Firefox 3 Beta 3 Officially Released

firefoxy writes "Mozilla has officially released Firefox 3 beta 3. This release includes new features, user interface enhancements, and theme improvements. Ars Technica has a review with screenshots. 'Firefox 3 is rapidly approaching completion and much of the work that remains to be done is primarily in the category of fit and finish. There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates.'"

Comments

Re:So...

[The MAZZTer]

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html

• Memory leaks
  • 333078 - XPCOM Cycle Collector. (Cycle collection has similar goals to tracing garbage collection but integrates better with reference counting. Turning on cycle collection fixed entire classes of leaks, both in Firefox and in extensions.)
  • 330128 - Calling cancel() on a timer doesn't drop reference to callback.
  • Many more: 331 bugs fixed on trunk with the "mlk" keyword.
• Code size and memory use
  • 296818 - Don't hold onto decoded image data for so long.
  • 143046 - Reduce memory use for animated GIFs by storing frames other than the first at the original 8 bits.
  • Take a string constructor out of line. (From 345517.) (1% code size win.)
  • 332174 - Drop SOAP support. (2% code size win.)
  • 313309 - Provide table-driven QI mechanism.
  • 407459 - [Windows] Switch from default MSVC malloc to jemalloc for better memory allocation speed and lower fragmentation.
  • Many more: 100 bugs fixed on trunk with the "footprint" keyword.

Most plugins aren't working yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although if you have a mac, be sure to install the proto theme. Although if you have a mac, you also should try the latest Webkit build too. Its ridiculously fast.

That is all.

Re:Adding bookmarks

[The MAZZTer]

Not that box, apparently there was a notice that appeared when you clicked the star to let you know what the star did (that the page had been bookmarked)... however the notice was both added and removed in nightlies between b2 and b3 (guess it ended up being more annoying than helpful).

Re:Is it faster?

[The MAZZTer]

FF3 is loads faster than FF2. I find that most slowdowns in FF2 were caused by extensions, but FF3 loaded with extensions is just as fast as FF2 in safe-mode. Which is fast.

Re:So...

[Cassius Corodes]

High memory usage is different from memory leaks - every time you open a new tab it stores in ram some of the previous and next pages in ram. So if you do a lot of surfing on different tabs it very quickly goes up to 100MB in ram. You can disable that from the settings but you lose the ultra-quick back and forward capability.

Re:Extensions

[Buran]

I get them to work by setting extensions.checkCompatibility to false.

A few still refuse to work, but most do.

Now, can someone tell me how to keep my bookmarks always sorted by name? The two extensions I know of that do this job ignore my "don't check compatibility" instructions and still refuse to show up in the menus.

Re:Extensions

[omeomi]

Exactly! You would think there would be some 'legacy plugin support' for people to enable if they so desire.

There is. Install the Nightly Tester Tools plugin. It adds a "Make All Compatible" button in your Add-ons dialog that does pretty much just what it says.

Hints

[Arathon]

First of all, I would strongly recommend actually uninstalling (completely) and reinstalling Firefox if you want to use this beta. Some apparent conflicts between my extensions for Beta 2 and this install caused some of the weirdest, buggiest behavior I've ever seen in Firefox. Only by wiping my profile and starting from scratch was I able to get tabbed browsing to work correctly.

Secondly, if you're annoyed by the new theme, just switch to Small Icons. It looks fine, except for the slightly annoying "Home" button.

Speaking of the "Home" button, it's on the Bookmarks toolbar now, in case you were wondering. You can move it back where it belongs while in the Customize Toolbar dialog.

So far, I don't see a whole lot to write home about. The new theme is definitely ugly. On the other hand, the beta feels very stable and very, very fast.

Re:Firefox 3 Mac OS X UI

[_|()|\|]

If they can't get those details right, they might as well not try to do a "native" theme at all.

List boxes have always been ugly in Firefox. I don't think the theme has any control over this. Buttons look pretty good in 3.0 beta 3, but there are some nasty rendering artifacts on in the tab labels.

I agree with you that the details can make or break the experience. I keep trying to use Emacs shortcuts (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, etc.) in this text area, but this isn't a native control.

From what I've seen in the last fifteen minutes, 3.0 beta 3 is a big improvement. I've been pretty frustrated with Safari's performance. I'm not a kung fu memory master, but I do know that top shows up to 400 MB RPRVT and close to 2 GB VSIZE after it has been open for a while, even with only one or two tabs open. Sometimes when I close a tab it hangs indefinitely with a beach ball, so I have to force quit. If Firefox can spare me that annoyance, I'll forgive a few UI quirks.

Re:acid 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Firefox 3.0 passes Acid 2.

I'm hoping that they bring forward Tamarin support in Firefox. Any chance of getting fast javascript before Firefox 4?

Re:YAY!

[DudemanX]

I think they should improve the AddressBar/Dropdown to incorporate things like being able to remove a URL from the list You mean like hovering the cursor over a URL in the list and pressing the delete key? Works nicely in 2.x

Try it without installing with Firefox Portable

[CritterNYC]

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 3 was released a few hours after the announcement. It's packaged with a launcher so it runs self-contained so you can use it from a flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc. But it's also handy for trying out the current beta without affecting your local install. You can even run it from your desktop to try it out and then delete it.

It's available from the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 3 homepage.

Re:If you close the tabs, does it free RAM or Leak

[Shining Celebi]

My typical memory-burning web surfing session is to go to Google News or especially to Fark.com, open up about 100 tabs of potentially interesting news stories, and then go read them one at a time, closing each one after I've read it. It's one thing to have the browser use lots of memory while I've got all the tabs open - but when I've finished with them all, and just have the original page back, or even hit "Home" to get "about:blank", the browser typically *still* has over 100MB of RAM and is often burning 20-70% of CPU.

I've never had Firefox use that much CPU, but many of those tabs you closed are still cached in memory (along with each of their histories) so they'll reopen really fast if you Undo Closed Tab. Closing the tabs does not necessarily mean they're going away. Changing this option in your about:config should keep that from happening (I think), but you'll also lose some of your session restore functionality. I have it on, and I've never had any of the problems you and a lot of other people have, but I hope this helps.