Five Bad Things about Firefox
Firefox rocks on Windows, but there are a few things about it that bother me. Especially on the Mac platform.
- <input type="hidden"> are not hidden. If you style a page with a rule that adds a border around all inputs, it affects hidden input fields and creates a visible border. The fix is to manually add a CSS declaration like:
input[type=hidden] { visibility: hidden; } - <q> elements are wrapped in dynamically generated quotation marks. I think it's fantastic that Firefox supports the CSS2 quotes property, but I don't like having to manually turn it off so that my pages have the same content in all browsers. The fix is to manually add a CSS declaration like:
q { quotes: none; }edit reflects correction pointed out by Larry - The dev team seems to have gone out of their way to break the Macintosh UI. Consider, for a moment that you are editing the url in the address bar. You have a section selected and press the left arrow key. Where should the cursor move? I suppose it could be argued that it shouldn't move at all, but it certainly doesn't belong moving to the right! If I recall correctly, this behavior is new to Firefox 1.5 and it worked properly (moved the cursor to left) on version 1.0 on both Mac and Windows. This bug applies to input boxes as well.
- The Javascript Console reports CSS errors. I understand that they're going to change its name to Error Console, but they haven't yet, and reporting errors on CSS is ridiculous -- especially when javascript isn't using them! What's more is that it flags CSS3 syntax (which isn't really official, but still) as errors. So on this site, you see errors because I have a stylesheet with CSS3 syntax that only Safari currently supports. Console2 is a decent bandage for this problem. It looks like it will evolve a great error console, but it's a little clunky.
- Firefox 1.5 no longer renders my Javascript Dock correctly. It does what Opera does. And while I think my CSS is correct, I'll have to research it a bit more before I can really judge. Consider this last point to be more of a grumbling than the other points.
So that's that. There are probably other issues that are escaping me at the moment, but I wanted to get the ball rolling. Don't get me wrong, I like Firefox, I really do. I use it at work on Windows, and I use it from time to time at home on my Mac. But there are some things about it that just make me scratch my head.
- under:
- Life in General
- Web Development
- Posted on
- 2006-01-12
Comments:
You make some good points. It is also unfortunate that Firefox still has no support for multiple background layers, even though Safari and Opera do. Is Firefox really the Best Worst Browser Ever for mac?
Wait for FF 2.0. I'm sure it'll support for multiple background layers.
It is in pretty rapid development, and it's bound to improve, that's for sure.
But there are a lot of hurdles yet for it to overcome. I also understand that the Mac development team is a short-handed, so that's no help on the Mac side.
We'll just have to wait and see! I do admit that I love a lot of the extensions, and I miss not having them in Safari!
I believe it's q {quotes:none} not q {quote:none}
you are correct, sir, I'll edit promptly! thanks for the heads up!
bullshitt
You might need to change the heading to say "4 Bad Things about Firefox". I didn't test it thoroughly but the type=hidden bug seems to have been fixed.
The CSS bug for hidden form elements is really annoying. Thanks for posting the fix - you saved me a bunch of time!
I'm using Firefox 2.0 and I had a problem with css styling type=hidden
Thanks for the fix!
Thanks for the tip about the hidden inputs!
I only think think it's even better to use:
input[type=hidden] { display: none; }(when using "visibility: hidden;" the hidden inputs may still use some space)
The problem with display: none; is that Safari will not pass the data when the form is submitted.
If you're worried about the elements still using space, I would recommend using position: absolute or floating them so they're removed from the document layout.
I couldn't agree more about the third item in your list - they've broken the Mac UI. Its the biggest problem I have with FireFox.
Is there a way to fix this behaviour using the about:config facility? I can't see anything obvious there.
Is FireFox 3.0 expected to resolve this?
This article is closed to further commentary. But you can always contact me directly.