Firefox 13 Released, Debuts Brand New Tab Page and Homepage 320
MrSeb writes "Mozilla has officially released Firefox 13. Unlike Firefox 12 (or 11, or 10, or indeed many of the recent Firefox versions), Firefox 13 is an important release with a handful of much-needed features that are long overdue. There's a new New Tab Page launcher, with your favorite and most-used websites, and a new default home page with one-click access to Bookmarks, Settings, Add-ons, etc. SPDY is on by default, too, which should help ameliorate the perceived speed difference between Chrome and Firefox. Finally, the developer tools (Page Inspector, Style Inspector, etc.) have been tweaked and updated!"
Smooth Scrolling (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no borders between the pictures, it's just a three by three grid of screenshots mashed together. Two of the images are of www.google.com (why two? I dunno) but it only shows the top left corner of the page. For all the other sites it shows the whole page, and then repeats the first third of the page along the right side. And then on top of the messed up images, in very small letters that still somehow manage to clash, is the name of the page/site. When you mouse over one of the images two small grey boxes appear at the upper left and upper right corners. The boxes are blank, but if you mouse over them you see that one is to "pin" the site, and the other is to remove it.
Maybe one of my plug-ins is breaking stuff (even though i told NoScript to allow "about:newtab") but there's just something messed up if what is supposedly a fundamental part of the browser itself is broken that easily. And if that's actually how it's supposed to look... they really need to fire whoever they have in charge of UI over there.
In short, i don't think the page launcher in Chrome is necessary (i'll use it sometimes just because it's there, especially since there are only a couple sites i visit with Chrome anyways, but i never felt the lack in FireFox) however at least that one doesn't hurt to look at.
Re:The new-tab page isn't a chrome invention (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't during the time period that they were actually innovating.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Tyler Eaves
--edited address out--
Order receipt from BMT Micro, Inc.
Order ID: 2275341
Order Number: 2004-1224-1543-51-678
Qty Product Description Price Shipping Subtotal
1 3100023 Opera 7 for Desktop 39.00 0.00 41.73
Sales tax: USD 2.73
Total bill: USD 41.73
Re:The new-tab page isn't a chrome invention (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it isn't a bookmark grid. It is a list of sites you most frequently visit, albeit set manually.
I don't think I would want one that changes dynamically based on the past 3 days of my surfing. When I open Opera, I hit Ctrl+3, Ctrl+5, Ctrl+6, Crtl+2 and have the pages I want to see at the outset. I remember what spot each page is and can open it in a new tab blindfolded.
As is, Firefox's version is a bit gimmicky, trying to one-up Speed Dial in order not to make it seem like a feature copy.
Re:Go Firefox! (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried Chromium. There is a problem: I've become addicted to tree-style tabs [mozilla.org], courtesy of the Firefox extension.
Chromium/Chrome had this feature natively for a long time, until the developers disabled it in a sneaky-Pete maneuver that pissed off a bunch of people [google.com].
The obvious response, to write a Chromium extension for Tree-Style Tabs, is not an option. The Chromium plugin API does not expose the functionality necessary to do so.
Webkit (Chromium/Chrome's layout engine) seems to be a little faster than Gecko (Firefox's equivalent), but I would prefer to use a browser that gives the user (ME!) control over it, even at the cost of some rendering speed.
The time I would gain in rendering efficiency would probably be lost trying to scan this [googlecode.com], as opposed to this [mozilla.net].