I am really curious as to why Mozilla's Firefox team could not OFFICIALLY release these builds. I mean, optimizing for the G4/G5/Intel should not be that much of a problem, right?

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The name and icon aren't really a problem. Just copy/paste the Firefox icon over from your old Firefox application, and rename BonEcho.app to Firefox.app. Sure, the application is still identified as BonEcho in the menu bar, but everything else looks Firefoxy.

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Why not optimized? G4, G5 and Intel are the only macs today (almost)...

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This is what I was looking for, I used an Intel optimized 1.5.0.4 of Firefox that launched in one bounce, but the default 2.0 would take 3 or more (a real letdown, despite the nice new features, since I'd become used to quickly firing up Firefox for a hop to some favorite blogs.) Also, the recommended add-ons in the article raised my hopes for using Tab Mix Plus, though I can't get the close button to appear on the tabs, so it looks like I'll either have to go without or use the far-right close button only.

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Simple reason why Mozilla will not released Optimized builds, like Neils, ElFurbe or mine... doing the QA on optimized builds can be a tangled mess. Then toss on portability issues that may arise.

Other Links:
ElFurbe:
http://firefoxmac.furbism.com/ (been doing optimized builds longer than most... for PPC)
Mine:
http://risckyworkings.com (one, if not the first, to do optimized intel builds)

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I'm on Mac 10.4.8 and I installed FF 2.0 yesterday. Everything is working well except a seeming problem with Flash. I can't view YouTube videos or most multimedia content on ESPN.com. I installed Flash 9 but it didn't make a difference.

Will the Intel-optimized build remedy this?

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http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/
Is wonderful, and also has a very nice alternative icon in use.

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Besides renaming "BonEcho.app" to "Firefox.app" and changing the icon in the "Get Info" window (which is what escargot mentioned in Post #2), you *can* get the application labeled as "Firefox" in the menu bar to complete the transformation.

Simply go the the BonEcho/Firefox application and control-click on the icon, and choose "Show Package Contents." (be sure you've quit BonEcho first). In the new window that opens, navigate through Contents -> Resources -> en.lproj. Once inside the "en.lproj" folder, open up the file "InfoPlist.strings" in TextEdit or some other plaintext editor.

In the InfoPlist.strings file, the first line will read:

CFBundleName = "BonEcho";

Change that to...

CFBundleName = "Firefox";

Be sure to save the file, and then close the Finder window. Relaunch BonEcho/Firefox, and it should now read "Firefox" in the menu bar. Obviously, you could also rename it to anything else that you think might be better.

I have no idea if this will break anything in BonEcho (hasn't yet on my machine), so please proceed with caution. Otherwise, that's how you do it!

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What's the benefit of using "optimized" builds? How are they optimized? Firefox seems plenty quick to me.

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navestar:

firefox is pretty quick, but i just downloaded bon echo for my macbook and believe me, it's much quicker! probably a 50% improvement in load times and no herkiness when scrolling down. try it out!

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@ Brian Baute

I have the exact same problem, while others don't seem to experience any problems at all. Kind of odd, if you ask me. I've been trying to solve this problem all day long and was an quarter of an inch from going totally insane when I saw you post - THANK YOU! So, I'm not crazy, which is a very comforting thing (to me at least).

Unfortunately I haven't solved the problem, so I too am looking in the direction of BonEcho to see if this could rescue me from insanity. The flash players on myspace-pages are defunkt too.

/Dan

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Nope, BonEcho doesn't solve anything regarding this Flash issue, unfortunately. Bugger.

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@ Brian Baute:

Finally!!

With a some help from leading Danish Mac board on Macnyt.dk, someone managed to come up with a solution. You need to remove (and eventually delete) ALL 'flash player.plugin' you can find in local/global libraries, after which you go to the adobe site and download the UB version. From there on it should work perfectly. At least, the myspace music players and youtube site work fine on my FF now.

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Where can one find the version without the widgets? I like how they blend in the Mac, but the text font appears small on my computer and I'd rather give up looks over readability. On the main page there is only a G5 widget version.

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What is the deal with the widgets? widgets aren't even mentioned in the help file. What widgets are they talking about?

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Thanks to Dan for the Flash fix—I was in the same boat.

Gotta love TUAW......

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There is only ONE WAY to fix the problem with flash etc and having Bon Echo Builds be recognized as "Firefox" Builds and I have and answer on my site, Drumsticks of
Mozillazine Fame, who also builds Firefox G5 Optimized versions, has found how do to make this quick fix and I have the steps detailed on my site, InTheMac.com, in the Second Post...

This Fix will allow your Bon Echo Builds to work on ALL Sites that are looking for "Firefox" as the Browser, sites like MSNBC etc.

Try going to MSNBC and see if fly-outs work before the fix and make the quick fix and they go back to MSNBC,
Now the site works 100%, As all the rest of your sites will...

Best Regards,

Admin, Ray Marotta, InTheMac.com.

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