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Firefox 4

April 15, 2011, 8:00 am

By Amy Cavender

FirefoxBack on March 22, Mozilla released Firefox 4. I was eager to give it a try, as I’d left Firefox 3 for Chrome very reluctantly.

Why did I leave Firefox in the first place? Mostly because it was becoming a resource hog, and was pretty slow. I’d routinely get the dreaded spinning beach ball while running it. I grew frustrated with it, and eventually switched to Chrome for all browsing needs that didn’t involve getting things into my Zotero library.

I found a lot to like about Chrome. It’s fast and it supports extensions–some of which are very handy for integrating an ereader into my workflow. But I really, really missed having Zotero live in my browser. All too often, I’d end up doing my research in Chrome because of its speed, then copying and pasting URLs into Firefox to move items to my Zotero library. That’s hardly an efficient way to work—though it was admittedly more efficient than trying to do the research in Firefox 3. (True, Zotero has a standalone version that works with Chrome, and it looks very promising, but it’s still in alpha stage. I’m not ready to depend on it just yet.)

So when Mozilla released the official version of Firefox 4, I snapped it up. There’s a lot to like about it; Lifehacker’s Whitson Gordon notes a number of this version’s improvements.

What’s made the difference for me is speed. I still find the browser a little slow to start up (perhaps because I’m running ten add-ons?). Once it’s up and running, though, it’s quite speedy. I’m glad to be working with just one browser again. I was even able to find Firefox equivalents for two of my favorite Chrome extensions: Klip.me has Send to Kindle support for Firefox as well as Chrome, Chrome to Paper can be replaced with Instapaper’s own bookmarklet, and Fox to Phone will do the same job as Chrome to Phone.

For now, I’m using Firefox almost exclusively. Hopefully it will continue to perform well.

What about you? Have you given Firefox 4 a try? Is it working well for your purposes? Let us know in the comments.

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by titanas]

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  • patriciataylor

    I switched over and was impressed by the speed as well. However, I did run into a pretty major problem: while trying to upload a file to gmail, Firefox crashed, and when I tried to reopen it, it crashed again immediately. I rebooted and reinstalled, still crashed. Eventually, I had to switch back to 3.6.16. I will admit I haven’t tried too hard to figure out how to solve the problem so I can go back to 4, but at this point in the semester, I just don’t have time to deal with it.

  • http://noradiofreelunch.blogspot.com/ Urk

    Thanks for posting this, I’d abandoned firefox for exactly the same reasons & had more or less the same experience with Chrome.

  • vandoesborgh

    I gave it a try and was happy until I found that it, unfortunately, doesn’t play well with Blackboard 9.1 which is our LMS flavor of choice. It would crash when the Java console came up in edit mode in BB9. It also didn’t like the links and dynamic menus (try adding an “item” and it takes about 10 tries to get the pop down menu to work). I actually, reluctantly, went back to Firefox 3.6.

  • http://twitter.com/giftsoutright Matthew J. Miller

    I’m basically willing to live with FF’s slowness (and even 4 is sometimes a bit slow, I think) for the joys of AdBlock Plus. It’s not that big a deal to wait a few extra seconds for startup or a page to load. But the experience of browsing the web ad-free is a joy I couldn’t bear to relinquish.

  • mbelvadi

    What I really need lately is the ability to be logged into two or more different Google accounts at the same time in the same browser. Due to our university moving into using Google more officially, I’m finding that I often need to switch between three different accounts. Right now I do that using three different browsers (FF, Safari, Chrome) but if I hit 4 (happens sometimes), I’m stuck.
    Any chance of FF 4 being able to help with this, or are there any plugins/add-ons that can help?

  • http://about.me/jbj Jason B. Jones

    Brian wrote about this in August: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/all-things-google-signing-into-multiple-accounts/26592

    It might not work if your school’s moving to Google Apps, but in general you can run different accounts in one browser.

  • aeonelpis

    I only use FFox for sending email through our LMS (ANGEL), which doesn’t play nicely with Chrome. Our campus prefers FFox, but I have had endless troubles with our classroom computers and a number of ITS tickets in the past year. It crashes, it takes forever to load, and it resets sites (canceling out buffering before class begins, for example). It used to be the more reliable and stable browser, but comparing my experiences using FFox in the classroom with Chrome in my office and at home…I won’t be going back.

  • http://about.me/jbj Jason B. Jones

    Amusingly, our classroom workstations have FF, but it’s not configured to play Flash. It’s the only space in the universe where I use IE.

  • mbelvadi

    Thanks!

  • http://www.facebook.com/Jennifer.McGann.AAPC Jennifer Elizabeth McGann

    My problem with Firefox is that I cannot access my accounts with it. IE continues to be problematic as Windows 7 has 2 versions — 32 bit and 64 bit — started with IE 8 now using IE 9. Also using Chrome for some things — seems be working better — for now. Main problem: Adobe does not seem to advanced enough for Windows 7. Our AT & T connection is also rather unreliable. One hour you’re connected to the internet the next you’re not. Can’t change things until i can afford my own account.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Jennifer.McGann.AAPC Jennifer Elizabeth McGann

    Rather we like it or not all of the other browser or IE-based anyway.

  • drjeff

    I need to use a few of the development-oriented Firefox extensions, so I was more or less “stuck” with FF. Before switching to 4, I was contemplating whether I could afford a new PC. Now, I’m happily using FF 4 and saving my pennies for later.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gabe-Gossett/100000400870891 Gabe Gossett

    I still use both Chrome and FF4. I was distraught when I first opened FF4 and Zotero didn’t work with it yet, but since then it works better than ever. I like being able to run Zotero as a mini-tab instead of as a popup at the bottom of the screen.

  • 1traveller

    upgraded to 4 and regretted it almost instantly. It stalls and freezes after five minutes of inactivity (the time it takes me to read an extended article online). Required me to “force quit” because it wouldn’t quit from the regular command on the menu and then reopen the browser. I checked Firefox’s forums and apparently 4 can’t handle the add-ons that 3.6 did. There was a long list of all the add-ons that needed to be disabled, i.e. 4 could only operate in “safe mode” and that’s now what I have to do. According to Firefox, they’re “working on it.”

  • jmur9468

    Start in safe mode. It will let you reinitialize the settings.

  • robert_wyatt

    Perhaps because the greed and unscrupulous methods of “investors” is commonplace.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1058166729 James Graham

    Firefox 4 is an abject failure in my book — none of the in-browser buttons work, and by “in-browser” I mean the ones that are on the pages you get when trying to restore a previous session, or (and this is a biggie) the ones you need to get past when accepting an “insecure” SSL certificate.  That those buttons don’t work is unacceptable; furthermore, what is the issue and why can they not fix this in an update?  Yes, there are workarounds but should I, as a user, *have* to work around a flaw just to get something to work which had worked previously?

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