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Firefox Beta Touts Advanced Engine, Solves 8 Flaws

nandemoari writes "Mozilla may be this year's winner in the 'browser battles' as they ready the next beta version of their tour-de-force, Firefox 3.1. Mozilla is resolving eight critical vulnerabilities found in the current version of Firefox — a move sure to garner applause from devoted Firefox users. As this year's crop of new browsers emerges, enhanced features are becoming secondary to one thing: speed. Mozilla is nearly ready to release the next beta version of Firefox 3.1 to the public for testing, and insiders predict that it will outpace even Safari 4, which has been the fastest browser in wide release since its beta began last week." It looks like they also will be upping the next major release to v3.5 to better show the significance of the release.

7 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And yet by 1stvamp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ooooooooooooor you could just go to about:config and set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0.

    But you know, if aimlessly bitching is your thing, please continue.

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    Wes
  2. Re:RAM usage by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't really care about the speed. It's already fast enough. I just wish they'd sort out the RAM consumption issue and all the memory leaks.

    Firefox 3 is the best performing browser memory-wise according to all independent tests that I have seen. It barely ever creeps beyond 200 MB RAM usage for me over days of usage. In comparison, Safari 4 Beta and IE 8 easily grows to 300-400 MB after a bunch of tabs browsed. It doesn't even take much effort to get those there.

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    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  3. You can fix the scroll ball by name_already_taken · · Score: 5, Informative

    I concur - the Mighty Mouse is not so mighty, Apple's worst product in a long time. I have the problem you describe in Safari 3 and 4 beta. Plus scrolling down has worn out somehow.

    Right clicking on the Mighty Mouse appears to have been designed by someone who only used one-button mice before. You have to pretty much take your fingers off of the mouse and only click on the right side of the mouse. It would have made much more sense to make it signal a right click if the right "button" area of the mouse was being touched, regardless of what's happening on the left. It sucks, and they really should fix it (probably could be done with a firmware update).

    As for the scroll ball, I have used the "turn the mouse upside down and run the scroll ball around on your pants leg" method with some success. It only works until you get something inside the scroll ball that won't come out. My primary Mighty Mouse (I have four, two are bluetooth and on the same desk) would not scroll right, and even throwing it at the floor and wall didn't work, so I decided to break the damned thing open.

    It's actually not hard to crack the mouse open, if you don't mind breaking that little collar that runs around the bottom of the mouse. There are two flexible connections that you have to disconnect, but you can remove the scroll ball mechanism with a small phillips screwdriver, disassemble it, clean it out, and reassemble it. I did it a month ago with no further problems. There is an order to reassembling the mouse and not having one of the flexible connections pull out, but it's not hard to trial and error your way through.

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    Putting moderation advice in your .sig lowers your karma!
  4. Re:fast is a matter of perspective by Spliffster · · Score: 4, Informative

    As an Add-On and Web developer i'd say: disable firebug when you don't need it. Firebug is a ressource hog.

    Constantly running a debugger must slow down your browser.

    -S

  5. Re:Dear Adobe by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please fix your flash plugin. Seems that once a day if I go to a page with considerable flash (which is most pages these days), the browser will crash and when I examine the crashfile, it's *gasp* always you. I've reinstalled flash and FF 3.0.6.....

    This is Slashdot, not Adobe's bug reporting system. Please fix your bookmarks. They won't fix the problem if you don't post it where they will read it.

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    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  6. Re:I hope they fix a couple of things by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 4, Informative

    Minefield and the 3.1 betas branched a long time ago.
    IIRC, You want to test Shiretoko.

  7. Re:I hope they fix a couple of things by Rhapsody+Scarlet · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason for this is that the Windows compile is compiled with some kind of compiler optimisation. Don't really know what that optimisation was, however it had nothing to do with Windows.

    IIRC, that was profile-guided optimization, which gives Firefox a 15-20% speed boost. It was enabled on Windows nightly builds at the time but not Linux nightly builds due to various reasons. It's now enabled on both, and surprise surprise! The performance gap is gone.

    We're still seeing this cited and modded up despite being busted on this very site (in the comments for that story) though, which I guess just goes to prove the old adage that a lie can get around the world before the truth manages to tie its shoes.