After Firefox 4 came out I had to install so many extensions to make it feel like 3.6 that it became unstable and incredibly slow. Because Firefox apparently tries to be more like Chrome I decided to switch to the original and I haven't looked back yet. I only fire up Firefox when Chromes built-in developer tools lack functionality compared to Firebug, which is rarely the case. The way Firefox decided to take makes me really sad, as I was a big Firefox supporter, until they screwed me over with the new UI. I hope this is not too off topic, but I never got the chance to comment on the changes.
Huh? The only way it's like Chrome is how you can move the tabs above the other controls on top. 3.6 feels very slow now, I can't use it and have never felt that I wanted to.
I actually still run 3.6 since I like the UI on it better. The speed of the browser means very little to me, I'd rather have the familiar UI. If you liked FF 3.6, why not stick with it?
And FF 7 (which I've been using for about 5 months now) is not even noticeably faster than 3.6 on my usage pattern. In fact it seems to spend more time with an unresponsive UI than 3.6.
What fundamental new is for new UI comparing with 3.6? I use Firefox for some way, only for firebug mostly. I think its just evolution of person, now I use what is most serves my needs.
Tab Groups are cool, but I don't think anyone uses them. If you're on Windows 7 it hides the menu bar for more vertical space. It has support for lightweight extensions (called "JetPacks" internally) which don't require a restart to install or uninstall. There's no statusbar, like Chrome, URLs pop up when you hover over a hyperlink.
The main advantage over Chrome is that it doesn't freeze up when it's loading a new tab.
I use Tab Groups mainly for task related stuff, as well as using a tab group to allow for a read later style of interface. But no, it's not a major thing for me, I've used Chrome for the past few months and not missed Tab groups.
Tab groups would've been much better if they showed all the tabs across all windows (like Expose on Mac does for windows). Unfortunately it's just a gimmick in its current implementation.
Firefox also hides the menubar on linux, although it can also be disabled. It is also posiblse to enable an 'extension bar', which takes the place of the status bar for extension icons.
Arguably, having the menu visible is not the default setup, is it? The default fold-out "Firefox" menu simply doesn't have that issue and is not transparent.
I agree it's a problem in Thunderbird, which has a menu by default.
I think that if you try to tweak Firefox 4+ to look like 3.6 you're going to run into suboptimalities. It evolved. I think that if you get used to the changes, they're actually changes for the better (new menu giving more vertical room, tabs-on-top, etc).
