Firefox for Mac 138.0.3 / 139.0 Beta 6 / 139.0b6 Developer / 140.0

Overview

Mozilla Firefox for Mac is an excellent choice for Mac users who wish to step away from their reliance on using the Apple Safari web browser. Firefox is well supported by the developer community with a large number of add ons that extend its capabilities way behind its default installation status. Most of these extensions will also work on the Mac, though a few are Windows only or very occasionally Linux occasionally. Firefox is great for cross-browser support as well because there are desktop versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, plus mobile versions on iOS and Android.

Firefox offers tabbed browsing, a sleek layout, lower memory usage than other web browsers, and frequent updates to improve web standards compatibility, add new features, and fix bugs.

Firefox Hello is a new feature that allows for account-less calling to other users with Firefox.

Firefox Sync is another useful feature which can sync open tabs, bookmarks, passwords and other useful information to a Firefox account in the cloud for safe keeping.

Installation

Firefox for Mac requires OS X 10.6 or above when installing Firefox 17 or later. Either download the package from our page here, and go over to the Firefox page where it auto-detects your system and offers the appropriate Firefox package for you.

Interface

The Firefox interface has been refined over the years. It recently become more sleep with curved tabs and saw the removal of the status bar at the bottom. The menu is also hidden from view. This leaves more room for the web page content to be displayed leaving more content “above the fold.”

Tabs will display below the title bar and have scroll arrows either side of the end tabs to scroll through the list of open tabs. The toolbar also may include add ons which can provide faster access to their custom features. Bookmarks for the toolbar will also display in the toolbar area for fast access. The main bookmarks can be access through the bookmark icon or view the hidden menu.

Pros

• Firefox is more memory efficient that most other web browsers
• Keep more than 50 tabs open without eating into system performance
• Extensive list of add ons adding new functionality with many updated frequently
• Frequent updates with new Firefox versions being released every 1-2 months
• Standards compliant browser to show web pages with the latest features

Cons

• Slow initial start up
• Initial overhead is high when first loaded

Alternatives

Google Chrome is available for the Mac and provides similar features albeit with a far greater memory overhead if you do not keep the number of open tabs down to twenty or fewer. 

Conclusion

Firefox is a good alternative to the Safari web browser on the Mac. It offers greater extend-ability than Safari does even if the Apple web site claims that Safari renders web pages faster, that claim is difficult to prove either way.