Firefox 4: Is it all its cracked up to be?

I have been using the Firefox 4 beta since it was released to the public and so far I have found it very useable. The new interface looks really clean and the browser is pretty fast. There are a few new features which make it worthwhile and I am sure more will come in the near future. I am sure you have heard of how fast the browser is and how great it is going to be. However I have noticed quite a few flaws with the product which seem like oversights.

• Next to the new Firefox button are a whole heap of empty pixels, just sitting there. Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to move the tabs up into that area so we get more real estate on the screen. This will give precious space to those on netbooks and low resolution monitors. Below is a picture to show you what I mean:

Instead the bar could look more like this:

• Next there is the download manager. It is hidden in the bar below and to see the full manager like in the previous versions, you double click on the logo in the status bar. However, when the download finishes, the little thing in the status bar disappears and unless you have told it to save the file, it will disappear. There seems to be no way of opening the file otherwise without re downloading the file in order to open the download manager. For some reason, the Firefox buttons contains the add-on manger but no download manager. Update: You can open the download manager with Ctrl+J or by pressing Alt and going into the tools menu. Still more difficult than it has to be though.

• Finally, every time a new version comes out, Firefox automatically downloads the new version. This is good but then when you restart Firefox, random menu buttons seem to appear and disappear. For example the feedback button disappears after updating and there is no way to bring it back. Then after a couple of days it magically pops back up again. As well as this, comparing this browser to chrome, it is not that fast. Chrome opens a lot quicker, in fact sometimes when i am impatient I just open Chrome instead of Firefox.

I am sure many, if not all of these issues will be fixed by the time the full version is released but for now, these are my major gripes with the beta.

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