Firefox, with the launch of version 3.5, has surpassed Google (NSDQ:GOOG) Chrome as a browser of choice, according to data recently collected by Net Applications, a company that tracks Internet usage.

Sure, Google Chrome is faster according to some benchmark tests. Firefox 3.5, however, has proven to be the fastest version Mozilla has unleashed to date. But there are a lot more reasons why users are swayed to choose one browser over another, and speed is not necessarily the deal-maker or deal-breaker.

One advantage Firefox has over Google Chrome: Firefox may still be the only true cross-platform application. Not only capable of running on Windows, Linux and Mac, Firefox can run on Solaris and off a USB flash drive. Google initially released Chrome as a Windows-only product and is still playing catch-up in getting Chrome to run as effortlessly as Firefox does on Mac and Linux.

There are still lots of rumblings about Google Chrome and memory issues, even after the Chrome 2.0 upgrade, which was supposed to address documented memory issues. In this interesting benchmark test, Firefox 3.5 was scored as having used 73 percent less memory during peak usage than Google Chrome.

Another differentiation between Firefox and Chrome: Chrome is a component of the Google ecosystem; Firefox is independent from any search engine. There have been some perhaps unfounded observations about Google’s “monopolizing of the Internet,” with the most raucous outcry coming from Microsoft. Surely, there is no evidence of any underhanded practices by Google, but the question is still unanswered: Is there a potential for manipulation of advertising revenue, user tracking habits or cookie tracing when using a browser from the same company that runs the most widely used cloud computing platform?

Take a look at Google Chrome’s Privacy Policy. By default, Chrome sends user data to Google’s servers.

There’s been a lot of cybercrying from bloggers and reviewers over the private browsing functionality in Firefox 3.5 and the fact that private and nonprivate browsing cannot be run simultaneously, as is the case in Chrome. However, because Chrome is capable of being run in incognito mode side-by-side with normal mode, Chrome can potentially leave cookies intact when a user may think they have been deleted. In fact, many Firefox users seem to embrace the way Firefox handles private browsing; there is less potential to browse the wrong session in the wrong mode, and testing shows that previously opened tabs are loaded without issue or needed user intervention when ending a private browsing session. Apparently for Firefox fans, the private browsing all-or-nothing mode is not a big deal.

Undoubtedly, what users love about Firefox, in the long run, is the wealth of available add-ons. Add-ons enrich the entire browsing experience and users can tailor the the Firefox application to their individual needs and tastes. Chrome has a fraction of the add-ons available — understandable because it is a lot newer — but Google Chrome has a long way to go before it catches up with Firefox in extension availability.

The competition between Chrome and Firefox is at the same time fierce and cooperative. Both have made a significant dent in the lockMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has had on the desktop browser market. Now as each browser vies to keep a dominant foothold, each will continue to tweak speed and performance, security and other features. In the end, this competition benefits end users the most.

Source: Crn.com
by Samara Lynn

Most people cannot build a Firefox (Firefox reviews) extension – it requires knowledge of Javascript, XUL, and a little bit of XML experience. While there are about 8000 developers and 12,000 add-ons for Firefox, Mozilla is always looking to expand that base even further.

So, Mozilla has released an experimental program, Jetpack, that allows anyone who can build a web page to build a Firefox add-on. This means that if you only know HTML, you can build simple extensions for the popular browser. Jetpack also supports CSS design and Javascript.

And for those of you who are not programming nerds, Jetpack makes one very nice change: you won’t have to restart the browser to install extensions built through Jetpack.

The Jetpack experiment is a very early open-source project – in fact, it’s version 0.1 – and thus, is highly buggy. But in its current form, it allows anyone to use an API to build statusbars, work with tabs, and more. It also supports external APIs like Twitter (Twitter reviews), so you can build simple Twitter apps for Firefox.

So if you’re a developer, check out Mozilla’s introductory video on how to build an add-on for Firefox. And if you’re just a fan of Firefox who hates restarting his or her browser, just be patient: Jetpack is still a baby, and it will be some time until restarting the browser is a thing of the past.

Source: Mashable.com

Everybody’s favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the browser just gets better and better.

But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.

1) More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View – Toolbars – Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.

2) Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.

3) Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

• Spacebar (page down)
• Shift-Spacebar (page up)
• Ctrl+F (find)
• Alt-N (find next)
• Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
• Ctrl+T (new tab)
• Ctrl+K (go to search box)
• Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
• Ctrl+= (increase text size)
• Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
• Ctrl-W (close tab)
• F5 (reload)
• Alt-Home (go to home page)

4) Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there – like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.

5) Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

• Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
• Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
• Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)

6) Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

• Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
• Shift-scroll down (previous page)
• Shift-scroll up (next page)
• Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
• Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
• Middle click on a tab (closes tab)

7) Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.

8 ) User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.

9) Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.

10) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.

11) Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.

12) Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:

• Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
• Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
• Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
• Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
• Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

13) Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.

14) Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.

15) Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:

• 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
• 1:(Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
• 2:Don’t display any close buttons
• 3:Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)

Got any favorite Firefox tips or tricks of your own? Let us know in the comments.

Source: LifeHack.org

Thanks to its extensibility, Firefox quickly became the favorite browser for most power users. But while extensions are a great way to make Firefox more functional, Mozilla’s designers are also currently thinking about a complete redesign of the way the browser looks and feels, in order to keep up with changing usage patterns. The most radical proposal we have seen so far would do away with the standard browser tabs, and replace them with an interface that looks more like iTunes than Firefox.

Look Daddy: No Tabs

Oliver Reichenstein and Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, have been thinking about the future of tabs in Firefox, and some of the resulting mockups are quite intriguing.

Reichenstein argues that tabs were a good solution for an earlier age of the Internet, when users hardly ever had more than ten tabs open at any given time. Now, however, as browsers are slowly turning into operating systems, a new paradigm for organizing this information has become necessary.

The current generation of browsers does a decent job when it comes to keeping a current browser session organized, but Reichenstein wants to create a system that structures the browser more like a mutimedia file system. He proposes a new interface that looks more like iTunes than today’s Firefox, with folders, libraries, and bookmarks in a sidebar.

Try Tree Tabs

If you would like to get a glimpse of what tabs on the side look like, have a look at Tree Tabs, a nifty addon that puts tabs on the side and that features a huge number of options for customizing the experience.

If you are on a netbook, for example, where vertical space is very limited, Tree Tabs (maybe in combination with Tiny Menu) will allow you to reclaim some of your screen estate.

Coming Soon: Built-In Ubiquity

Mozilla is also moving ahead with the integration of Ubiquity, a command-line style interface for common browser tasks, into Firefox’s ‘awesome bar.’ Mozilla plans to add this project, dubbed Taskfox, into the main Firefox interface by the time version 3.6 of Firefox is released.

You can find more info if you look at the mockups on this page.

Source: readwriteweb.com
Author: Frederic Lardinois