Firefox 3: Not very 'Mac-like'?


The rest of us are quite found of Firefox. Let me rephrase that, about one-in-four Mac OS users also chose Firefox. That's about 7 percentage points above the general internet population--give or take a little, around 18% of all web surfers use Firefox.

With an adoption rate that high, you'd think we Firefox on Mac users would be a relatively contented bunch o' people.

Although I'm sure he's not alone, Johan Sanneblad is perhaps the first to go over Firefox 3 with a fine-tooth-comb and describe in detail all of the things therein that aren't Mac-like.

Apple Store


Having tried to use Firefox 3 as my main browser for a while it just strikes me how little it actually conforms with the rest of Mac OS X. I haven't found a decent summary of this yet on the web, so I decided to do one myself.

Here's a quick and dirty version of the nits, some not so small, Johan found to pick with Firefox 3:

Firefox does not use Cocoa controls.

In Leopard all menus now have rounded corners. Well not in Firefox. All Firefox menus have the old style look, and when used with items such as list boxes it just turns out way wrong.

Firefox 3 RC2 added the possibility to differentiate between foreground and background windows. However there is still something very wrong with the Firefox window.

Finally, I think Firefox renders content in a very ugly way. Just check the two pictures below from http://www.google.se/. There is nothing special in the form layout, but just look at the way the buttons OVERLAP with the input field, and how the radio button text is located UNDER the actual buttons. It's so ugly it's almost funny.

Well, Johan's plenty irritated with Firefox 3. So much so, that he won't use it anymore.

Perhaps he should consider Camino...

Editor's note: Is Johan getting his knickers in a twist over nothing or is Firefox 3 on the Mac really that bad? Personally, I use Firefox about 90% of the time and Safari the remainder...

What's your take?

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