The stable release of Firefox 13 is now available as a direct download from Mozilla. You won’t see this propagate through the update mechanism until sometime tomorrow, but those in the know can get it immediately. The most notable additions are a new Chrome-style new tab page and a new default home page. Smooth scrolling is on by default now as well, but I wouldn’t call that substantial.
Here’s the problem: It still sucks for Mac users. We’re still stuck with ugly legacy scrollbars despite Lion being released to the public nearly a year ago. While they have implemented forward and backward gesture support for trackpads and the Magic Mouse, it still doesn’t show any sort of visual indication of where you swiped. If you errantly swipe forward or backward in Safari or Chrome, it is made clear with visual cues which direction you’re going. With Firefox, no such luck. As far as Mozilla is concerned, Mac users are still second class citizens. At this point, Safari and Chrome are best-of-class browsers on OS X with Firefox and Opera failing to keep pace. Firefox may be great on Linux or Windows, but it certainly isn’t even good for OS X.
Is there any good reason for recommending Firefox to anyone using a Mac at this point? Sure, you’ll have some super dorks who really want to keep a certain extension. Certainly, web designers need to keep it around for testing. But what about normal humans? If you can think of any good reason to recommend Firefox over Safari or Chrome for Mac users, please take a second to leave a comment below this post.
