Sony Developing Firefox OS Devices, Aiming For 2014 Launch

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Get the Best of Firefox 4 With Status-4-Evar

Firefox is in a state of rapid updates, when it seems every month brings a new version to your screen. In the vast rush to get new features out there, older features, perhaps considered no longer necessary, are dropped by the wayside. Fortunately, the extremely robust plug-in ecosystem and developer community that keeps Firefox my personal browser of choice (winning me back from Opera solely due to some add-ons I found I couldn't live without) means that if there's a feature you like, someone will add it back in if it's gone. Thus it is with Status-4-Evar, which recreates the pre-Firefox 4 status bar widgets, but with improved flexibility.

Status-4-Evar offers many ways to customize your display.The trend in browsers today is towards a minimalist and Spartan interface, which makes sense for the tiny screens of netbooks. This is why many of the features included in Status-4-Evar went away. I've got a widescreen monitor at a desktop PC, though, so I have a lot of real estate that's not doing anything. Status-4-Evar brings back Firefox's thermometer bar of yore, which shows how much of the page has loaded, a download progress icon, and a text status bar. All of these have several configuration options, including placement in various toolbars, color, and other types of general behavior. For example, I have set page load status to show as both a small bar on the bottom of my screen, and as a field of color that creeps along my address bar. You are not required to do both, but you can, and flexibility is Status-4-Evar's goal. (Spelling, clearly, is not.)

If you don't want more things on your screen, of course, you won't want Status-4-Evar. If you do want this information, Status-4-Evar gives you an easy way to see it. Overall, I find it interesting but not vital; I didn't notice most of these features were gone until Status-4-Evar brought them back. If I have any complaint about Status-4-Evar's functionality, it's that it's not always entirely intuitive what an option might do or what to set to get the effect you want, but this is an issue easily solved with a few minutes of fiddling, or quick trip to the support forums.

Last thought: There's the usual issue that no matter how few resources any given add-on may consume, the sum total of multiple small add-ons can be a cumulative drag on performance. iIt's always good to consider the cost of each straw you add to the back of the Firefox camel.

Note: Clicking the Download Now button takes you to the Firefox add-ons page, where you can download Status-4-Evar into your browser.

--Ian Harac

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Firefox Add-on Pentadactyl Lets You Browse Mouse-Free

Take a cutting-edge browser, and add a Seventies-era user interface. This crazy-sounding idea stands at the core of Pentadactyl (free), a Firefox add-on that makes Firefox look and feel like the famous open-source text editor Vim (and, to an extent, Vi, the editor that preceded it and was initially released in 1979). If you've ever wanted to use Firefox for hours without reaching for your mouse even once, this may be the add-on you need.

Pentadactyl provides powerful, fast auto-completion.If the concept sounds familiar, that's probably due to the well-known Vimperator, a Firefox add-on that does exactly the same thing. In fact, Pentadactyl is Vimperator, under new management. The original Vimperator add-on is still alive, but Pentadactyl was forked by some of its former developers due to disagreements with the project lead. There are some changes, the most notable of which is a major improvement in startup times. Heavy Vim users may care about some of the other changes ("It is now possible to skip past the end of incomplete completion groups via the c_ and c_ keys"), but for the rest of us, just coming to grips with Pentadactyl's basic functionality is challenging enough.

If you're not already a Vim user, Pentadactyl is probably one of the most confusing things that can happen to your browser. Unlike Vimperator, installing Pentadactyl doesn't require a browser restart. You just click the Install Now confirmation button, and find yourself with no address bar, add-on bar, or any other bars for that matter. You're suddenly left with a bare window that contains almost no browser chrome--just tabs on top. Welcome to Pentadactyl. Thankfully, the Pentadactyl Help system immediately pops open, so you can just start reading to figure out how things work now, and the first thing explained is how to bring the toolbars back (although they suggest you keep them off).

Pentadactyl's online help is comprehensive and well-written.Even if you're already familiar with Vim, you may still want to read the documentation. Pentadactyl stays very true to the spirit of Vim, and the way it is extended to support functions that are available in a browser but not in a text editor makes a lot of sense. For example, a new :dialog ext command lets you open Firefox dialogs (try :dialog addons for the Firefox add-on dialog). Pentadactyl also has a very fast autocompletion system for ex commands, so just typing :dialog and hitting Space pops up a list of all dialogs you can access using this command.

One problem with Pentadactyl is that because it remaps so many keys, websites that use shortcut keys--like Gmail and other Google products--may not play well with it. Pentadactyl resolves this by offering a "pass-through" mode that passes all keys except Escape directly to Firefox. You can trigger it manually, but if you want it to always trigger when you switch to Gmail, you need to configure Pentadactyl for it. Even after doing this, the J/K keyboard shortcuts used in Gmail still didn't work for me.

Pentadactyl's hint mode lets you navigate without using a mouse.Much like Vimperator, Pentadactyl lets you click links without reaching for your mouse. It does this using "hints:" hit f, and all links on the page become highlighted, and a little number pops up next to each. You can either type in that number, or start typing the anchor text of the link. By the way, if you like this functionality but are not looking for full-on Vim emulation, you may want to check out LoL--a free Firefox add-on that does just this.

Pentadactyl also has an extended hints mode that can be used for performing other operations with links. Let's say you want to copy where a link saying "funny picture" points to. Normally, you would have to reach for your mouse, point at the link, right-click to open the context menu, and click Copy Link Location. With Pentadactyl, you just have to type ;yfunny and hit Enter. Such is the power of Vim, and by extension, Pentadactyl.

If reaching for your mouse sounds like the sensible thing to do, Pentadactyl is not for you. But if you're already using Vim, are fascinated by arcane keyboard shortcuts and infinitely configurable interfaces, or just really dislike toolbars, Pentadactyl can transform your browsing experience.

--Erez Zukerman

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Firefox 10 Stays Competitive With a Multitude of Add-ons

Since its dramatic redesign in version 4.0, Firefox has undergone a few more aesthetic changes. The bulky toolbar is gone, replaced instead by a row of tabs on the top of the window, and the bookmark bar is hidden by default. Of course these can all be changed through the options, but the simplified interface works well--especially on smaller displays where space is at a premium.

Firefox 10 is sleeker than its predecessors--although you can still pile on the add-ons.Firefox's biggest strength comes from its extensive library of add-ons. These add-ons can help you completely customize your Web browsing and make Firefox infinitely more useful. There is a downside: The more add-ons you have installed, the slower Firefox will be to start up and run. Some add-ons can turn Firefox into a memory hog, slowing down even the beefiest systems.

Firefox led the pack in our HTML5 tests. The browser came in third in handling JavaScript, but still beat out Opera, Internet Explorer 9, and Safari by a considerable amount. On our test machine, Firefox was the second slowest at loading Web pages, taking on average 9.67 seconds to fully load an image-heavy page, a lot longer than Opera, which only took 3.79 seconds to load the same Webpage.

Firefox is one of the more full-featured browsers in our 2012 browser round-up. You can save Web services you use constantly, such as Pandora and Gmail, as App tabs. App tabs are permanent tabs in Firefox that are saved in the browser. Think of them as bookmarks in tab form. If you are a power user with tons of tabs constantly open, Firefox will allow you to collect the tabs into manageable groups, a handy feature for keeping your entertainment tabs separate from your work ones, for instance. If you use Firefox at home and work, Firefox Sync will sync your history, bookmarks, and preferences across computers and will even sync with the Firefox Mobile app on Android. Firefox has a pop-up filter and supports private browsing. The browser includes malware protection that will warn you if you end up clicking on a fraudulent website, as well as an updater to ensure your plug-ins have the latest security patches. Firefox will also work with any security software you have installed on your computer, using the software to scan downloads for malware.

--Megan Geuss

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Tested: Firefox 10 Can’t Catch Up to Internet Explorer, Chrome

 

Today marks the official release of Firefox 10, which adds new developer tools and changes the design of the navigation bar to show the forward button only in instances where it can be used. Mozilla’s update gives us a perfect opportunity to reassess the browser playing field, and that’s exactly what we did, pitting Firefox 10 against Chrome 16 and Internet Explorer 9 in a series of tests. The results show that the Mozilla project still has a lot of work to do if it wants to take back the number two browser position from Google or the number spot from Microsoft.

Using a Dell Inspiron 14z with a Core i3 CPU and 4G of RAM, we ran two web-based browser benchmarks: SunSpider and Peacekeeper on Firefox 10, Chrome 16, and Internet Explorer 9. We ran each test three times and then took the average. After that, we measured browser open times and available screen real estate on an ASUS ZenBook UX31 notebook with a Core i5 CPU and a SATA 6Gb/s SSD.

The SunSpider test measures a browser’s ability to execute a series of complex JavaScript functions. Because most web pages contain a lot of JavaScript, this test effectively shows how quickly the browser can render pages or perform dynamic actions. A shorter time result is better.

Firefox 10 completed the test in 276.3 milliseconds, putting it in between the 312.4 notched by Chrome and the 247.5 we got on IE 9. It’s still not the fastest. 

Peacekeeper is a synthetic benchmark where higher scores are better. On that test, Firefox 10 turned in a score of 1536, which  trailed IE 9's mark of 1483 and Chrome 16's 2918.

One of the least talked about performance features of any browser is its ability to open quickly (or not). Every millisecond you spend waiting for a program to launch is a millisecond you’ll never have again. We tested all three browsers’ open times on the powerful ASUS ZenBook UX31, because it has a blazing fast Sata 6Gb/s SSD that allowed each program to open at its fastest possible time.The results confirmed that Firefox is still a slowpoke. Chrome 16 opened in an average of 1.8 seconds and IE 9 in just 1.1 seconds while Firefox 10 turned in a relatively sluggish 2.4-second average, an eternity in particle physics. 

The more space its toolbars take up, the less space each browser has left for viewing web pages. So our final test entailed capturing a screen on each of the browsers and determining how many pixels of screen real estate each navigation bar takes up. Firefox has the largest navigation bar, with a height of 62 pixels, while Chrome’s and Internet Explorer 9's measure 48 and 53 pixels, respectively. 

Firefox 10 by no means bombed on our tests, but it didn’t give anyone a valid performance reason to switch to it or stay with it. The Firefox 10 results are in line with our previous browser showdowns, which similarly showed IE pulling ahead of Chrome and Firefox in terms of SunSpider rendering, application open times, and screen real estate. Chrome is the leader in Peacekeeper, but Firefox only appears to be a follower in all of our tests.

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Firefox 12 Tab Features May Have Been Prematurely Hyped

Firefox tab features slated for the upcoming version may not be available until the following iteration, upsetting some fans who could ditch the web browser and use a competitor's instead -- a development that would be good news for Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.

www.electronista.comBoth the home tab and new-tab page features initially reported as slated for Firefox 12, which is to be released in April, may not appear until Firefox 13, according to ExtremeTech.

"It now looks like at least the Home Tab, and possibly the New Tab Page, will not arrive until Firefox 13; they just weren’t ready for Firefox 12," it reported on Sunday.

Other reports over the weekend based on nightly builds of Firefox 12 said that edition of the browser would have a new-tab page feature, similar to what's found in Safari and Chrome, and a revamp of the home tab page.

With the new-tab feature, whenever a blank new tab is launched, Firefox would display a 3-by-3 matrix of thumbnails of your most visited sites.

You can edit the thumbnails. They can be reordered within the matrix through drag and drop. Thumbnails can be hidden or "pinned" to their position in the matrix.

The home tab changes are more ambitious and will come in two phases. Phase one calls for a clean and simple page with a row of "launchers" at its bottom. The launchers give you quick access to tools, such as bookmarks, history, settings, add-ons, web apps and downloads.

Phase two completely overhauls the home tab. It adds a new toolbar and direct access to Google Chat. It also incorporates the thumbnail matrix display used in the new new-tab feature. There's a matrix of "top sites," for example, and one for "recently shared" sites.

There's a "top apps" section with shortcuts for webposts like Netflix, Facebook, Twitter and such.

www.extremetech.comThose tab features, though, probably won't be seen until Firefox 13, which doesn't have a release date yet, although it's expected to be sometime at mid year.

Two things that will be in Firefox 12 are auto completion of web addresses and deeper integration with Web applications.

With auto completion, Firefox will automatically complete a URL that you start typing in the address bar based on information from your browser history or bookmark library.

Firefox 12 will enter its Aurora phase on January 31. Final release is expected in April.

With Mozilla's rapid release schedule for Firefox, it's not surprising that things can be a little confusing from time to time. The breakneck pace allows Mozilla to incorporate new features into Firefox faster, but it can create more pain than some users are willing to bear, users like "John S," a commenter at ExtremeTech.

"Thanks but no, thanks, [F]irefox," he wrote. "I've moved on."

"Your fast release schedule has put me out in the cold," he continued. "My add-ons are broken, and new bugs pop up every week. In fact, this is all academic, because your lost update broke my ability to use your browser at all. It won't start, and no matter how many times I uninstall and reinstall, the problems remains the same."

"So, it's Chrome for me," he concludes.

Follow freelance technology writer John P. Mello Jr. and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.

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