Firefox 5 Enters Beta Channel With CSS, Speed Improvements | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 5 Enters Beta Channel With CSS, Speed Improvements

webmonkey.com

25 pointspdelgallego12 comments

I noticed that they have copied the close tab behavior from Chrome. That's a pleasant surprise I didn't see mentioned in the release notes.

What behavior is that, for those of us who can't install the beta at the moment to compare?

The following link is a pretty thorough explanation. Much better than I could do in a few lines.

http://www.theinvisibl.com/2009/12/08/chrometabs/

Good explanation, but the only difference from how my Firefox 4 installation works is the delayed resizing, which isn't as important since I can close a tab by middle-clicking anywhere on the tab.

Reconsider that. You're missing a large part of the point. The delayed resizing is important because it means it's consistent in allowing you to close tabs both successively and very quickly without moving your mouse.

Trust me, once you get used to it, going back to the Firefox 4 behavior is just very frustrating.

Anyone who manipulates tabs with anything other than a middle-click is missing out on a wealth of delicious UI consistency. A middle-click on a tab closes it, and you can aim for any part of the tab (Fitts' Law approved).

Arguing about how efficient you can be /after/ you've targeted a microscopic UI element with your mouse cursor seems odd.

No, you're still missing the point. I never said anything about not using the middle click to close tabs. That's precisely how I close tabs. When you have as many tabs open as I often do... the resizing ruins the ability to quickly close tabs in succession.

I would again ask that you actually go try it rather than assume you know what I'm talking about. Trust me, the way I can target a tab and rapidly close lots of tabs (YES, by using the middle click SPECIFICALLY) does NOT work in Firefox 4. Please try it yourself rather than force me to make a video of it.

Open 8 tabs in Firefox. Target the third tab and without moving your mouse, close tabs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It's not possible. The tabs resize and you end up closing tabs 1 and 2. I don't know how you browse the web, but I daily find myself opening numerous tabs and then wanting to close the last several after opening lots of pictures or articles on reddit. (But then again I'm in Linux and scroll on my tabs in Chrome so I move my mouse very little as it is and it suits my browsing habit.)

In that scenario, I'd put my cursor over the last tab, and middle click 6 times, possibly having to move the cursor for the last one or two. Or, I'd more likely have tabs 1 and 2 pinned as app tabs (probably gmail and pandora, in my case), in which case I can flail with any close tab action without problem.

Also, I browse with browser.tabs.closeButtons set to 3, which gives me a fixed-position close button at the end of the tab bar. (And on my laptop, I close tabs with a gesture that doesn't require me to move the cursor at all.)

Delayed resizing is a neat feature, and one that Firefox should copy, but it is not as critical as you make it out to be.

>Delayed resizing is a neat feature, and one that Firefox should copy, but it is not as critical as you make it out to be.

How on Earth can you possibly say this? Besides it being a matter of opinion, it's highly lauded as good UX (which I believe and have heard numerous other Chrome users swear by), and you can't possibly know how often I use it or how frustrating it is to use Firefox with it's default behavior.

In that scenario, I'd select the first tab and pound CTRL-W

No support yet for NavigationTiming :(

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=570341

Soon? Pretty please?

And does it still take a life time to start in Linux? It's crazy how slow it is. Chrome can open and I can manually middle-click six bookmarks to check my social sites before Firefox is even started. And that's with me clicking it's launcher first.

Even the tab behaviors are all considerably less responsive. Every once in a while I'll use a colleague's computer with Firefox 4 in Windows and I'm blown away by how functional it is. It looks nice, it's fast, it doesn't feel sluggish.

It's just a slap in the face of Firefox's original base of users that it feels so inferior to Chrome on the Linux desktop.

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