Installing Firefox 8 was a fine, quick experience. Installing Firefox 8 was a fine, quick experience. Keep in mind that Firefox now has four "channels," so if you've been on the beta channel since the days of 3.6, you will stay on it until you download the installer for a different channel. There's no in-channel way to switch channels.
We mistakenly reported that Firefox 4 didn't include automatic updating the way that Chrome and Opera do. In fact, it did, as have all subsequent versions. Firefox 6 brought big cuts in the time it took to restart the browser, so the process that used to take several minutes took less than 1 minute on our test computers. If you're updating from version 3.6 to version 8, the process is likely to take several minutes because of the significant code changes that have been made.
Careful Firefox observers will notice that the browser no longer ships with a separate icon for Safe Mode. Simply hold down Shift; when you click on the Firefox icon to open a box, you will be allowed to customize which settings carry over to Safe Mode.
Firefox automatically installs a Windows 7 taskbar icon if you choose it as your default browser. Uninstalling the browser does not leave behind any icons or folders if you choose to remove your settings at the same time.
A new feature debuting in Firefox 8 checks your add-ons to see which ones you installed and which ones come from third-party vendors, such as security suite makers. The browser will now ask you if you'd like to disable any of these third-party add-ons when you upgrade to Firefox 8. On top of that, all future third-party add-ons will be blocked from autoinstalling. Instead, you'll be presented with the option to allow them or block them on a per-case basis. This squarely puts Firefox on the side of the user.
Another tool you'll encounter that debuted in version 7 is an opt-in reporting measure called Telemetry. It anonymously contributes user performance data to help Mozilla improve the browser, and it is not mandatory. We talk more about Telemetry below in the Performance section.
Interface
If you're a big Firefox fan, you'd better hope that either you weren't very attached to the version 3.6 look or you're extremely taken by the new design. The main interface is now completely different from what's come before, retaining only the larger back button that debuted in version 3. Not surprisingly, the new design also brings the browser significantly closer to the minimalist style first adopted by Google Chrome in 2008, although it actually looks most similar to Opera 11.
The menu bar has been squished into an orange button on the upper left, with menu options spread across two columns. Nearly all the submenus have been redesigned as well, although the hot keys remain the same, so the learning curve isn't particularly steep. In fact, the menu redesign makes it much easier to get to bookmarks, add-ons, and history, as they now all live on one Menu pane. The Menu button is not available to Mac users, to keep with the Mac OS X theme.
In addition to the major changes to the menu, smaller changes have greatly improved usability. For example, there's now a Get Bookmark Add-ons link in the Bookmarks submenu. The History submenu now has Recently Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows sections.
Tabs are now on top by default, and while the forward and back navigation buttons haven't moved, the stop and refresh buttons are now attached to the right side of the location bar, next to the bookmark star. When you're typing a URL, the "Go" button appears at the end of the location bar as an arrow. While resolving a URL, the box changes from the "Go" arrow to an "X" for the new Stop button. It might be hard for some to see since the traditional stop-and-go colors of red and green that were in Firefox 3.6 have been removed. You can customize the Firefox skin with the restartless Personas add-ons, added in Firefox 3.6.
Right of the location bar lives the traditional search box, with its drop-down list of search engines. Above that on the tab bar there is a new button that lists all your open tabs, and you can add a button to access the Panorama tab-grouping feature. If you don't see the button, you can add it by right-clicking on the interface and choosing Customize, then dragging and dropping the Tab Groups icon next to the List All Tabs button. We don't consider many customizations to be essential, but this one is.
The Status bar that lives at the bottom of the interface is now hidden by default, again in keeping with the minimalist philosophy and the competition. There's a new Add-on bar as well, also hidden by default, to which extension icons can be added if you want to keep add-on icons easily available but out of the way of the main interface.
One of Firefox's singular strengths is its capacity for customization, which remains unparalleled and which is accessible even to novice users. While competing browsers do offer add-ons and extensions, Firefox remains far ahead of all of them in interface customization. And so, if you don't like the new interface, it's quite easy to revert it to Firefox 3.6 or just about any other look using add-ons and themes.
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