New Mac Firebird v0.6 (aka Phoenix) is out!

Glad to see my favorite browser on the PC get a Mac version. First thing I noticed is that they moved the "Options" menu setting from the PC version to be "Preferences" under the Applications menu, which is much more Mac like.

To improve scrolling (with a scroll wheel), go under preferences > extensions > get new extensions. Scroll through the list and you will see an extension called SmoothWheel. It doesn't increase the speed of scrolling, but it removes the "jerkiness" of it, and smooths it out.

Camino still has a ways before the 0.8 release. They included Popup whitelisting in the nightlies. Also in the works is a redesigned bookmarks manager, ala Safari. It's basic implementation is already in the nightlies, but half of the features don't work yet. I'm hoping this will be finished for the 0.8 release....
 
Dayum. This thing is SWEET. Can we say OS X got a new best browser? I can't believe how fast and responsive it is. I thought this kind of responsiveness was only available on XP. Window Resizing screams on my 800 Mhz G4 eMac. Pages load soo damn fast. It feels faster than Safari and Camino, Seriously. Just my 2 cents.
 
Pheonix has ALOT of features, this is EASILY the best browser for OS X. For real this browser beats out every other browser so easily in my opinion, its soo good it just crushes every other one.
 
I've been playing with firebird all day on our macs and PCs. It does seem a bit faster than IE on our Dells but Camino and Safari are still my choices on the mac. Could this be Apples choice for a business branded browser since Dave seems to be working on this as well. Now that Safari uses the inverted tab UI I really am begining to see just how awful looking the other tabs are, wasted pixels all over the place.
 
FWIW, Phoenix has been available for MacOS X for quite some time.
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Up until now, the OS X port of Phoenix was just a tech preview hack by Kevin Gerich, just to be shown that it could be done.

With the revised Mozilla roadmap, this is the first officially released version of Phoenix(Firebird) for OS X.

I only wish they had a nicer logo, other than the Mozilla "M".
 
when the pinstripe theme makes it wasy to firebird, and the mozilla devs do some more work to make the program more "mac like", then i'll give it another shot. in any event, it's great to see competition really heating up on the mac browser front.

no matter which browser is your choice, it's great to finally HAVE a choice :)
 
I had just installed Firebird and was getting set to give it a good spin around the block to see how it measured up. But before I did that I hit Command-H to hide it so I could do something else first. But the browser did not hide. The browser instead grew a "History" sidebar. How unfortunate. Good bye Firebird.
 
Originally posted by gwynarion
I had just installed Firebird and was getting set to give it a good spin around the block to see how it measured up. But before I did that I hit Command-H to hide it so I could do something else first. But the browser did not hide. The browser instead grew a "History" sidebar. How unfortunate. Good bye Firebird.
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...of Firebird the Command + H (Hide) works just fine here... Maybe you downloaded/tried an older version? :rolleyes:

As for other people who believe that Firebird must look more like and OS X you are correct... Still, I don't expect developers doing so but you can bet that someone will produce an Aqua and even a Metal Theme for use with Firebird or maybe they already exist... :D :p ;)
 

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Everyone who comes out with a new browser sportscar has to make it faster than the last guy to get people to switch.

At least you can't get a speeding ticket. :)
 
Originally posted by hulkaros
...of Firebird the Command + H (Hide) works just fine here... Maybe you downloaded/tried an older version
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I downloaded the "newest" version of the browser as linked to directly from the main page of Mozilla.org: 0.6. Perhaps this is an error that they've corrected in some bleeding-edge nightly build, but not in the "for general public consumption" release that just came out.

And what exactly was your screen shot supposed to show? All I saw was an 'about' page, nothing that proved that Command-H toggled Firebird to hide in your case.

As for other people who believe that Firebird must look more like and OS X you are correct... Still, I don't expect developers doing so but you can bet that someone will produce an Aqua and even a Metal Theme for use with Firebird or maybe they already exist.
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I don't expect the developers to come up with a shoddy skin that sorta makes the browser look like a native Cocoa app. I expect the developers to design a browser that is a native Cocoa app--one that uses the native OS widgets in their entirety rather than copying a few of them here and there. So for now Firebird is "cute" and I could see some people using it, especially on the Windows side, but when it comes to Gecko-based browsers I find Camino to be a much more credible alternative (though it does not use the native widgets--for the most part--either).
 
Originally posted by gwynarion
I downloaded the "newest" version of the browser as linked to directly from the main page of Mozilla.org: 0.6. Perhaps this is an error that they've corrected in some bleeding-edge nightly build, but not in the "for general public consumption" release that just came out.

And what exactly was your screen shot supposed to show? All I saw was an 'about' page, nothing that proved that Command-H toggled Firebird to hide in your case.
Click to expand...

The picture was meant to show you my version of Firebird, nothing more nothing less... Anyways, try the nightly build and give THAT a shot... :p ;)

As for Cocoa developement I'm totally with you but as I said I don't expect them to do one... Just themes I guess... :rolleyes:

:D

:)
 
Ok anyone getting this?

When i close the main window and open a new one i can't go anywhere. I type in an address or click on a bookmark and nothing happens. :(

Otherwise i really like it. Especially the banner ad blocking ( built in ads not just pop-ups )
 
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