Fixing Firefox

November 13, 2006 3:27 AM

Making Firefox behave like a Mac application...

While it's trivial to add OS X-like themes to Firefox to make it look like a Mac application, are there preference or component modifications that can make it behave like a proper Mac application?

Specifically, with respect to how mouse and keyboard input are managed, these are a couple examples of what I'm talking about:

• I double-click on a word to select it, and in all other Mac applications, dragging additional words selects those words in entirety, instead of letter by letter as in Firefox

• I use Alt and Command modifiers to move the cursor around in text input areas throughout the browser (within a page and in the widgets); in Mac applications, these modifiers work as expected, but in Firefox, they take on Firefox defaults

Thanks for any advice. I would love to move to Firefox from Safari, but its interface continually frustrates.

posted by Blazecock Pileon to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Just a quick recommendation for Camino. The whole point of Camino was to make a "Mac-like" Firefox. I use it on both of my Macs.
posted by gregvr at 4:11 AM on November 13, 2006

Not to be pedantic, but the point of Camino wasn't to create a "Mac like Firefox". Camino (then called Chimera) predated Phoenix by many, many months. The point was to demonstrate the feasibility of embedding the Gecko rendering engine within a Cocoa application.

I use Camino as the default browser on all my Macs. It's fantastic, but it's no substitute for Firefox. I would guess Blazecock would like to take advantage of FF's extension support, so Camino isn't really the best solution as far as the original question is concerned.

If, however, extensions and theme support are not a concern, then I'll second the recommendation of Camino. As far as I'm concerned, it renders Safari totally useless.
posted by melorama at 4:37 AM on November 13, 2006

Best answer: There's an add-on for Firefox called Keyconfig which lets you, well, config the keys. I've added nice functionality to Firefox to switch between tabs Safari-style (CMD+Shift+Right or Left). It may take care of your Alt + Command issue, but you'd have to do some sleuthing on that one. You need to actually put in the command code into Keyconfig, which you can usually find on the Intarweb.
posted by The Michael The at 6:47 AM on November 13, 2006

I'm glad you asked this. I'm a big Firefox fan and a Firefox advocate, but it's just too un-Mac-like for me to use. When 2.0 came out I switched for a few days. Then I tried Safari again and it felt so much better. I miss the features, but Firefox just feels too uncomfortable.
posted by waldo at 7:02 AM on November 13, 2006

You might want to try this optimized-for-mac build of firefox. I don't know if the keyboard stuff are mac like, but maybe worth a shot.
posted by dhruva at 5:05 PM on November 13, 2006

Response by poster: Nope, I've tried Bon Echo and that doesn't work. Thanks for suggesting it though.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:28 PM on November 13, 2006