Mozilla Firefox 3 Features Screencast

An anonymous reader points to a mention at MozillaZine of "a screencast by Mozilla developer Mike Beltzner, demonstrating some of the new features in Mozilla Firefox 3, which is due out very soon. Weighing in at under four minutes, the screencast gives a concise overview of why you should be excited about Firefox 3. Due to its visual nature, the screencast shows Firefox's features far more clearly than the many written previews that have been published. A picture really is worth a thousand words."

Comments

Re:SWF?

[Anonymous Coward]

2%...really? You think only 2% of /. users have flash installed? Even if that is a hyperbole, it seems a bit extreme.

Good job FireFox Devs!

[Toreo asesino]

I have to say FireFox 3 has some features I can't believe have been missing up until this point. The awesome bar, looks awesome.

In fact, i find it amazing most areas of browsers haven't been "just searchable" like FireFox 3 is now, having seen how much sense this makes.

Good job guys, you're setting a high bar for the rest to follow (no doubt).

Re:Good job FireFox Devs!

[Jugalator]

For me, it's a lot about the little things. When he showed the thing about right-clicking on a downloaded file and being able to go back to the actual download page, that's when I thought "why haven't other browser devs thought of that before".

IMHO, Firefox 3 isn't a huge advance among web browsers, and actually catches up in some areas with some of the competition -- thinking of the site identification support. And it isn't the dominating browser in the Acid3 test either. But it does a lot of things right, and that with the extensive plugin support not found on any other browser (besides Firefox compatible derivatives). With the resource consumptions fixes (that Safari is in dire need of on Windows, and IE 7 too somewhat), it's really becoming a quite pleasant browser to use.

I'm a former Opera user, but the thing is that I feel Firefox 3's new Javascript speed enhancements and memory fixes making it so fast (and with the scrolling plugin YASS giving it the final touch of smooth "speed scrolling"), that I can't really switch back at this point. I did with Firefox 2 due to the memory issues, but I doubt I will again until perhaps Opera 10 or something is released.

Wow, actually creates interest

[rkohutek]

Wow, the summary is totally right for once - watching the screencast makes the features actually seem desirable.

Normally you just download the software and are sort of pleasantly surprised when you find a new feature, or similarly disappointed when there are none. In this case, it actually makes me /want/ to download FF3 and get to having some of those neat widgets.

Re:Grr sidebar history

[Splab]

Just like the sibling AC comment you are telling me that I need to change my behavior to adjust for what the FF team think is right. This is just like the Pidgin team telling the world that the behavior all have learned is wrong and the new way is the right way. It's the wrong way around - programs has to help the user optimize his or her work flow, while this is what they wanted with the feature, changing behavior means the user has to relearn everything from scratch - my way of doing it was fast, reliable and worked for me.

This is by no means a unique incident, someone comes up with some thing they think is nicer, but always forget that they have taught hordes of people to do it the other way - you have to leave in options for going "old school" rather than alienating your most devote supporters - and it shouldn't be buried somewhere in the internals of the system.

Oh and to the mods, get a life - I'm stating the facts as they are from my point of view, developers needs to keep users work flow in mind when adding features.

Don't get me wrong I love FF, but the added features has alienated me from it and too much bloating could lead to switching to others like Konquerer/Opera.

Re:Grr sidebar history

[miro f]

why go to all of that effort to fix your problem when you can just complain about it on slashdot?

The vast majority of us love the new address bar, and yes, there is an extension that brings back the old behaviour (I have no idea as to the reliability of the extension as I don't use it, it took about 2 minutes with an open mind to get used to the new location bar and now everything is so much easier with it)

It's a shame developers always change behaviour without giving the option to change it back, there should be an option to revert every single user interface change ever made so that people who hate change can keep things exactly like they used to be while everybody else has to sift through a billion different options to change something important (such as the proxy settings). Or maybe those of you who hate change can just stick with IE5 on Windows 98.

For fuck's sake, it's not difficult to get used to the new location bar, and once you do I guaruntee you'll love it.