Impressions of Firefox 3.1

A Tech article with View Comments posted 16 October 2008.
Tags: browser, firefox, javascript, web

I have begun to play with Firefox 3.1 beta2, and I have mixed feelings. I installed version 3.1~b2~hg20081014r20486+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~fta1~hardy (which is quite likely the longest, most involved, most unreadable version string in the history of computing) from Fabien Tassin’s PPA site and decided to try it out.

The Good: It’s really freakin’ fast. On javascript-heavy sites like Google Reader, GMail, or the backend SAGrader tools, the difference is phenomenal. It’s hard to explain, so you have to try it.

The Bad: It’s in beta, and so I really can’t blame it, but many of my extensions don’t work yet. But I’ve had a bug-free experience so far, so for a nightly build, that’s not much of a drawback.

The Ugly: I strongly dislike the “preview” style tab switcher for about 172 reasons:

1. It’s slow. With many tabs open, it sometimes takes a moment to open. I consider this a regression bug compared to the previous functionality.
2. It flickers on quick changes. When I switch between adjacent tabs, I get a flash of something else in-between now.
3. It doesn’t match the rest of my desktop. I use compiz, and my Alt-Tab switching has one slidey, three-item preview switcher and my browser has another. The juxtaposition is jarring.
4. I don’t like “reflections” effects much, and I like to see the title of what I’m switching to. I get neither with this tab switcher.
5. It violates the linear nature of having a long row of open tabs. With this new switcher, I can only see what’s ahead and what’s behind one tab. Instead of “I need to switch to a tab three to the right” I now have to think “Ctrl-Tab. Am I there yet? Nope. Ctrl-Tab. Not yet. Ctrl-Tab. Oh, there it is. Once more. Ctrl-Tab.”

Overall: I hope that a way is provided to disable the new tab switcher. With that said, Firefox 3.1 is so much faster that it’s shocking. When it is finally released, I’m going to be excited about the upgrade.