten around to setting up my new (sigh…Windoze) box, I finally also go around to downloading Firefox.

Hey, it’s a full release – OK, v1-PR, but let’s not get picky.

Impressions, having never used it before:

  • Wow, it looks just like IE! But that might be a good thing, as that’s what people are used to.

  • It’s a much better look than Mozilla – I always used Mozilla with the classic (i.e. Netscape) skin. Just worked better. But this is nice

  • Having not really read anything about Firefox, it’s fun to see the almost Easter Egg like items. The RSS and style switching items in the status bar and so on. Not incredibly useful right now, but points towards good things in the future.

  • I have tab issues – I think Mozilla handled this better. I like Mozilla, where you had the icon on the left to “add new tab” instead of having to right-click on the tab bar. In Mozilla you could right-click, as well, but had the option of the icon. I personally miss that. One click, instead of right-click | menu selection. Hope this is addressed. (see Update)

  • All the other tab goodness from Mozilla seems intact. Excellent.

  • Yay! The Javascript console is retained. This is something that just kicks IE’s ass all over the place. Indispensible for Web developers (uh, like me….)

  • Can’t really say how standards’ compliant this is, other than to say I haven’t run into any sites where weirdness showed.

  • Alt text not displayed; interesting. I’m sure that’ll be fixed. Weird that it does not display….(see update)

Well done Mozillians!

Update

Trying to add a picture (the Firefox logo) to this post, I found a bug: Through Blogger, the upload doesn’t work. (JS error, but works in Mozilla. Odd.) Update 9/23/2004: I’m an idiot. Firefox was blocking pop-ups ( the JS window to load pictures). Allow pop-ups on this site and all works fine. MY bad.

Alt tags don’t display, but title tags do. While this may be standards compliant, still seems a serious oversight: Title tags are, to most, new and/or optional. Alt tags have been around for a decade. Don’t ignore the mass of the current web just to stick to principles. Bend a bit where necessay, as it is here…

Still – after one day – my firm browser of choice.

Update Deux

Once I bothered to look, I found there is a keystroke for new window: Ctrl-T – excellent; I’m all about keyboard shortcuts (which is one of the reasons I’ve really dug Gmail).

This browser keeps getting better and better in my estimation.