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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.'"
If so it's made with Firefox 3 Beta 1 Yeah ! (If not, well it's made with Iceweasel 2.0.0.9)
"Because it looks like Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users -- security, speed and ease of use"
Well, thank the Spaghetti Monster. Why did it take so damned long to convince them that was more important than constantly fiddling with the widget layer and whatever else they were doing? Why the nearly 5 year flame war over whether a browser that takes up 2 GB of memory is technically leaking it or not?
Who would have ever thought that having a secure browser that quickly loads pages and doesn't crash your machine would be enticing to users?
ilovegeorgebush
Does it still have memory leaks? Nothing else matters (esp. new features) until they've fixed those. They aren't *quite* so bad on Linux but my friends who use MS Windows have real problems with this.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I've been using Camino because it's got a fraction of the overhead of Firefox and doesn't have the insecure XPI installer design.
Pity there's not a similar lightweight native Firefox derivative for Windows.
So... is Firefox secure, or does it still have the "I'm going to ask you to do something stupid in 10 seconds" countdown when you click on an install link for an XPI file? I swear, they have made it less convenient to install extensions in Firefox than they would have by just letting you download them and install them manually, and they've had to close at least one security hole related to this unnecessary flourish.
It's sort of sad that we go from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 and when posed the question "Is Firefox going to be better" the answer is simply I think so. But then again I don't have many complaints for Firefox if it would just work a bit better. Aside from that it seems like there has to be a better way for bookmarks, and I'm assuming that they're going to the new database format in FF3, but that isn't even mentioned here. Someone on slashdot brought up the awesome idea of having a homepage option that displays your bookmarks (maybe even drag and drop for organize). I guess that would be a cool feature I'd like to see.
From the release notes:
I'm optimistic, but we'll see in time...
df -h
I'm posting this with Firefox 3.0.1.... from the future.
Instead of this windows-screenshot-centric review, what geeks like me really want are the release notes.
They say the have plugged more than 300 memory leaks in the release notes. I hope that's most of them...
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
Firefox no extentions http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195566731.jpg
Firefox with extensions http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195566750.jpg
Opera http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195566796.jpg
IE http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195566785.jpg
The vendors don't care because the consumers wouldn't, either.
Why would you demand Firefox from your vendor when you can install it yourself 30 seconds after you get home? The idea that having Firefox preinstalled would influence anybody's choice of vendor is nuts.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory? They throw in so much of crapware but not Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice. Why?
Because the companies that author the crapware pay the desktop manufacturers to put them there. It's a form of advertising.
Mozilla Foundation probably can't afford it. Although perhaps that opens up the possibility of doing a donation campaign or some such fund raiser with the community to get such spots purchased.
Compared to lynx, no. But then, what is?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Actually Firefox is forbidden on Dept of the Army systems. Why? Well, it requires updating separately, and is always flagged on scans. Some of the systems in question - ok, a lot of them - can't do automated updates due to not being on the Internet in the first place, and an institutional aversion to accepting updates from any source without vetting them through a security team first. So I don't imagine this changing anytime soon.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I"m sure that many of the memory leaks have been fixed. However, they may not be the biggest problem. One of the developers has been making some really interesting posts about Firefox's memory fragmentation problems. http://blog.pavlov.net/
Those have yet to be solved.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I installed the Firefox 3 beta today as well and was positively surprised to see everything react much snappier than my current Firefox. AJAX-laden sites like GMail, Netvibes and Digg comments didn't have the usual effect of slowing down the browser to a creeping halt as they do to Firefox 2. If this holds up then I can't wait for the final release.
But, and there's always a but: every fresh Firefox installation feels snappy. 2.0 did, and 1.0 did as well. It's always been like that, sort of like a fresh install of Windows. It's when you start installing extensions that it goes downhill, and as a web designer I need quite a few extensions. What I am waiting to see is how Firefox 3 will play along with those. I don't think the author of TFA considered that factor.
parasight.de
The one feature that really floored me is that you can browse ZIP files ONLINE! That's just novel! It's hidden though (most users would rather a ZIP file download than a directory listing pop up when they click it) and you access it by prepending "jar:" to the url and appending "!/" to the end. Try it!
It also has a much better HTML/CSS layout and better functionality for file:// and ftp:// (and jar:) urls (has a show hidden files option for file:// and shows explorer icons for files).
Here's some more of my favorite new features:
Overall speed increases... tab switching is now snappy like it should be, and like it is when you don't have any extensions. I like my extensions, and now I can have my cake and eat it too!
Places. This is probably the one feature everyone here is aware would be in FF3. Firefox 3 throws in some sample queries when you first run it and it imports your bookmarks into an SQL database.
Bookmark favicons now update to a new site favicon even if the bookmark already has a favicon! This was a bit annoying as before to update a favicon you had to manually go into the bookmark HTML and delete the icon data.
New download manager appearance with search and with the ability to use a Windows antivirus program on EXE files.
Full page zoom! However, it seems to crash when I used it on slashdot.org! :(
New Places UI for bookmark organizing.
What's the verdict on GPO management for firefox? I've seen an XPI that allows for IE-like management of firefox from a domain controller, but it hasn't been updated in quite some time (I've tried it for 2.0.9, but the XPI will only work with 2.0.0). Will 3 support honest-to-god, grown up management? or will I still have to use hacked together scripts from "Billy Bob's house of chick, waffles, and firefox"?
That's my biggest knock on firefox right now; trying to manage it centrally is more hassle that it's worth. I've seen the tools out there now and my choices are A. a collection of logon and logoff scripts B. roll my own MSI's and have to re-push firefox when I need to make a change or C. create custom config files at install before the machine is rolled out, then go back to and do B. if I need to make a change.
Oh, and it'd be nice if I didn't need administrative rights to finish installing some of the updates (Either 2.0.7 or 2.0.9 wouldn't finish auto-updating unless a domain admin was starting firefox.)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
From TFA:
And all the screenshots are done in Windows Vista!? So, apparently the guy doesn't think there's anything wrong when an OS consumes more than 500MiB of RAM just to boot, right?
My automatic update keeps demanding that I install IE7. Any way to shut this off?
This is my sig.
As a Mac user, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Firefox 3. For too long, the browser has felt like a foreign application that doesn't integrate nicely in to the OS X UI (Among other issues). With the abundance of third party extensions that greatly assist my general browsing and development experience; it's difficult to switch to an alternate browser.
Now, Firefox feels like it's apart of OS X utilising native widgets and dialogues. More importantly, the proposed Firefox3 themes for OS X look fantastic.
PS: This post was brought to you from Firefox 3 Beta 1.
Yes, of course, that's why Windows and Internet Explorer are both bit parts in the computer industry, while Linux commands a 90%+ market share.
Preinstalling Firefox would do a hell of a lot to gain market share for it, especially if it was the default browser. But then, to be honest, I'd rather have no web browser bundled with a Windows install, thanks very much.
I write bullshit
I'd prefer a "Send randomly generated angry email to site-owner" button. With the option of specifying how many million emails you want to send.
Maybe Mozilla should partner with owners of the storm botnet...
The real question isn't whether 3.0 will be better than 2.0; it's whether 3.0 will be better than 1.5. Firefox 2 was a step backwards in a lot of ways.
A cheetah!
Giving users an "easy way out" is important; it builds trust by showing respect up front. Letting people know they can get rid of something lowers the resistance to try it.
How would you like to try a roller coaster that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, except you couldn't see where (if!?) people were supposed to get off afterwards.
Users will feel safer trying to install a program if they know it will uninstall cleanly, or at least be easily removable (as in: programs that live solely in their install directory).
The same goes for (business) relationships. If you sign up for anything at Fog Creek or Dreamhost, there is a prominent button saying, essentially, "I want out, and don't ever bother me again." Conversely, with most phone or insurance companies, even figuring out where to ask is a challenge. What kind of impression would you like to make on your company's potential customers?
"Good news, everyone!"
He wasn't arguing that it wouldn't be good for FireFox to have vendors pre-install it. That's pretty obvious. He was arguing the OP's claim that it would be a good brand differentiator for the vendors to preinstall Firefox. I think he has a point. Most users who know why they should be using Firefox know that they can download and install it for free in less than five minutes. So why would I, as a customer, make a choice of which vendor to purchase from based on a piece of free bundled software? It wouldn't at all, especially since most new PC's come so loaded with crapware that the first thing I do is blow them away and install the OS from scratch.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I guess I just question whether someone who willingly chooses to browse with IE over Firefox is qualified to measure the value of a browser.
I love that you managed to slip in "the whole "installer" insanity" after pissing and moaning about your platform's procedure.
Nothing but class.
> and I already started getting errors.
And filed a bug, right? That's the point of a beta: to get feedback if things don't work somewhere for some reason...
Hah! _real_ men use links. Oh wait... dont they simply nc to port 80?
There is a few new features in the DOM, CSS and Javascript (including a good subset of XPath and XSLT) which will help offload some parts of the big script libraries to the browser.... now if only they'd get up to speed on the things that Webkit is doing!
;-(
Not that it matters really when IE7 is still light years behind
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
... right here: Get Firefox 3 Beta 1
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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."
You aren't alone on doing the shuffle - at least among OSX users! Firefox is great because of the extensions, but FF2 is just bloatware on OSX and it is dog slow. When I updated to Leopard I decided to give Safari another shot. I added in Pithhelmet, SafariStand, and SafariBlock. All it lacks are auto-updating blocklists and it is far faster than FF ever was and it Acid2 compliant to boot!
As a long time Firefox user I hate to say it, but I may not go back to Firefox for quite some time (unless FF3 is a vast improvement).
Get a web developer
Has no one heard of FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition?
It may not have AdBlock(tm) with FilterSet.G(tm) but it does block ads. I don't really care which bit of software blocks my adds, so long as it gets done with minimal hassle to me. Camino does that. If Camino had a semi-convenient way to get at my del.icio.us bookmarks, I'd never use anything but.
Firefox 3 is Acid2 compliant, if you didn't know.
Acid2 doesn't even measure compliance, only error recovery for whatever advanced selectors the creator of Acid2 came up with. It's far from a CSS test compliance suite, but the folks at the W3C are so allergic to the idea of working reference implementations, let alone test suites, that you're never likely to see one.
Contrast to the IETF, which requires (or at least used to require) two working, different, and interoperable implementations before considering any protocol for a standard.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
It's not that horrendously difficult to keep control of memory in C programs
The Firefox developers just told you that the browser bloated by hundreds of megabytes, had lots of memory leaks, and that they needed to focus for an entire release on fixing those problems, and you still claim "it's not that horrendously difficult". Evidently, it is for Firefox developers.
lots of us do it every day.
OK, so there are two possibilities: either you are a lot smarter than both the Firefox developers and me, or you simply don't know how much trouble you're even in and you just think you have memory management in C under control. Odds are it's the latter.