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Firefox 3 Beta 1 Review
DaMan writes "The newly-released Firefox 3 beta 1 has been reviewed by ZDnet and the verdict is that it is good. 'Is Firefox 3.0 going to be better? Given what I'm seeing so far, I think so. Why? Because it looks like Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users — security, speed and ease of use ... Everything about Firefox 3.0 beta 1 is fast. The download package is small which means that it comes in fast, the installation is fast, the browser fires up fast, pages and tabs open fast, the browser shuts down fast, and the uninstall process is fast and painless.'"
Instead of this windows-screenshot-centric review, what geeks like me really want are the release notes.
But... Firefox is already a lightweight derivative... of Mozilla Suite (SeaMonkey)...
It's lightweight in that it has less compiled code in it, alas it makes up for it with an excessive amount of scripted code.
What flamewar? For nearly two years, Mozilla developers have asked users to file good memory leak bug reports and have even supplied tools for doing so. If you're still having problems, simply report them and they can be fixed. You can report any bugs in Firefox 3 beta directly to Bugzilla, or discuss them in the MozillaZine Firefox Builds forum first.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Yes, many users were mistaking fragmentation (and caching) for memory leaks. We've been making this exact statement for years in the MozillaZine forums. But there are actual memory leaks, also. You can't point the finger at any one cause. At any point in time, Firefox memory use is some combination of memory needed to display the open pages, various caches (not just the two people talk about all the time), fragmentation, and possibly memory leaks. The only news is that the developers are getting diminishing returns on fixing leaks, and are now turning to reducing fragmentation to reduce normal memory use.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I run FF 24/7 for weeks on end on Windows and it never goes over 200MB. I accept it's still a lot but then I also tend to browse lots of forums with crappy animated avatars and the like. I can have 20 tabs open across three windows and it still doesn't go over 200. I'm amazed that some people find it using memory in the order of gigabytes.
Maybe they need to realize when some pages that people make are taking up too much memory, or some extensions are using too much memory. If you go to a page that adds a couple new elements to the DOM every 3 seconds, and leave it on all night, you're going to end up with your browser consuming gigabytes of RAM. If you have a plugin which doesn't release it's memory, and keeps on asking for more, you're going to have a browser that takes up 2 GB of RAM. If you try to open up a huge XML file with your browser, then you're going to have a problem with the browser taking up lots of memory. Those are the only times I've ever seen my usage go above 200 MB. Under normal browsing conditions, even leaving Firefox open for weeks, I've never seen it go over 200 MB. When it does, it's because some rogue page keeps adding stuff to the DOM.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It seems Firefox 3 also passes the Acid2 test.
A few other minor observations - it won't install any add-ons unless they update securely. So far the only add-ons I've been able to install successfully are GMail Notifier and Adblock Plus. I'm not complaining (since it is a beta release specifically for developers and testers). I just can't wait for development and support of my favorite add-ons to take place!
One nice thing I noticed is that if you are installing add-ons from a site that is not in the exceptions list you can just accept it via the title bar now instead of having to open the settings, add the site, reload it, and wait again.
So far I'm impressed! It's fast and smart.
"This food is problematic."