The Mac Observer

Skip navigational links

DealsOnTheWeb Daily Deal: It's Friday, time for the Amazon Friday Sale!

Feedback on Mac Firefox Solicited

by , 3:45 PM EDT, April 23rd, 2007

The Firefox team would like to hear from Mac users about what they should do to improve the Mac OS X version, according to a post by Colin Barrett.

"As the Firefox release cycle marches onwards, there’s been a lot of talk about what sort of things are really affecting people day to day that we should fix, particularly on the Mac. If it’s anything, Mac users love to nitpick (guilty as charged).

"So, fellow Appleites, I put it to you: What sucks about Firefox on the Mac? Send mail to macfirefox at this domain, and let me know what you think," Mr. Barrett wrote.

Feeback has already been posted so that readers can see what other users have been thinking.

Observer Comments

Show: Subjects Only | Full Comments
Close Name:Guest
Subject: Get rid of the horrible interface

Self explanatory.

Make it a Cocoa based app that uses services and all the other nice built-in things in OSX. Go look at OmniWeb, it's got the best user interface of any browser I've ever used.

Close Name:Tiger Posts: 1018 Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Subject: speed it up

While Firefox may be speedy on Intel based Macs, it drags on PPCs in rendering pages.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Fix it so it works with iListen

MacSpeech's iListen is one of the only options for speech recognition/dictation on the Mac. While iListen works with nearly every other Mac program I've tried, it doesn't work with FireFox or Thunderbird. FireFox blames iListen - iListen blames FireFox, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't work and someone needs to budge on this issue!!

Close Name:rpaege Posts: 96 Joined: 16 Dec 2005
Subject:

I like the interface, so please leave me the option of using it the way it is now.

It renders just fine on my PPC Mac and my Intel Mac, as long as I use optimized (Bon Echo) versions, but it could definitely be faster in general.

Upload support for sftp would be nice so I can use it with secure sites.

A page zoom feature would be great of those of us with crummy vision.

Ability to use the keychain, while still keeping a separate password manager.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: search sidebar history

With Version 2 on intel powerbook, my search history sidebar goes empty as soon as I put something in the revealed sidebar history fly out. What is wrong that a simple search of visited URL no longer responds to searches!?? What gives?

Close Name:gslusher Posts: 2088 Joined: 13 Nov 2002
Subject: Camino

Quote
Guest wrote:
Self explanatory.

Make it a Cocoa based app that uses services and all the other nice built-in things in OSX. Go look at OmniWeb, it's got the best user interface of any browser I've ever used.


I agree. The popup menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, and other features are direct copies of Windows. They have that flat, incomplete look that IE and Firefox have on Windows. (Vista and IE 7 might be different.)

If you want to use a REAL Mac browser--not just a ported Windows application, besides OmniWeb (which is not free), one that's quite fast, try Camino. It still has some problems, mostly with embedded QuickTime movies, but another version (1.1) is in testing that might fix this. It also uses the Mozilla engine, like Firefox. Camino doesn't have the wide range of extensions/plug-ins that Firefox does, but, so far, I haven't found that to be an issue. It doesn't do RSS, for example, but I use NetNewsWire for that.

If you want extreme flexibility, with lots and lots of options and preferences AND one of the few truly compliant browsers for the Mac, try iCab.

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

Besides Safari,the only two browsers I like are Camino and Omniweb. I would use Omniweb as my default browser, but compared to Safari it has poor PDF support.To be fair, that is not Omniweb's fault as Adobe's PDF plugin was designed to only work with Safari. Still I view a lot of PDFs online, and I like to view them in the browser, and Adobe makes the best plugin.

Camino is nice because it is speedy, and has the nice OSX feel that Firefox lacks. However, it lacks all of the nice plugins that Firefox has.

The problem with iCab, although innovative a one time, is it is the least web standard complaint browser out there. This shows because it has tons of problems rendering sites (in my experience).

Quote
gslusher wrote:
Quote
Guest wrote:
Self explanatory.

Make it a Cocoa based app that uses services and all the other nice built-in things in OSX. Go look at OmniWeb, it's got the best user interface of any browser I've ever used.


I agree. The popup menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, and other features are direct copies of Windows. They have that flat, incomplete look that IE and Firefox have on Windows. (Vista and IE 7 might be different.)

If you want to use a REAL Mac browser--not just a ported Windows application, besides OmniWeb (which is not free), one that's quite fast, try Camino. It still has some problems, mostly with embedded QuickTime movies, but another version (1.1) is in testing that might fix this. It also uses the Mozilla engine, like Firefox. Camino doesn't have the wide range of extensions/plug-ins that Firefox does, but, so far, I haven't found that to be an issue. It doesn't do RSS, for example, but I use NetNewsWire for that.

If you want extreme flexibility, with lots and lots of options and preferences AND one of the few truly compliant browsers for the Mac, try iCab.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Interface

Firefox for Mac has an ugly interface that should be changed.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Don't nitpick here, nitpick there.

The Firefox team isn't reading this, people. Follow the link and give your feedback there.

Close Name:Guest
Subject:

The people who complain about the interface not being Mac-like don't complain that iTunes for Windows isn't Windows-like. Now I hear that iPhoto will be made available for Windows. What will it look like?

Close Name:Guest
Subject: what sucks

speed or lack thereof; lack of autofill

Close Name:Giles Posts: 15 Joined: 08 May 2004
Subject: Look and feel

I'd like FireFox to have a more Mac-like look and feel. In particular, text editing in FireFox can drive this Mac user nuts. I'd like to see Services available, too, but it doesn't require a complete conversion to Cocoa, which would probably be prohibitively difficult.

Close Name:Guest
Subject: Crash problems, slow

I was using Safari, which is the worst browser for crashing. Firefox is not far behind Safari. Slow and crashes. Tried Shiiva and that crashes more than those two. Now I'm using Camino which is the best of all these browsers. And it's fast. I like options in Camino like instant bookmarks you can view from other browsers, no need to import. Better options to tweak also. Firefox and Safari for mac are similar in my opinion. Both suck.

Comment on this Article


You cannot edit your comments.   You cannot delete your comments.
Log in | Register | Having Problems? Reset TMO Cookies & Try Again
Username:   Password:   Log me on automatically each visit   

You are not logged in, and this post will appear as "Guest." Log in with your username and password from the TMO forums. If you do not have a username, you can register here.
Please note that guests are limited to including a maximum of two URLs per post.


Post A Comment
  Subject


  Your Comments



Please enter the word exactly as you see it in the image above. Registered users aren't prompted for this. Having trouble reading the image get a new one.


Recent Headlines - Updated January 9th

Thu, 5:56 PM
Macworld Expo 2009 - Orbicule Announces Undercover 3 with Location Technology
5:49 PM
News - TOM BIHN, Waterfield Designs Release 17” Unibody MacBook Pro Notebook Cases
3:50 PM
Macworld Expo 2009 - Targus Shows File Share Cable for Mac
3:40 PM
Macworld Expo 2009 - Blackmagic Demonstrates Video Recorder
3:14 PM
News - Microvision Demonstrates SHOW WX Laser Projector
2:53 PM
Just a Thought - First Time: A Closer look at Macworld and San Francisco
12:35 PM
News - Mac Gamers Can Now Fight For Good or Evil in City of Heroes
12:12 PM
News - EVE Online to Expand the Known Universe in March
11:53 AM
News - Feral to Ship Rome: Total War Gold in March
11:19 AM
News - Freeverse Says Commander: Napoleon at War is on the March
10:34 AM
News - Whither Macworld Expo?
9:47 AM
News - Paragon Issues 30 ‘Talking’ Dictionaries

The Mac Observer Reader Specials