Home › News › TechSpot
A Compendium of Firefox 4 Beta Tweaks
Fortunately, Mozilla hasn't deviated from what's made Firefox the second most used browser in the world: flexibility. We're going to look at some tweaks you might want to apply if you're running the current Firefox 4 beta, such as changing the color of the new orange menu button, moving tabs back to the bottom, getting add-ons to work and more.
Truth be told, many of our staffers were becoming Chrome converts or rather they had already moved completely, but this first Firefox 4 beta is looking particularly solid and in a short time Mozilla has been able to win back a few of us. Haven't downloaded the Firefox 4 Beta yet? You can do so here (Windows/OS X), highly recommended.
Read the full article.
User Comments (20)
Post a comment|
Stonos
on July 15, 2010 6:01 AM |
You forgot about enabling hardware acceleration: [link] |
|
Gars
on July 15, 2010 9:58 AM |
oh man... just remove it yesterday cos YouTube downloader isnt work and in my job i need to get some videos as references the beta just replaced the FF3.6.x and i was unable to switch back and was forced to uninstall it now im back with the beta, thanx to your great article Regards |
|
Chazz
on July 15, 2010 10:14 AM |
Gars: You need to set multiple profiles and use your default profile for your normal firefox and use a "beta" profile for minefield. I've had them both on my pc for a few months now and can use them at the same time. On topic with the article. Those are some nice tips but, I can't help but wonder, why don't you guys stay with Chrome if it does everything so right? |
|
Guest
on July 15, 2010 10:36 AM |
Well, I don't know about anybody else but for me, I don't want Google to know about my online whereabouts. There is no privacy with chrome, they know where you go, what you do, which sucks...Big Time! Firefox Rocks! |
|
Guest
on July 15, 2010 11:36 AM |
is it just me or does the pic look like chrome? @ Gars, i use downloadhelper for youtube video grabbing. |
|
Guest
on July 15, 2010 11:56 AM |
I have my Win 7 Taskbar set to auto hide, and when I do, I am not able to access it when I'm using firefox 4 and try to hover over the taskbar to show it. Does anyone know how to fix this? This problem only happens when I have the orange firefox menu, but when I have the normal menu, it lets me access the taskbar. Any help is appreciated! |
|
matrix86
on July 15, 2010 1:47 PM |
@Guest did you inform firefox tech support? Anytime something like this happens in a beta build, it should be sent to their tech support just in case it's something with the program and not just your OS. You may not be the only person having this problem. Chazz said: why don't you guys stay with Chrome if it does everything so right? So just because it does everything so right, that means they can't test out other browsers? What's wrong with doing that? Don't knock something if you haven't tried it. If these guys didn't try the new firefox, then in the future when someone asks why they chose Chrome over FF, they can make a fare statement as to why they think Chrome is better. And like he said in the article, most have switched back to firefox...clearly they like it better now than Chrome. They never would have known that if they hadn't tried it. |
|
Guest
on July 15, 2010 3:46 PM |
Firefox has always been better than the other browsers. People started to switch because of the speed; it only needed the speed boost. Now that it's starting to catch up, using Chrome feels kind of... useless. I won't stop using Chrome as my second browser though. Sorry Opera. :P |
|
matrix86
on July 15, 2010 4:29 PM |
Same here, Guest. Chrome has always been my second browser. But with this new firefox, I think I may end up with 2 firefox windows open instead of firefox and Chrome. I didn't even check this out, but I wonder if private browsing in FF4 is like that in Chrome, where it opens a new window and lets you work in both windows. That's what I like about Chrome, right now. I can keep the original window that saves the history and everything, and also have the Chrome Incognito window for birthday/christmas/special occasions shopping. I had FF4 on my thumb drive and was trying it out using that, but I seem to have lost it so I can't look to see if FF has done what Chrome did with private browsing. I think they should. It's better than the window closing all the tabs, going into private mode, and then having to reload all the tabs again when I exit private mode....kind of annoying, lol. It's be nice to just close the private mode window and resume what I was doing in the original. |
|
Guest
on July 15, 2010 6:59 PM |
Immediately installed Beta 4, and while ggogling top 10 cities in the USA, inadvertently picked up the AV Security virus on my XP machine. Don't know if it was a Beta security bug or just AV getting past my firewall, but after cleaning things up with Malwarebytes, I went back to 3.6. Can't wait to get back to Firefox 4, but will wait a couple of more weeks to see if there are any security enhancements. FF4 is very sleek and way better than Chrome or IE8 in all areas. |
|
AnonymousSurfer
on July 15, 2010 7:36 PM |
I used to use Chrome but now I think I may be getting back into Firefox. Before FF would take like 7 minutes just to start up and I hated that. Now the beta looks pretty promising although for some reason FF sometimes fails out of nowhere and its kind of annoying. Then again, it is the betta... |
|
Chazz
on July 16, 2010 11:11 AM |
matrix86 said: Chazz said: why don't you guys stay with Chrome if it does everything so right? So just because it does everything so right, that means they can't test out other browsers? What's wrong with doing that? Don't knock something if you haven't tried it. If these guys didn't try the new firefox, then in the future when someone asks why they chose Chrome over FF, they can make a fare statement as to why they think Chrome is better. And like he said in the article, most have switched back to firefox...clearly they like it better now than Chrome. They never would have known that if they hadn't tried it. And that's exactly what I'm asking them. If chrome is doing everything right..why switch back to firefox? I personally love firefox but, thats because I think these "browser wars" are overrated and the speed differences between them go unnoticed to me. That puts firefox's feature set as the best. |
|
Matthew
on July 16, 2010 11:53 AM |
I initially switched to Chrome because of Firefox's performance issues (slower to start up, random sluggish points when loading pages and so on). Chrome doesn't do everything right. Call me crazy, but there are small things like highlighting text that feel less tactile and accurate in Chrome. Also, some of its add-ons aren't as polished. Despite the Firefox 4 beta's snappier performance, there are still a few things that bug me. For instance, dragging and dropping tabs between windows is less responsive than Chrome, and if you move a tab that's streaming media, it restarts (presumably because the page refreshes). Both have their quirks, but overall I prefer Firefox 4 at the moment. |
|
tengeta
on July 16, 2010 1:53 PM |
...the tabs are on top because of? |
|
Guest
on July 22, 2010 11:33 AM |
Stopped using the beta right after initially installing it when my IE Tab 2 addon refused to start "Force your add-ons to work" section to the rescue. Am using Firefox beta full-time now TYVM for this article |
|
Guest
on August 22, 2010 11:23 AM |
Is there way to enable plugins also? The beta's have disabled plugins (ie flash). |
|
Julio Franco
on August 22, 2010 5:58 PM |
@Guest, you can run plugins, just not the ones Firefox deems incompatible with the beta version. |
|
Guest
on November 2, 2010 6:00 PM |
Thanks for a great article! Now I'm wondering if I can switch the order of the right click menu items back to the old style? I'd like the "open in new window" be first and "open in new tab" be second. |
|
Matthew
on November 2, 2010 6:48 PM |
Menu Editor -- though I'm not sure how well it works with Firefox 4 (if at all). Worth a shot. |
|
Guest
on January 7, 2011 10:29 AM |
You forgot that the Firefox button is enable by default only for Windows Vista and 7. To get that button XP users just need to hide the Menu Bar |
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
-
iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak tool released, supports 4S, iPad 3
-
After five days, Facebook ranks as worst IPO flop of the decade
-
Rumor: Windows 8 RC will launch June 1, will ship with Adobe Flash
-
Rumor: AMD "Piledriver" FX CPU production to begin Q3 2012
-
Is Apple's USB wall adapter really worth $29?
Editors' Keyboard Picks
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and tech breaking news.
