Firefox 3.1 brings good stuff
The latest alpha release of Firefox came out today and they come bearing good fruit. First and foremost, they followed in the wonderful footsteps of Webkit and implemented querySelector and querySelectorAll. This means you can do native CSS queries. I’d likely wrap mine up in a simple $$ function as so:
JS native querySelector
var $$ = function(q, b) {
if (b) {
return document.querySelector(q);
} else {
return document.querySelectorAll(q);
}
};This allows you to pass in a second optional boolean parameter that denotes the function to only return the first matched result as a single node. Otherwise a standard nodeList is returned. Nevertheless a problem still remains is that you still get returned something that is “array-like” but not a real array. So we’re still stuck with classic array conversion hacks:
Converting to an array
[].slice.call($$('ul > li:not(".selected"):hover'), 0).forEach(function(el) {
el.style.color = 'red';
});Border images
Border images can be fun if you need them. Although, the rounded corner craze seems to be dying down a bit. This would have been useful five years ago.
A better URL bar
Yes! A better, smarter URL bar, that enables you to make it behave like the old one. Check out these preferences in about:config.
Notice how you can finally turn off title matching (albeit others think this is cool to leave it as the default setting).
Tabs!?!
I’m not sure whether tabs got better, or worse. First of all the introduced a tab switching overlay pane that behaves similar to app switching in OS’s. Now when you hit ctrl + tab you get this overlay. I personally find it annoying when just trying to switch tabs… others… might like it. The only problem is, it breaks the tab switching model. ctrl + tab moves right; ctrl + shft + tab moves left. NOT SO in this case. Now when you move one over with ctrl + tab, then hit it again, it takes you back to the last one you were on rather than continuing to move to the right. (I took a small screencast to illustrate what I’m saying) This is bad. But, whatever. As long as there is a way to eventually turn this off.
And of course, Better support for “Web Standards”
I’m not really sure what this means. I didn’t scour the release notes to see if this meant anything actually useful. Since they rewrote a large core of their layout engine, they are going through regressions, so this could just mean they fixed things that were already working, but broke with the latest public release of Firefox 3.
Overall
Things are looking good and I’m glad Mozilla has overcame leaps and bounds throughout the years from a once dominated by IE6 world. My current site statistics show Firefox at 63% over a 28% IE. Indeed, times are good.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
The “better support for web standards” is actually pretty significant. They’re adding a ton of CSS 3 selectors like :nth-child that Firefox didn’t used to support, the CSS 3 “word-wrap” property, CSS 3 column-rule-* properties, text-shadow, box-shadow, the very useful border-image property, and a bunch of other stuff.
Also, pseudo-elements (:before and :after) will be fully-stylable in accordance with the CSS 2.1 specification. Before, Firefox only allowed a few CSS properties to be applied, as specified by the CSS 2 spec.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
What percentage of that 28% is made up by IE6? Sounds like you might be safe to put that baby to bed?
I pray for the day.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
You can toggle the ctrl+tab behavior with a pref.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed
July 31st, 2008 at 12:02 am
Your write: “Now when you move one over with ctrl + tab, then hit it again, it takes you back to the last one you were on rather than continuing to move to the right. This is bad.”
You’re kidding me? This is a) default behaviour in other programs for many years and b) very handy, because this is what you want most of the time.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:09 am
I’m wondering if Firefox isn’t advancing too fast. Although IE usage has been going down for a while now, it’s still the major player in the browser world.
For sites like yours, it might be nice to use these spiffy new features, but for corporate sites (which are most likely the bread and butter of all our work) that need to cater to the largest common denominator, the effort of adding support for these features might not outweigh the cost of implementing them. Which in turn means that there’s no real reason to upgrade to the latest Firefox.
Despite that, I’m happy to see these improvements happening, I just hope that we’ll get some kind of level playing field sometime.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:10 am
@Edwin: Agreed, yet CTRL+TAB has always worked like that in Firefox, thus it’s a bit strange at first; Took me some time to adapt.
@Dustin: to cycle through the tabs you have to hold the CTRL button and then press TAB a few times; just as you would switch a window in Windows (you’d keep on pressing ALT and then hit TAB ’til you’ve reached the correct window).
Another neat way of going to a tab is to press F4, then type in the name of the tab and hit enter. Now if I only could re-map that F4 shortcut …
Ooh, to those who don’t feel like installing the 3.1 alpha, then give the CTRL+TAB extension (which actually IS the new tab switching behavior in 3.1) a spin ;)
July 31st, 2008 at 1:49 am
@Dustin: just read that CTRL+PGDWN will still advance a tab ;)
July 31st, 2008 at 7:06 am
As others have sort of mentioned, the tab switching behavior seems to be modeled after the default windows app switching behavior. I can’t imagine it will be long before a plugin exists to force the mac behavior instead. Or maybe if enough folks say something about it they’ll make it the default behavior on the mac distribution.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:03 am
@David: That’s actually excellent news. Thanks for pointing those things out about the improvements in Standards.
@Edwin: Re: “because this is what you want most of the time.”
No, this is what ‘you’ want most of the time. I know how the tabs work, and I’m quite capable of switching back to the last tab I was on by dropping in the extra shft key. Tabs in every browser behaves this way. “App switching” behaves the other way. They’re different, and should be, I believe.
@Bramus! I’ll have to check that out that tab extension, although I’m sure there will be something in about:config that will switch back to the old behavior. Thanks! :)
@Scott: Indeed, the behavior is modeled after windows. Eitherway, the behavior was just fine how it was, there’s no need to muck with it. I always figured if people want this kind of extra (awkward) functionality, they would hunt down an extension.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:13 am
@Dustin: Unfortunately only the
browser.ctrlTab.smoothScrollsetting - which controls if animations should be used when CTRL-TAB’in - can be tweaked. No shortcut remapping, no nothing :(Hoping that this will change in FX3.1 (or maybe it has already?) ;)
August 1st, 2008 at 6:38 am
Re-thinking coding, right? :)
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm
The keyconfig extension (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72994) can be used to remap keys.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Ever since switching to Firefox years ago I have always seen only great stuff come out for it and these are no exception. These new add ons are awesome!
August 21st, 2008 at 5:43 am
If Ctrl-Tab goes to most recently used in 3.1 when it lands then it’ll force me to learn how to make extensions and I’ll make one that changes it back. Unless there’s a pref.
Update: looks like it’ll be in about:config
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445476
August 21st, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Thank goodness I found this entry. In my version of Firefox 3, the URL bar’s response time was excruciatingly slow! So slow that it forced me to wait seconds every time I typed a value into it. This drove me completely nuts. It wasn’t until you mentioned the URL bar configuration options that I was able to fix this issue. Thank you very much for this entry! You’ve saved my computer from being thrown out the window.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:11 am
Very cool overview of firefox! Like the new features
September 6th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Gotta love native selectors. And I’m really loving webkit. But I’m really loving xPath: fast, fast, fast.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
New releases always scare me. I have to wonder where the bugs are hiding!
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Only issue I have with the new Firefox is that all my bookmarks disappeared. That was a crushing a blow. After the heart attack, I fixed it, but still…