Here’s one of the many small improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 1 that I really like:
Browsing a local folder in Firefox 2:
Browsing a local folder in Firefox 3 Beta 1:
This makes it so much easier to navigate your local files. And it’s not just eye candy — you can now sort the file listing on Name, Size, and Last Modified!
For a more complete coverage of Firefox 3 Beta, this article by Ars Technica is a good start.
by Lim Chee Aun
21 Nov 2007 at 12:49
Wow, this is great! How come I never find this?
by Adam Dempsey
21 Nov 2007 at 14:03
Looks a lot better! I’ve tried it out and there are a lot of improvements! Looking forward to the release!
by AndyEd
21 Nov 2007 at 14:56
I was kinda bummed that browsing a chrome folder reverts to file:// upon click. But cool nonetheless!
by David Naylor
21 Nov 2007 at 16:52
I’d forgotten about that one!
Verry naaaiiiich says Borat!
by Maxo
21 Nov 2007 at 19:08
One thing I’ve always wanted to see is a file manager implemented in FF. I know that this won’t happen (short of an extension) for various valid reasons, but an open source, multi-platform file manager could have so many benefits.
by mawrya
21 Nov 2007 at 19:20
That’s Smokin! As my thermodynamics teacher used to say.
by Gijs
21 Nov 2007 at 19:23
It is, in my humble opinion, a pity that all this really does is look prettier. It is not faster (slower, if anything, due to the extra css and images) and it does not provide additional functionality. The Suite still has the option to use XUL to display directories, which provides a more native-looking UI as well as a tree directory view, something which I’ve always thought was very useful. This feature was taken out for Firefox, and even though I filed a bug to bring it back long ago, nothing has happened (even on that bug – it wasn’t even WONTFIXed, which would put the matter to an end, albeit not a very pleasant one).
by John S. Thomsen
21 Nov 2007 at 19:33
For this functionality to be useful to me, the directories must be listed at the top.
by David Tenser
21 Nov 2007 at 20:10
Gijs: Did you read the blog post at all? It does add functionality too.
by Boris
21 Nov 2007 at 23:01
David, it doesn’t add functionality when compared to the tree view, which is what I assume Gijs was talking about…
That said, I’d be interested in a performance comparison between this view and the tree view. Loading a local file listing got about 2x slower as a result of these changes, and it would be nice if we could get some more of that perf back…
by Miksago
22 Nov 2007 at 10:30
Wow, this is a great new feature, any idea if it’ll be implemented for most file directory pages, such as raw ftp and server outputs?
by Fred
26 Nov 2007 at 10:38
Yes, this is how FTP looks, also.