Mozilla Firefox 3.0: RELEASED!

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 01 Feb 2008, 03:57

Firefox 3 Beta 1: First look - It's a bit old being post last November but anyway here we are:

http://lifehacker.com/software/screensh ... 319968.php

thelostdragon · Post by **thelostdragon** » 01 Feb 2008, 04:36

When is it out?

I'm always sceptical using new versions of anything that has been working well already.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 01 Feb 2008, 06:47

The fact that it was delayed several months since the original scheduled milestone date speaks volumes.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 01 Feb 2008, 14:25

There is no release date yet. I suspect when IE8 comes out, which no doubt MS are delaying so they can nab some more ideas from Firefox.

I too am a bit cautious about installing new software when the old works but often it's worth it for the new features. I cannot be bothered installing it while it's in Beta though.

No doubt it will be stable when it's released. Firefox 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 were.

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 01 Feb 2008, 15:22

thelostdragon wrote:When is it out?

I'm always sceptical using new versions of anything that has been working well already.

Same here. I still use an old version of Avant which is working well, cause I know the newer version won't allow me to keep my tabs on the bottow of the screen while keeping the 'close tab' button on the top of the screen.

And same goes for Bitcomet btw, which works fine, so no need to update.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Jun 2008, 03:34

Firefox 3.0 is due this Tuesday: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fasterfo ... _near.html

Firefox 3.0: Release Candidate 3 Review: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080605/mo ... b-for-now/

From that article:

One caution: Some existing add-ons won’t work with the new version until their authors update them

You'd think a Technical writer would know, it's dead easy to get any Firefox add-on to work in any version of Firefox, even if not officially.

This sounds useful:

The latest Firefox has a number of new and improved features. If you type any word or phrase into its address bar, the browser instantly searches your history and bookmarks for a possible match, to save you from typing or combing through your bookmark list.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's worth remembering what Microsoft have planned for IE8, due later this year:

https://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/ ... 455#108455

So far IE8 looks like it will trump FF3, we'll see.

Regardless I'll likely stick with Firefox for it's configurable options and add-ons. For me it's lots of little things, plus the massive add-on support that make Firefox the better web browser. This does make it difficult to explain to someone when they ask why it's better than IE7.

It was much easier with IE6, as that's ancient.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 17 Jun 2008, 22:41

With only an hour and a half left of the 17th of June I can finally get into the Mozilla website, to download Firefox 3.0. No I haven't been checking all tonight.

It's too late now to install it. I'll do it tomorrow.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 18 Jun 2008, 21:32

I've just installed it to check it out, and I can say it's definitely a lot faster than IE7.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Jun 2008, 00:38

I decided to delete my FF2 installation folder and profile folder, it had become so bloated. My Profile folder was 27Mb, it's now only 6Mb. Normally I always upgrade over the top. After doing this and installing FF3 I imported my bookmarks.html, added my search engine plugins back in and re-installed my add-ons.

My god Firefox 3 is quick. It's significantly faster than Firefox 2 and IE7. Pages literally just appear, there's virtually no page loading at all.

They've renamed Add-ons back to Extensions

. All but one of my Extensions are compatible with FF3. I had to force a few to install by bumping the MaxVersion tag.

Sadly Tab Preferences isn't compatible and there's no new version, bumping the MaxVersion tag on this one doesn't work

. Ah well I'll get use to the "close tab" button only being on each tab, instead of at the end.

I dislike the cluttered Bookmarks menu. My Bookmarks now start way down the list. I'll never use the "Recently added Bookmarks" options, it's a pity I cannot remove it. I also don't need to see the Bookmark Toolbar on the menu, it's in my toolbar anyway. I've installed the latest Menu Editor extension but sadly it's not able to amend this menu.

Except for those niggles Firefox 3 is definitely better than Firefox 2. I've not had a chance to play with the new features yet. I do suspect IE8 will trump it (that looks to have some pretty cool features) but for now Firefox 3 rocks.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Jun 2008, 01:04

I've uninstalled it because of various niggles:

It doesn't display all MySpace profile customisations such as coloured scrollbars, rollover effects on images, and invisible song players.

The bookmarks section is indeed cluttered, and when you select a website off it, the bookmarks bit doesn't close itself, you have to do it.

On a PSP website, Firefox started using 100% of my computer's memory/resources and was basically freezing everything up until I eventually forced it to close. I then compared IE7 and FF3 on identical pages, and found that FF3 actually uses more memory/resources.

So basically I'm sticking with IE7 and I'm hoping that IE8 will have speed that rivals FF3 (and a download manager...).

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Jun 2008, 12:31

gasteropod wrote:It doesn't display all MySpace profile customisations such as coloured scrollbars, rollover effects on images, and invisible song players.

Weird. I've noticed Smilies and the images used for Quote/Edit (to the right of each post) are out of focus slighlty in FF3. It's not big deal, if a little weird.

Do you post on Facebook too? Your Myspace page isn't too bad but if you don't mind me saying your background makes it hard to read some of the text. I've wondered this for awhile, are you only allowed one Myspace page per profile? They alwayds just seem to scroll forever.

gasteropod wrote:The bookmarks section is indeed cluttered, and when you select a website off it, the bookmarks bit doesn't close itself, you have to do it.

I didn't notice that I'll test it tonight.

gasteropod wrote:On a PSP website, Firefox started using 100% of my computer's memory/resources and was basically freezing everything up until I eventually forced it to close.

What's on the website to cause it to do that? Weird.

gasteropod wrote:I then compared IE7 and FF3 on identical pages, and found that FF3 actually uses more memory/resources.

Firefox always has done, including Firefox 0.8-1.0 and FF2.0. Remember a good portion of IE is part of the OS so it's not an exact comparison.

That said, I'm not about FF3 but prior versions do have a memory leak problem whereby it can increase to over 100Mb if you leave it open for long enough. I just close it every now again (which I do naturally anyway) to fix this.

Due to the sheer amount of configuring and the extension support I cannot see myself going back to IE anytime soon. It was easier before IE7 came out, as IE6 is truly ancient. You can customise so much with FF, MS would never allow you to do with IE.

gasteropod wrote:So basically I'm sticking with IE7 and I'm hoping that IE8 will have speed that rivals FF3 (and a download manager...).

The download manager maybe not but I bet IE8 will be as fast if not faster than FF3. It always works that way.

Did you run FF2?

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 19 Jun 2008, 13:34

For whatever reason IE7 keeps crashing on me every few minutes, the only extension I have installed is IEPro. Bloody annoying. FF virtually never crashes and I rarely turn my PC off.

Anyway, FF3.0's security features/visuals are quite nice. Eg It can seamlessly show your security certificates.
This is what happens when I sign into my internet banking.

Then once I've clicked the green box.

Also some of my extensions are redundant now (ie Flat Bookmark Editing) as similar/identical functions are now present in the browser.

Concerning the predictive URL feature of the address bar, I'm still on the fence. There will be an undocumented way to turn it off, there always is when it comes to FF.

Now to wait until Vector64 releases his SSE2-optimised build, then I can put the vanilla FF back into the cupboard like I usually do.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Jun 2008, 14:00

bradavon wrote:Do you post on Facebook too? Your Myspace page isn't too bad but if you don't mind me saying your background makes it hard to read some of the text. I've wondered this for awhile, are you only allowed one Myspace page per profile? They alwayds just seem to scroll forever.

Yeah I'm on Facebook too but only because I know certain people who only use that, I prefer MySpace. You indeed only have the one page on MySpace.

bradavon wrote:What's on the website to cause it to do that? Weird.

I have no idea, and when I tried it again with FF3 it went to 100% again, IE7 doesn't do that.

bradavon wrote:Did you run FF2?

Very briefly, even more briefly than my FF3 trial. I know Firefox has loads of extensions you can download, but that just bewilders me really; I'd rather just use a quick, easy-to-use browser which is the most compatible with all the websites I visit.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 19 Jun 2008, 14:39

It's pretty much well known that Myspace is badly coded and only works 100% in IE.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Jun 2008, 19:05

Can you post the website to your PSP page? I'll test it on my PC.

I'm amazed anyone actually likes MySpace, but fair enough. I think I've only ever seen one nicely designed MySpace page. No offence but everyone seems to be utterly chocker block with gaudy graphics, awful music, an endless scroll bar (why one page?), lots of really poorly written English and so on.

At least Facebook is aesthetically pleasing on the eye (for a social networking site), although it's annoying most pages are private. I cannot be done with registering. I'm about 9-10 years too late for for social networks

.

gasteropod wrote:I know Firefox has loads of extensions you can download, but that just bewilders me really; I'd rather just use a quick, easy-to-use browser which is the most compatible with all the websites I visit.

Stick with IE7 then. The biggest pluses of Firefox are technical. It's annoying IE7 has no spell checker though, without add-ons. The add-on concept in IE7 is messy.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Jun 2008, 19:11

http://uk.playstation.com/psp/

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Jun 2008, 19:34

gasteropod wrote:http://uk.playstation.com/psp/

That website is incredibly poorly designed. It has a massive Flash object covering the entire page, not just the top. Here's what happened for me:

I checked I wasn't running any browser in the background:

* With a fresh copy of FF3 loaded:

20Mb of memory usage - No sites loaded
213Mb of memory usage - With that site loaded

* With a fresh copy of IE7 loaded:

7Mb of memory usage - No sites loaded
200Mb of memory usage - With that site loaded

Why does Firefox then scroll slightly jittery but IE7 scrolls smoothly? I guess IE7 is just slightly more efficient at handling a large browser session (probably coming back to the fact most of it is loaded into the OS) but the root cause is still the same. A website should never need 200Mb of memory!

I disabled the Flash add-on in IE7 and it dropped to 70Mb instantly. To do this:

Tools ---> Manage Add-ons ---> Enable or Disable Add-ons ---> Disable: Shockwave Flash Object

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 19 Jun 2008, 19:35

There's an option on FF3 for 'smooth scrolling', so that might be what you're referring to if it's turned off.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 19 Jun 2008, 19:40

I checked and mine is turned on. Besides Smooth Scrolling isn't designed to compete with a 213Mb Browser

.

EDIT: Okay the out of focus Bullets smilies and QUOTE/EDIT buttons are a wee bit annoying. I wonder how FF3 renders GIF files differently.

Is happening to anyone else with FF3?

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 19 Jun 2008, 20:50

photobucket isn't compatible with firefox 3,at least it wasn't yesterday.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 21 Jun 2008, 14:06

Please explain? Sadly I doubt FF will ever be compatible with all sites.

Blame MS for constantly creating new "MS Only" web standards instead of sticking to Universal ones. They can do this as something like 85% of users use some form of IE. I do blame web designers for not testing Firefox more though, it's now something like 10-13%.

Opera, Safari (at least on Windows based PC's) and a few others mop up the rest. Thankfully MS are better at this than they used to be. They got so much flack for it.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 21 Jun 2008, 15:27

EvaUnit02 wrote:This is what happens when I sign into my internet banking.

This is nice. IE7 has pretty much the same function.

EvaUnit02 wrote:There will be an undocumented way to turn it off, there always is when it comes to FF.

I'm not sure if this helps:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/How ... cation+Bar

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 21 Jun 2008, 15:38

From what I am reading no chance in hell I am going near FF3 for some time, too many bugs the first few days. Will wait till they are ironed out so I can acctually go on the net and not have so many problems.

Still nice to know when I do get it, it will be faster.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 21 Jun 2008, 16:04

You say that every time new software/patch is released

. In my experience it's largely exaggerated.

All software has bugs, if you're that concerned I'd box up your PC and send it back. Firefox isn't an operating system or service pack. Give it ago and if it doesn't work, just go back to FF2. It's not like it will do any damage, like a new/beta O/S could.

How's MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.1 doing for you?

.

But yes correct FF3 is super quick at loading pages, it's not any quicker at loading though.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 21 Jun 2008, 16:11

Well you lot can test it out and wait for you to report all the bugs, then I can jump in and have no bugs. I use Photobucket for one, if that dont work well with it, thats a strike from me stright away.

I have all my settings done for Firefox, going to FF3 may mess them up or worse.