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.

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.

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.