I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 almost immediately, but am feeling user's remorse. Perhaps 2.0 was a non-trivial improvement over 1.5, but the lack of familiarity with its options and preferences because things were changed (I'm sure there was a UI rationale) really means that I took a short-term step back. Anyway, this is my first irritation with Firefox, the "release" seemed timed to one-up IE 7.0, it really should have been a bug fix and the switcheroo in the UI seems to be the main reason to stick it with a 2.0, even though as I offer above I think the UI changes mean a loss of short term productivity.
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Casual users might not notice much difference between Firefox 2.0 and
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Chrome Passes Firefox, Google May Pull Out Support: I stopped using Firefox around the 20th time it made me do something I shouldn't have had to do because it sucked as a browser. Firefox used to be my hero, now I regard it as somewhat dangerous, and I only use Google Chrome.
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I've run Firefox 2.0 under three different operating systems on several machines.
There's another problem with Firefox 2.0 if you use an Intel Mac, specifically a Mac Pro. It crashes. A lot. It never crashes on my G5-based machines, but it still seems to have problems on Intel machines. I'm tired of seeing the spinning beachball of death.
Hmmm.. It doesn't crash on my Intel iMac. I've really rarely seen it crash at all.
I have a G4 Mac, and my problem is that it won't display some images and funky Flash sometimes. Still, it's mostly an improvement over Camino, which I used until 2.0 came out.
I am a devoted FireFox user but I've also had gripes with it recently, about two weeks ago it randomly deleted about 75% of my bookmarks, including a lot of research links for classes...a lesson learned in the value of backing up files, I guess.
Firefox 2.0 seems to freeze up more often than earlier versions, and seems slower overall.
I lost my bookmarks last week, and was bummed until I discovered that Firefox backs up the bookmark file daily. You can find the backups in your Firefox default profile folder (in Windows, you need to have the option to show hidden files and folders enabled).
There are two features which make 2.0 indispensable to me.
1) When I close a tab accidentally, which I seem to do several times a day, a simple ctrl-shift-t brings it back. Hit it again, and I get the one before that. Etc.
2) When firefox crashes OR my computer crashes OR my battery dies, firefox saves my state and lets me resume where I left off.
I did install an add-on which put the red x back to the side where it was in 1.5 rather than on each tab, but other than that I have no complaints.
One thing that really bugs me on FF Mac (G5) is that often when you click on a hotlinked region, you get jumped to the top of the current page and have to scroll down again.
But I love the spellcheck, and the fact that if I inadvertently leave my finger on the Alt key and scroll with the mouse, I don't suddenly find myself looking at 36pt type.
A quick Googling will give one information about how to revert most of the UI changes, or then one could just go to http://www.lifehacker.com/software/firefox-2/geek-to-live--top-firefox-…
to find most of them directly. Apart from the tweaks there, one might also want to set browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose to false, to get the old behaviour on tab close.
I'm on XP, and I'm also having the problem that a great deal of .swfs aren't showing, so for instance when someone has included a YouTube video in their blog post, I have to click the IE Tab button to see it. It's not that great a hassle, though.
safari !