Firefox 14

Firefox 14, the latest entry in Mozilla's rapid-release scheme, is one of the less earthshattering new versions, adding a mere handful of new features, and none that most users will probably even notice. The browser can now encrypt Web searches and ditches site favicons in the address bar, and it also offers developers better control of the mouse pointer for Web-based games. But despite the lack of exciting new goodies in this update, I'm still a big Firefox fan, and there's not much that other browsers can do that Firefox can't. It has lots of HTML5 support, the best extension and customization capabilities, and the unique Panorama tab organizer. While you can get all this Mozilla goodness for Windows, Mac, or Linux, I evaluated the Windows version for this review.

With the previous version, Firefox filled one remaining gap between it and pretty much every other browser?its new-tab page was completely blank, where others like IE and Opera long offered a grid of frequently visited and favorite sites, as well as the ability to re-open closed tabs. Firefox has not only added tiles for most-accessed sites on the new-tab page, but included lots more settings on the home page. Firefox has also gotten faster to start up and thriftier at memory usage. Read on for a closer look at where Firefox has been and where it's at.

Earlier releases have brought bigger changes that will be welcomed by many users. In version 9, performance was improved Mac OS X Lion operation and appearance improved. We also got better "Do Not Track" privacy support, and improved HTML5 standard support. Firefox 7 added better use of memory, addressing one of the most common complaints I've heard about Firefox over the past few years. It also sped up startup times, in which Firefox has long trialed competing browsers.

It still holds true that the big interface changes all came along in version 4. Mozilla started emulating Google's Chrome (free, 4.5 stars) Web browser in JavaScript speed and minimalist interface, as other Windows browser competitors Internet Explorer 9 (free, ?3.5 stars) and Opera 12 (free, 3.5 stars) have, as well.

Firefox 14 can nearly match Chrome on JavaScript speed, and holds its own when it comes to HTML5 support and a trimmed down interface that gives the Web page center stage. But when compared side-by-side with Chrome, Firefox falls just a bit short in terms of HTML5 support and whiz-bang features like Chrome Instant, which loads pages from your history before you even finish typing their addresses or search terms in the address bar.

Install
A simple 16MB download gets you the Firefox 14 Windows installer. When you run it you'll lose your old version of Firefox. The latest Firefox is available for Mac (30MB) and Linux (17MB) as well as for Windows 7, Vista, and XP?the last of which even Internet Explorer 9 (Free, 4 stars) can't claim. You can import bookmarks from any other installed browsers on first run, but setup is nearly as uncomplicated as it is for Chrome. Firefox also now makes it easy to choose a search provider other than Google, but surprisingly, not as easy as Chrome does. Mozilla also offers a Firefox with Bing version, which uses Microsoft's Web search built in.

Mozilla has been working towards silent updates for Firefox since at least the summer of 2010. And starting with version 13 this effort finally came to fruition?you no longer need to explicitly update Firefox; it happens after a restart of the browser. The Firefox installation gets around Windows' User Access dialog in a more orthodox way than Google Chrome's automatic updates. Chrome installs in a non-standard, non program folder, which some consider a potential security risk. Firefox, however, uses a "service" rather than a standard program process for the update to avoid the UAC dialog.

The first time you run Firefox, you'll see the "Select Your Add-ons" dialog. This is so that you can see any add-ons that may have been installed unbeknownst to you by another app you installed. After this first extension approval, the browser will no longer allow third-party app installations to install Firefox extensions without your approval.

Interface
Firefox's interface is in line with the trend of "less is more"?less space taken up by the browser frame and controls and more space for Web pages. The page tabs have moved above the address bar, and as with Opera 12, there's just a single menu option in the form of the orange Firefox button at top left. You can re-enable the standard menus by hitting the Alt key.

In the version 14 update, Mozilla has followed Chrome's lead in banishing sites' favicons from the address bar. Favicons are those customized icons for a site that appear to the left of a site's URL in the address bar. The growth in popularity of Chrome is an indication that users probably don't care about this favicon, but Web publishers will probably miss the opportunity of further branding their sites. Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera still respect the site's branding by showing the favicon. In its defense, Firefox designers claim that doing away with Favicons aids security by preventing rogue sites from mimicking security icons, and the favicon does still appear on the tab bar.

Most of the current interface started to show up with Firefox 4, but with Firefox 13 a key interface update arrived: Firefox's new new-tab page, as in a lot of other things, also mimics Google Chrome most closely. As in Chrome and Opera, Firefox's new tab page shows thumbnails of your most recently and frequently visited sites. And as in the other browsers, you can customize what's on these thumbnails, and they shrink and enlarge as you resize the browser window.

You can also remove sites and pin and unpin them to the new tab page. But you can't specify which sites to include: They're chosen by frequency of your visits. It's not quite up to the level of Safari's beautiful 3D Top Sites page or Opera's Speed Dial, which even offers live information on its pinned tiles. And most of the others let you re-open closed sessions?Firefox's default home page lets you do this, though I'd like to see the choice on the new-tab page, too. Anyway, it's good to see that Firefox finally helps you out a little when you open a new tab. If on the other hand, you don't want this view, a button at top right turns it off, reverting to the plain white, blank tab page.

The Home button is to the right of the search bar, and a bookmark button appears to the right of that. That bookmark button only appears when you don't want the bookmark toolbar taking up browser window space. This gives you one-click access to frequently needed Web addresses. But I wish that, like IE's star button, Firefox also let you see recent page history. You can still call up the full bookmark manager, which lets you do things like importing bookmarks from other browsers, search, and organize. And the full History dialog does let you see all recent visits, but it's not as convenient as IE's star dropdown.

Firefox is one of the last remaining browsers to still use separate address and search boxes, which is good for those who like to keep those two activities separate. That doesn't mean, however, that a search won't work in the address bar, aka the "awesome bar." That tool, which drops down suggestions from your history and favorites whenever you start typing, was pioneered by Firefox and copied by all other browsers. Another tweak is that when one of its suggested sites is already open in a tab, you can click on a "Switch to tab" link, preventing you from opening more tabs unnecessarily?a useful tweak.

As part of its leading extensibility, Firefox has always been the browser most open to allowing different search providers, including specialized search like shopping, reference, or social. It was one of the first to support the OpenSearch format. The other popular browsers now do so, too, but Firefox can automatically detect search services on a page and let you add them from the search bar. And Firefox's built-in Twitter search option makes it easy to find Twitter personalities worth following as well as popular photos and videos on the social network.

The Mac version of Firefox integrates well with Apple's latest desktop operating system, Mac OS X Lion. Mozilla's browser supports the OS's two- and three-finger swiping gestures for moving between apps and pages in full screen, and the theme design matches Lion's toolbar and icon stylings. With version14, we finally get full-screen operation in Lion, but it still doesn't support multitouch trackpad webpage zooming, as Safari does.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/PYgvqyddT6o/0,2817,2349494,00.asp

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