Firefox 3 RC1 still not tablet-friendly

I just downloaded Release Candidate 1 for Firefox 3 since barring any major code-tastrophes, it's a safe bet this version will be the final release. What's the first thing I did? Checked the tablet and ink input methods, as they've been an issue since early on.

I installed the browser on my Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC that's running Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate and uses a touchscreen, not an active digitizer. I hit up our site and immediately tapped in the Google Search text box. No Tablet Input Panel, same as before. Just to make sure it wasn't our Google Search implementation, I tapped in our comment fields: still no TIP.

Tapping in the Address Bar does bring up the TIP, but not with the web-context buttons like "http://", "www.", and ".com", which I use extensively. I also noticed that the floating TIP will not appear if you first highlight any part of a URL in the Address Bar; truly a pain because I often select the entire URL and then hit the TIP to delete and replace it with a new URL. I'm also not seeing a fix to the auto-complete bug first noted late last year. Actually, I'm only seeing the auto-complete function when you send the data from the TIP to the Address Bar, but it could just be me.

I haven't tested any of these Tablet scenarios on a device with an active digitizer; I can't see why those would behave differently, but if someone has a few minutes to check, let us know!

Comments

[JC]

I see the same address bar behavior with an active digitizer (Toshiba M200). However, I do get a TIP when I tap the Google search field (when I have no text highlighted in the field).

[Jeffrey]

Have you run with the Gesso TIP extension?

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Jeffrey, I haven't added the GeckoTIP extension for two reasons. One, I'm testing the native functionality of FF and two, I'd have to turn off a FF extension compatibility to test. Just didn't get around to it yet because I'm more interested in the native functions. I suspect (and hope!) that GeckoTIP will work or be updated to work in FF3.

[Edward Del Grosso]

Just as a side note. I have been running IE
exclusively on my Tablet. I installed the
Firefox beta and a tablet extension called gesso.
For me it restores all my tablets features in
firefox. It works in version 3 and I think it
is better than gecko tip.

[Dave P]

I'm running Firefox 3 Beta 5 on an OQO with an active digitizer. I find that the TIP works in the toolbar address and find boxes although there seems to be something of a conflict between tapping to select text with spaces which is already in the boxes and getting the TIP icon to appear (essentially, when you double tap to select all the text, the TIP icon sometimes vanishes).

Boxes within the page are not always supported. Many of them require the use of the TIP's keyboard with the ink entry "insert" button grayed out.

When I get a chance I'll move to RC1 and see if the same thing happens.