Speckled Green

Just been trying out the new Firefox 4.0 beta 1, and it sure does look and feel different. Actually, I’m trying the Portable Edition, but really all that is is just boxing up the normal version to run properly off a USB…

Anyhows, many people have commented that Firefox 4 is just trying to copy Opera (like they said Chrome was copying Opera, and Safari was copying everyone else…). And I thought “you know, they seem perfectly right…” until I read someone’s comment on the matter:

I’m getting tired of the “Opera copy” stuff, and “who came first” thing in general. The fact of the matter is Firefox 4′s UI was proposed as being this back in December, before Opera’s new look came out. There are plenty of mockups of the UI from that time, before Opera’s new look was public. It’s a matter of convergent evolution if you actually bother to look into it. Why do they look so similar? Because it’s a fairly fundamental simplification and enhancement. Much in the same way that tabs were a UI revolution that every browser adopted in much the same way. Give it a few years and every browser will look like this, because it Just Makes Sense (TM). Credit to Opera for shipping their UI first though.

As Matt Wilcox has said there, really all these ideas and designs are coming from and going to the same place, just like car designs, computer designs and plane designs: they all have their similarities and same basic principles, but they all have their different tastes and implementations (like how the F-22 Raptor’s radar cross-section was about the size of a metal marble, and the new F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter’s cross section is slightly larger: about the size of a golf-ball (btw, that’s the Lightning 2, not eleven). They achieve the same thing: highly versatile stealth fighter planes; except they do it differently (newer tech and approaches in the case of the F-35)).

Anyway, I’m really liking the new loading pie in the tabs, the sleek new design (reminds me of using Google Chrome, or Opera 10… can’t remember what Safari 5 looks like, or how it compares to IE8 or 9), the faster rendering (although I must say that it isn’t that noticeable, only on some websites), the new Firefox button up top looking nice and neat, and the new feedback system. I wonder how well it would perform when all my plugins are added to it (when they are compatible after the proper release), although, when I think about it, I can’t really see why any of my plugins would affect page loading.

I’m just glad that Firefox is attempting to catch up to browsers like Google Chrome and Opera. Right now I’m using a mix between Firefox 3.6 and Chrome 5.0 on my desktop, and Opera Mobile 10 on my phone. Yes, I use two browsers at once on my desktop. What I like to do is have one lot of tabs open in Firefox, say my emails and school work related stuff, while in Chrome I have my procrastination tabs, such as Kongregate, and interesting articles I find on the internet.

I’m intrigued in what some people are saying in the feedback of Firefox 4.0b1, and I shake my head at the silliness of some people. Some people are saying Firefox made them sad because “I can’t get any of my addons” or “too many addons aren’t compatible”… the first person obviously doesn’t understand that with the new beta means new APIs or features, or anything that could make the addons incompatible, hence heaps don’t work. The 2nd person is just too attached to their addons, and isn’t willing to spend some time in the beta Firefox to give feedback before he goes back to 3.6. I mean, I know I’ve been like that before, but you’ve gotta take some risks sometimes to help the browser you love so much!

Anyhows, I’ll stop ranting now. I need to go to bed now, or else I won’t get up till 8am (gasp! “So early?” you might ask? Yeah, well, I prefer to wake up early, although holidays, my ‘early’ is usually 7am as opposed to 6am, and I like to get more than 7 hours sleep, so I normally go to be at around 9:30ish…), and then I surely won’t do much at all that day!!

TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!

P.S. I really need to find out if there is a signature plugin…

Edit: BTW, I actually posted this at 11:11pm on 13th July, except that I had forgotten to change the time zone in the WordPress settings, and so it changed it to daylight saving time, making the post tag say it was published on 0011 hrs 14th July (that’s 12:11am, right? Because 12pm is noon…. right??)

• Author: Ant
  
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