omgwtf!

So yeah, I downloaded and installed Firefox 2.0 today! It went very smoothly and so far I’m having no real problems of any kind. Each iteration of the browser seems to get a wee bit more sluggish, but to be fair I use about 3,200 add-ons and those slow Fx down considerably. Especially since one or two of the add-ons I use are memory leaky. But I’ve done eight or nine hard drive reformats since April (the result of my old motherboard and new video card refusing to speak to each other – I hate hardware catfights, especially when I lose) and had the opportunity to use Fx a good deal without any add-ons. It’s a little sluggish on launch and with page renders. That’s all there is to it, no matter how many names the Firefox fanbois call you for daring to suggest such a thing.

So yeah, I downloaded and installed Firefox 2.0 today! It went very smoothly and so far I’m having no real problems of any kind. Each iteration of the browser seems to get a wee bit more sluggish, but to be fair I use about 3,200 add-ons and those slow Fx down considerably. Especially since one or two of the add-ons I use are memory leaky. But I’ve done eight or nine hard drive reformats since April (the result of my old motherboard and new video card refusing to speak to each other – I hate hardware catfights, especially when I lose) and had the opportunity to use Fx a good deal without any add-ons. It’s a little sluggish on launch and with page renders. That’s all there is to it, no matter how many names the Firefox fanbois call you for daring to suggest such a thing.

Well, because I’ve mostly learned my lesson about leaping rashly to update or install new versions of software on my computer (at least while this one is still my primary, main machine that I need for work), I cruised on over to the Firefox forums to see what the most extreme bitchfest topics were – you can’t take the Mozilla forums too seriously because theyre primarily populated by whining, screaming, rude, abusive imbeciles with a smattering of poor bastards that actually need help thrown in for sharp relief, and in that way they are almost identical to the WordPress forums – but it’s a good indication of whether there is something seriously wrong with the software and maybe you should wait a while for the update or sit tight on the next version.

To my surprise, there was nothing new as far as operational flaws go. People mainly bitched about the tabs, which were changed to be wider, force a scroll bar at a fairly unreasonably small number of tabs open due to the default width of the tabs, have a close button implemented on every single tab and at the same time removing the single close tab button that once appeared on the far right, and have active tabs turn an almost indistinguishable shade of slightly brighter gray from the other non-active tabs.

All these can be fixed rather easily, either by going into about:config and changing a couple of settings, or by installing the fantastic Tab Mix Plus add-on. The current Dev-Build of that add-on works with 2.0, and I have had zero problems with it so far, so I’d say it’s safe for anyone to install. I use it anyway, even though I’ve made the tab tweaks in the about:config file. It has a lot of useful features.

A lot of those concerns about the tab changes were valid, though, along with the complaint that many folks made that you should not have to rely on an extension or have to go into the about:config, which badly intimidates a hell of a lot of users, but that there should instead be an option in the tools menu for tab configuration. Since tabbed browsing was not only Firefox’s brainchild to begin with, but was touted as the most attractive feature and has since become indispensible for anyone who uses a browser for more than five minutes a day, yeah, there should be an option. The Fx team apparently considers this small change when compared to the other bugs theyre concentrating very hard on not addressing, and I think that’s a mistake.

I love Firefox, and I consider it the very best of all the browsers out there – and I’ve used ‘em all, believe me – but the dev folks that work on this browser have a bad case of high-falutin’ attitude and they need to mellow out and remember that while yeah, it’s open source and it’s free, you still dont get a pass to be a cock about it. If the only reason youre doing it is so everyone will tell you how awesome you are, then you’d better expect to come across some pretty hostile responses to that unwarranted sense of entitlement, you know? Make the browser, and fix the browser. Dont tell the users that we’re ungrateful bastards because you do something stupid and we call you on it. The term “free, open source” is not a license for you to abuse the people who made your little project a worldwide success. Maybe, just maybe, it might be YOU who owe US.

The truth is, it could never have happened without both the users and the devs. So everyone just settle down. Jeez.

Right. All that aside, Firefox 2 is awesome and the fixes for the tab thing are easy, even if youre a noob. Well, let’s qualify that: you can be a noob but not a hopeless noob, like my landlord.

Okay I just noticed another bug I’ll have to go looking for: I can’t seem to hit alt+I as a hotkey for “italicize” in WordPress using Firefox 2.0. Terribly minor, mildly annoying. Probably some setting somewhere.

While I was perusing my Morning Coffee links (awesome – great, great add-on) I came across this blurb in BoingBoing (which is why this started out as a BoingBoing post) about this guy here. I’ve actually done a couple of the tweaks he lists on my own before I knew about this site, and the rest of what he suggests looks pretty cool. So it’s maybe a good place to start for folks who want to tweak Firefox 2.0 but dont know how. Also, it explains how to do the aforementioned tab fixes, as well, which is why I didnt post that info here. So if you need to make that tweak, Lifehacker can probably get you started on it.

I love doing tweaky bits like that. And while I’ve been writing posts this evening I’ve had between 20-40 tabs open in Fx the whole time with no problems loading pages or any slowdown in performance whatsoever, except on Mozilla’s own forums. Understandable after a major release.

Here’s the FAQ for 2.0, and here is a really good list of frequently-encountered Firefox issues to help you sort them out if you run across them. And last but not least, the forums actually can be a good source if you go there remembering that youll have to be patient and wade through a lot of crap before you get your answer most of the time. I’ve had a lot of success with simply using The Google to uncover solutions for elusive or frustrating problems.

My verdict: Firefox 2.0 is a winner. If anyone asked me whether or not they should upgrade to 2.0, I’d say yeah, go for it. It’s worth it so far.