Tag: app-subdomain-redirection:firefox-3

Since upgrading to Firefox 3 a few months ago, I’ve been pretty impressed by the performance of Mozilla’s latest browser. Generally, page loading times seem slightly quicker, although several of my add-ons are still not supported by it, which is something you have to unfortunately resign yourself to every time you upgrade Firefox.

However, one major problem that I was experiencing was a severe memory leak when Firefox would suddenly hog my RAM and CPU for about a minute causing the browser to hang, or even crash. Although memory leaks have been an ongoing problem with Firefox, this was far more serious and persistent that usual. The simple solution, it seems, was to sign out of the Gchat module in Gmail. Simply by being signed in, Gchat could suddenly conflict with Firefox for no apparent reason. A quick Google search revealed that I wasn’t alone either with desperate users flocking to Mozilla’s forum to find a solution.

It seems incredible that Mozilla didn’t even notice that one of the Internet’s most widely used web based e-mail clients was causing this problem when they developed Firefox 3. In fact, it’s not the only basic glitch I’ve noticed with Firefox 3. Some JavaScripts, that worked fine in Firefox 2, don’t seem to work for me in the latest version of the browser.

Let’s hope that this is not a sign of things to come with future releases of Firefox. The add-ons incompatibility issue is already annoying enough but incompatibility with basic components such as JavaScript or IM clients is not really acceptable (unless of course you’re Microsoft).

When launching the long-awaited Firefox 3, the guys over at Mozilla decided to try to achieve a Guinness World Record. The idea would work not only as a very original marketing campaign to promote the latest version of the popular browser among Internet users, but would also set Firefox 3 as the most downloaded piece of software in the world in only 24 hours.

A few weeks later, after in-depth reviews, video analysis and some opposing voices, Mozilla has made it official: Firefox 3 is now the proud holder of a Guinness World Record as the most downloaded software in 24 hours. The numbers are pretty self-explanatory:  on June 17th 2008, the day when Firefox 3 was officially launched, 8,002,530 people dowloaded it from the Mozilla servers (no wonder they were on the verge of crashing). The counter is still working on their site and currently shows more than 28 million downloads. Way to go!

Again, Mozilla wants to thank all users who helped Firefox 3 to achieve the Guinness World Record. So if you did your bit and downloaded your copy last June 17th, show off your contribution by printing your very own personalized certificate.

So the pomp and publicity is over. Firefox 3 was downloaded a gazillion times in 24 hours and was given a big gold medal by everyone (including Softonic). But just how good is Firefox 3.0? In my opinion, it deserves most of the praise it receives but it is still far from perfect. In fact, there are at least three things I really hate about Mozilla’s latest browser.

1    Firefox 3 crashes all the time

I haven’t used a program this prone to critical errors since Firefox 2.0 was released. In the last seven days, Firefox has crashed on me about 10 times. And like the very best program crashes, Fx 3’s problems seem impossible to predict. Sometimes, I’m editing a bookmark’s properties and Bang! Or maybe I used a search box on a frequently used and perfectly stable website and Boom! This happens on my Mac and my work PC but most specifically on the Mac, I also get frequent hangs due to other applications working. None of this happened during my extensive testing of the betas for Fx 3, so why now?

2   The memory hog that grew and grew

Everyone knows that the main problem people faced with Firefox 2 was that it was prone to gobbling up all your system resources like a fat, greedy, RAM-eating pig. We were given assurances by Mozilla and various reviewers that this problem had been fixed but… I still see Firefox using up a hell of a lot of memory for just two open tabs. Of course, extensions can be the root cause of this kind of problem but as far as I’m concerned, it’s mad to say “Well, as long as you don’t install any extensions, you should be fine”. If I can’t install extensions without Firefox turning into Mr. Creosote then I don’t want the option to install them. Continue reading “Three things I hate about Firefox 3”

Unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the past week, you can’t have missed the release of the brand new Firefox 3. Although the event was marred by a few connection issues, which prevented users from downloading the program for a few hours, Mozilla’s Download Day was globally a success and the new version of the browser has already been downloaded more than 13 million times worldwide. This week, Nick and I took to testing Firefox and exchanged our impressions. Today, I invite you to check out a video review of the new features in Firefox 3:

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We’ve had a good look at the final edition of Firefox 3 which is released today. In this review, Cyril and Nick chat about the various changes and improvements, and discuss just how good the new version is.

Cyril: Let’s start out with the interface. Now based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering platform, Firefox 3 has undergone a significant makeover, with sleeker icons and a cleaner look. In some ways I’d say it looks a little more like Flock, which is not my favorite browser but has an attractive design. The ‘Go back one page’ button is bigger and elements in the location bar, like title and url, are more easily recognizable. A native Vista look is available for users of Microsoft’s latest operating system. One of the things that impressed me most though is that version 3, finally passes the Acid2 Test, so you can be guaranteed to render any web page out there.

Nick: There’s no doubt that Mozilla have improved on the look of Firefox 2 although I never had any major aesthetic issues with the former anyway – it’s always been a million times better than Internet Explorer and that’s all I cared about. I can see what you mean about Flock although as I argued a while back, that’s no bad thing in my book as I quite like the browser. As you say, while Vista users can now enjoy a native look, I think Mac owners have more to get excited about. The default theme for Mac now looks a lot more like Safari in Leopard with a cleaner interface and Safari style icons.

C: Yeah, I also quite like the updated interface on Mac. I don’t know what to think of Places, the new system for managing bookmarks and history, though. I like being able to bookmark any page just by adding a star in the address bar or how the browser lets you search both your history and bookmarks just by typing in the address bar. Tags are also a welcome addition, although I wonder if that many people will make use of them. I’m also glad that you can now properly save sessions, although it’s a bit annoying how Firefox asks you every time you close the browser.

Places itself comes as a folder in your toolbar and includes all sorts of advanced lists like recently starred, most visited starred or most used tags. I do think that’s a little too much information given to users though. I would have preferred being able to create my own smart bookmark folders. Continue reading “Firefox 3 in depth review”

If there’s one thing I really need help with in my browser, it’s bookmarking. I’m constantly discovering new and interesting sites and pages but rarely have time to organise them in any in any meaningful way. Of course, I have folders for each different subject and topic but I just don’t have the time to go through them all once I’ve decided to add them to my favourites. I just add them to the main menu until my favourites list is now just a sprawl of bizarre links ranging from cooking sites to classic YouTube videos.

That’s why I’m quite excited about the much talked about new bookmarking feature in Firefox 3. There are three main features that disorganised bookmarkers like myself will welcome – Bookmark Stars, Bookmark Tags, and Smart Bookmark Folders. The Star feature is my favourite. It’s similar to the way you can mark items with a star in Gmail. At the end of the address bar, there appears a star that once clicked on, immediately adds the page to your bookmarks – no more going to the time consuming process of the file menu and selecting “Bookmarks – Bookmark This Page”. If you double click on the star, it brings up the bookmark editor so you can easily select which folder you want to put it in or even quicker, just give it a tag (again, very similar to the way Gmail works). Tags allow you to organise bookmarks in a bunch of folders or areas rather than just one – very useful for those bookmarks which don’t fall neatly into one particular category. Finally, the Smart Folders option is a very clever way of keeping your folders always up to date and organised. By creating a keyword for a particular folder, everytime you tag a page with that word, it will be automatically added to that folder with no further action required on your part.

On the downside however, it does seem that the bookmark dialogues and menu take slightly longer to open in Firefox 3 than Firefox 2. So sometimes, you feel like whatever time you save in organising your pages, you lose in loading time. Whether this is just a bug that they will hopefully iron out in the final version or whether it’s something we’ll have to live with for now remains to be seen but for once in my life, my bookmarks make sense again and I’m rediscovering pages I’d bookmarked years ago.

While the final version of Firefox 3 will supposedly be launched in June (at least that’s the latest news from official sources), as an avid software tester I can’t keep myself from testing every single beta that comes out before the great day arrives. On the downside, this means that my Firefox installation may end up being a total mess: running different versions of the same program is never a good idea, and even less in the case of Firefox which I use to work on a daily basis.

If you can’t wait until the final version comes out, but at the same time don’t want to run any risks with your current Firefox version, use the portable Firefox instead. This special Firefox edition can be run from a USB device – or from your computer itself, without having to install a single thing. In this way you can take a sneak peek at the new exciting Firefox 3 features without compromising your previous installation and therefore your bookmarks, saved data, user profile and so on.

Now that you’ve managed to test Firefox 3 without ruining the good ol’ Firefox 2, what about extensions? Most of them may not be compatible with the latest beta yet so you’re probably wondering if there’s any way to make them work. And the answer is yes: it’s called Nightly Tester Tool, an extension that’s been especially developed to make your old extensions compatible with the latest Firefox 3 beta versions. Of course, this is no magical cure for all extension incompatibility issues, but I must say it worked for me perfectly fine. Nightly Tester Tool also adds some useful tools for beta testers, such as a built-in screenshot app, direct access to the Profiles folder and a log file analyzer.