Mozilla Firebird Soars Into View

About a zillion people wrote to announce Mozilla 0.6, but asa was the first: "Mozilla Firebird 0.6 (formerly Phoenix) is available for download. This release features a fresh new look, a redesigned preferences window, preliminary support for Mac OS X and much more. Read why you should be using Mozilla Firebird and get the latest release." I'm not exactly clamoring for a new web browser, but it looks worth checking out.

Font Magnification

[Teckla]

For those of us without electron microscopes handy to read the tiny, tiny fonts on many web pages, Mozilla/Mozilla Firebird also allows text magnification that *always works*.

There are tons of web pages whose text can't be magnified in Internet Explorer without first turning on the accessibility options, and doing that is very annoying.

-Teckla

A browser that puts the user's interests first

[Ed Avis]

The Mozilla Firebird developers seem to be the first mainstream developers to finally realize that a browser doesn't have to follow every stupid thing that a 'web designer' dictates. A browser does not have to pop up moronic Javascript windows just because the site says so. It doesn't have to allow the site to obscure the status bar just because the site wants to. If the Javascript specification allows these things, well then the spec is broken and it's right for the browser to ignore it and do (by default) what the _user_ is most likely to want. Font resizing that always works is another instance of this.

(One more thing I wish they would fix, however, and that is links that open in a new window. It shouldn't be up to the web site to control opening new windows in the user's browser, it's confusing to the novice (as Nielsen points out) and annoying to many experienced users. The default browser settings, IMHO, ought to open all links in the same window and let the user choose whether to do something different by middle-clicking instead of left-clicking. I hope the Firebird people can fix this one remaining annoyance in a future release.)

Re:Why do /.'ers think people should switch?

[Azureflare]

I think the only solution is for you to try it out. No one else is going to tell you "OHH this is what you really like, and Phoenix does it better for you!!!" You're the only one who knows what you like about your web browsers. Download it, give it a whirl. Personally, I download all major browsers available for linux, and then choose the one that appeals to my tastes. Remember, this is only version 0.6; it's a very young project, so there will probably be a lot of adjustments in the future.

BTW I tried opera, and I really liked it, but under linux for some reason it's incredibly slow, compared to Konqueror and Mozilla (Loading time of the application and viewing of webpages). I used version 6 for a while, then tried 7; I still find myself going back to galeon and/or konqueror. Firebird is fast, the UI is great.

There is something to be said for Mozilla

[DrXym]

Obviously Firebird has it's uses but when you spend all day reading mail, news and browsing there is much to be said for an integrated all in one solution. It's the little things that you miss when you run seperate apps, for example middle-clicking on a link in a mail window and having a tab open in the browser, having a single password manager and so on. Mozilla is generally so rock solid, I'd be prepared to take a hit in stability for the better performance / footprint a single app brings.

Firebird obviously is useful if you want to use some other mail application but I think it is unwise to split the apps out without good reason, especially for the large number of people who love the integration of Mozilla.

I would much prefer this - design the apps so they can run seperately if desired, but also allow them to run in the same address space using chrome overlays. That is pretty much all Moz is doing right now, but it could be done much more cleanly so that you could mix and match the bits. This is quite feasible to do and it means the best of both worlds for everyone.

minimum font size

[Ender Ryan]

Yeah, Mozilla has had a minimum font size option for a long time too. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread, as I am so sick of having to stick my head closer to my monitor just to read some BS "fine print".

Annoyingly, this often throws off the layout of some websites, but that's pretty stupid design if a minor font-size adjustment throws it off... *cough gamespot cough* :)

Re:Opera

[grayrest]

If you don't see what you're looking for, check the extension page [texturizer.net] at Firebird Help. Otherwise, ask in the Mozillazine Forums, which are linked in a dozen places.

The whole point of firebird is that different people want different things from their browsers. A web neophyte and a web developer will have different requirements. With the extension mechanism, the needs of both can be satisfied.

For example, my setup looks like this [nique.net]. The features shown there are a mix between built in mozilla features and extensions, several of which I've either created or tweaked.

The features they list are pretty pedestrian, but since it's pretty easy to create extensions, a lot of interesting functionality is being created. I believe that the creativity of extension makers will be a key source of innovation for web browsers and the ideas that are currently in development will be listed as key features of mozilla in the future.

Finally, I personally would keep using firebird even if IE or Opera duplicated the functionality of everything in Fb including the extensions. Why? If I want to have a new feature in Fb, I sit down and hack it out. If a feature is almost right, I dive into the source and tweak it. Mozilla interface code is really easy to hack and that is very valuable to me and something that Opera lacks.

What about performance on older machines?

[ngunton]

Something I don't hear talked about all that much is how slow Mozilla is compared to Netscape 4.x. I use a 450 MHz desktop, which is perfectly adequate speed-wise for every other application that I use (including software development on both Windows and Linux). I can't for the life of me understand why "progress" always has to involve slower, bigger, more complicated applications. It happened with Windows, and now it seems to be happening with Linux and Open Source too. What on earth is Mozilla doing so different to what the older Netscape 4.x did? They both are supposed to be just web browsers. But 4.x is so much faster and more responsive. Sure, 4.x is getting long in the tooth now with regard to standards, but come on - if they could write something this fast five years ago, why is the latest and greatest so demanding of CPU? From an end-user point of view, it really doesn't do anything different - it renders web pages and does email. Why should that be so CPU intensive? I understand that Mozilla uses XUL, and while it's a laudable goal (cross platform), in the end I judge software these days by how usable it is in real life. And I'm sorry to say that when it takes a good three to five seconds just to bring up a "new message" or "preferences" window, that is unusable to me. Are we moving away from compiled code and towards interpreted scripts for everything, no matter what the cost in terms of performance? And surely if so much is interpreted, shouldn't the code size go down, not up? I'm sad that nobody seems to be talking about this. Since when is a 450 MHz computer too slow for web browsing and email???? I can understand it being slow if I were trying to render 3D animations, but come on...

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but the problem with that is that middle clicks do something else in Firebird. They open links in a new tab in the background, which is way, way, way more useful (especially considering autoscroll puts an autoscroll icon usually in the way of whatever you're reading). Now maybe right button and middle click at the same time or something for autoscroll would fix that, but the middle click/new background tab is so astonishingly useful at browing the web in the way I and lots of other users do that I think it should take precedence, and screw what IE does.

Re:Everyone

[bogie]

Not to Troll but IE users are the ones to worry about. Opera and Konq users probably make up like .025% of web users. Its not even worth working on Safari(I guess Konq) users, Apple only makes up like 4% of computer users.

Work on IE users, they are the ones that make up 95% of the Net. If Mozilla is to ever make any impact(doubtful without desktop bundling) than you need to beat Redmonites first.

Re:Uh.. crap

[zurab]

- Form auto-complete is still an unstable feature and may lead to crashes.
- Disabling of form auto-completion is not working.

I caught that too! This is ridiculous. They shouldn't release software in this state, doesn't matter if it's 0.6, pre, alpha, beta, or anything else. This reminds me of some MS software.

Re:The last things stopping me from switching:

[samael]

No, I want it built in.

The whole point of Phoenix is that only the essentials will be built in. If it's not something that 99% of the population wants, then it's an extension. That way people can build the Phoenix that they want.

I use the tabbed browser extensions myself and it would, indeed, be very useful to not have to add them in my hand. But it's a 2 minute job whenever I upgrade and I appreciate the design philosophy that means I don't have 30 things built in that I don't use.

Re:Opera

[AlexMax2742]

Um...there is no reason why you can't use both. I do, and I'm very happy with them.

(In fact I just downloaded the newest opera version, and I'm planning to upgrade Phoenix...errr...Firebird sometime today. I used IERadicate to get rid of IE, and my Win98 system has been relatively stable ever since...)

Re:No down arrow searches?

[asa]

The search bar may (may) be helpful to new users, but I think most power users find it annoying.

I think just the opposite. Newbies may be happy with a limited single search engine for all searches in the Mozilla urlbar but power users like me want the flexibility different searches in their search field. I have google, google groups, google news, google images, dmoz, bbc news, salon and NASA searches all available in my search field. I can't get that power-functionality in my Mozilla urlbar.

--Asa

Re:No down arrow searches?

[jmd!]

Sure you can. g, gg, gn, gi, dmoz, bbc, salon, nasa keywords. Easier to type a letter or two than deal with picking one from a menu. I have 16 keywords. Selecting a text box, typing, then selecting an entry from a 16-long list of destinations sounds like an abysmal idea to me.

Re:Great Work

[juhaz]

The extensions are wonderful too. Simple things like NukeImage, Tabbrowser extensions, Adblock, and a tonne of other extensions.

Why are people always giving credit for the extensions specifically to phoenix/fb? It's not like they're something new and unique here, Mozilla has got 'em for ages, and most extensions (like all you mentioned) work just as well in both fb/moz.

And some that only work on fb are only putting stuff that IS ALREADY in Mozilla back to Firebird.