It has improved a lot of things, but there are issues that caused me
to finally give up and uninstall it. The new add on manager is a
serious pain and I never did figure out how to display all of my
installed add ons, plug ins and so on. The inability to read
difficult pages with the mouse cursor is a big one, you can no longer
use the F key to navigate via forms, this was particularly annoying
to me since I use it a lot to navigate certain pages on Amazon.com,
it will not hold your position when you enter and then exit browse
mode, for me it consistently jumped back to the top of the page. It
seems to have issues counting objects on the page, for example the
standard Firefox start page states that it has 2 links whereas with
3.6.15 and all previous versions, it reports having 13 links. Issues
with browse mode not working or taking multiple attempts to work on
various pages are much more common.
I am sure a lot of these issues have to do with version 4 being such
a fundemental shift, and, in truth, there aren't any massive glaring
issues that render it unuseable in any major area, but there are
enough little things and middling things to make it frustrating for
me. The last several major changes to Firefox left me feeling like
there was a lot new for me to explore and learn. This one has left me
feeling like I can't depend on what I am being told by Window Eyes in
all cases and as though I have lost some of the control I have over
what I get from my browser and how I can get around even some pages I
know very well, let alone unfamiliar or difficult pages. I know that
accessibility is a priority for those that work on Firefox and I
expect that many things will improve, but I do not feel it is there
yet and I feel that some things fell through the cracks. The add on
manager is, in my mind, the most glaring example of this. They moved
from a standard control scheme to an in-browser, online and
interactive scheme, but browse mode doesn't work consistently on the
page. turning the add on toolbar on and off doesn't seem to do
anything. Installing Firefox 4 automatically enrolls you in the
Mozilla Test Pilot program and the Test Pilot add on is automatically
installed, but the pop ups that it produces are not very accessible.
They include a button to submit information and a check box to allow
it to automatically submit information, but there is no accessible
text to let you know what information you are submitting and the pop
ups interfere with the add on manager page if you are trying to
navigate it while Test Pilot is nagging you to submit information.
The add on manager page includes quite a number of links with no alt
text to tell you what they do and a row of unlabelled buttons at the
bottom of the page. There is no way I could find to simply display
all of your installed extentions, if you want to find them you
apparently have to search for them and remember the names of all of
the ones you have installed. Perhaps there is a way to display all
installed material, but if so, I couldn't find it and didn't stumble
on it by clicking on unlabelled links or buttons. While stumbling
through all of this, browse mode seems to work inconsistently and the
page often stops reading and has other such issues like inconsistent
reading of lines that make the already frustrating experience even
more difficult.
Perhaps some of the issues I had were related to being an XP user,
perhaps the browser works better on Windows 7 systems. Perhaps some
are because I only have 1 Gb of RAM and a five year old dual core
processor. I don't know. I just know that I tried the last beta and
went back to the previous version and then tried the release version
and found that most of the issues I had with the beta were still
there. I tested it out and worked with it trying to get used to the
issues. I finally got the Test Pilot add on removed, sorry Mozilla,
would like to help, but not when the add on won't let me figure out
what information I am giving you and when its pop ups interfere with
what I am currently doing. If I could get the add on manager to work
better, could get my forms navigation back, get Firefox to hold my
position better, and get some of the browse mode annoyances to go
away, particularly being told that browse mode is unavailable when it
should be available, I could probably live with the other issues at
least until some of them are improved, but right now, the
frustrations are enough to make me want to avoid doing things online,
and I can't deal with a browser that makes me want to put off either
working or playing online. I switched from IE to Firefox way back for
exactly this reason and I still find IE to be offputting enough to
not be a really good option for regular use, but Firefox 4, at least
right now, doesn't seem to be much better of an option and the last
release of 3.6 is working well except for the little crashing problem
i've been having that updating to 4 didn't fix. So, until some things
improve, I don't see any reason to deal with all of the new issues
when I have the option of staying put on 3.6 where at least I only
have to put up with issues I am already used to dealing with and that
might get fixed soon.
Just my two cents,
Chris
At 04:54 PM 3/23/2011, J.J. Meddaugh wrote:
I can't speak to its official support at this time, but by and
large, it works well. You may need to associate the Firefox sets for
the new version.
J.J. Meddaugh - A T Guys
Your source for Code Factory, the iBill, KNFB Reader, Sendero GPS,
audio games, braillers, and more!
http://www.atguys.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Don H" <[email protected]>
To: "gwmicro" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 6:52 PM
Subject: firefox 4
I assume that GW is not recommending Firefox 4. Seems that users
are posting problems that are not currently solvable.
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