Firefox 3 RC1 Released

[Winnow]

How is it?

I've only read the "Digg" comments on the new release and people are happy in general with it and say it's stable.

I'm mostly interested in speed and the plugging of any memory leaks, etc.

Yes they've fixed many performance issues, specially the garbage collection routines that free up RAM.

Firefox 2 works fine so I'm in no rush to upgrade but there appear to be a few refinements, like the speed and dealing with bookmarks that might improve efficiency for me.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3. ... easenotes/

[Fash]

I've been using beta 1 and 2 and they've been fine. I've had more issues with Firefox 2. I'll grab beta 3 now, thx.

Really the only issues I have with Firefox revolve around the Flash plug-in ceasing everything up, and it happens frequently on my work laptop, very rarely anywhere else.

In order to combat that, and any other CPU hogging processes, I grabbed a program called Process Tamer, which automatically handles lowering the priority of processes that hog the CPU so you're able to continue using your PC (or at least able to get the task manager up to kill it, as i do with firefox)
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/

[Funkmasterr]

I'm trying it out too, the absurd amount of memory it held up because of all the leaks, etc really annoyed me. I've already noticed that a lot of the formatting issues I had (particularly with some of the web based tools I work with) are resolved, more to come!

[Fairweather Pure]

Man, Starfox was a great game for it's time.

[Spang]

triple wing damage!

[cadalano]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

[Fairweather Pure]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

I tried to look up this answer online and seems as though no one knows for sure.

[Syenye]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

I tried to look up this answer online and seems as though no one knows for sure.

[Show]

in the starfox ds game, slippy gets a girlfriend named amanda.

[Boogahz]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

I tried to look up this answer online and seems as though no one knows for sure.

[Show]

in the starfox ds game, slippy gets a girlfriend named amanda.

That doesn't answer the question one way or the other though, does it?

[Syenye]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

I tried to look up this answer online and seems as though no one knows for sure.

[Show]

in the starfox ds game, slippy gets a girlfriend named amanda.

That doesn't answer the question one way or the other though, does it?

they get married and have kids.

[Aardor]

was slippy a boy or a girl? either way that motherfucker was annoying

I tried to look up this answer online and seems as though no one knows for sure.

[Show]

in the starfox ds game, slippy gets a girlfriend named amanda.

That doesn't answer the question one way or the other though, does it?

they get married and have kids.

They could have adopted, and what if he changes sex like the frogs in Jurassic Park???

P.S. I can't wait to go home and play starfox on the wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

[Fash]

pet peeve with the new Firefox... They've changed the address bar suggestions to use more than just the web address... It uses page titles as well.

Before, if I wanted to go to slashdot, I'd type "S" and it would be #1, "V" would be VV, "F" would be for my personal email, etc... If I remember I was on some site, I could hit the first letter or two, and the list would be accurate.

Now, pretty much no matter what letter I hit, VV has top honors... I need to type at least 2 letters and typically more.

Right now if I hit "S", I get 4 entries for VV, 1 Google, 2 Salesforce, Slashdot, and 2 for my personal email (since it uses SquirellMail)... If I hit "F", there isn't even an entry for my email login screen.

I've gotten accustomed to using the bookmarks toolbar for my main links, but I'm going to look for a way to turn this off.

[Funkmasterr]

pet peeve with the new Firefox... They've changed the address bar suggestions to use more than just the web address... It uses page titles as well.

Before, if I wanted to go to slashdot, I'd type "S" and it would be #1, "V" would be VV, "F" would be for my personal email, etc... If I remember I was on some site, I could hit the first letter or two, and the list would be accurate.

Now, pretty much no matter what letter I hit, VV has top honors... I need to type at least 2 letters and typically more.

Right now if I hit "S", I get 4 entries for VV, 1 Google, 2 Salesforce, Slashdot, and 2 for my personal email (since it uses SquirellMail)... If I hit "F", there isn't even an entry for my email login screen.

I've gotten accustomed to using the bookmarks toolbar for my main links, but I'm going to look for a way to turn this off.

Yeah I thought that was kinda poopy too, but for the most part I use the bookmark toolbar for everything so it's not a major issue for me.

P.S. I hate Salesforce, not quite as much as Lotus Notes, but damn close.

[Fash]

Oh me too.. Salesforce is shite. It's the "one crappy framework fits all" approach that makes me sick.

I'd theorize that ~85% of Salesforce Customers could save a lot of money by having more efficient custom applications developed. I know my company could... We have plenty of coders, yet we use SF to handle help-desk tickets? wtf?

Although, we have a custom developed 'change request' system which makes SF look dreamy. It's called the "RTS" or Request Tracking System, but my pet name for it is the Red Tape System. It was developed by off-shore consultants and directed by off-brain management, though.

[Funkmasterr]

Oh me too.. Salesforce is shite. It's the "one crappy framework fits all" approach that makes me sick.

I'd theorize that ~85% of Salesforce Customers could save a lot of money by having more efficient custom applications developed. I know my company could... We have plenty of coders, yet we use SF to handle help-desk tickets? wtf?

Although, we have a custom developed 'change request' system which makes SF look dreamy. It's called the "RTS" or Request Tracking System, but my pet name for it is the Red Tape System. It was developed by off-shore consultants and directed by off-brain management, though.

Yeah that's the same problem with lotus/salesforce here. We have lotus notes doing so much more than it's meant to do that it fucking croaks constantly.. It's tied into who knows how many databases, there is all sorts of code for various tools that dump info into/take info out of lotus notes, and now they are trying to make tools dependent on salesforce since they are trying to move away from lotus.

Then on top of that, we are Oracle's lab rat for their new Data Center software/server cluster and it is an absolute atrocious pain in the ass, I hope the people that developed it meet a horrible, gruesome fate.

I also think it would make much more sense for us to develop our own shit.. It might take longer and cost more short term, but long term they would end up with less problems, less reliability on other companies, and it would save them money... But it's all about the rush to go public, the investors need their money back!

[Syenye]

pet peeve with the new Firefox... They've changed the address bar suggestions to use more than just the web address... It uses page titles as well.

Before, if I wanted to go to slashdot, I'd type "S" and it would be #1, "V" would be VV, "F" would be for my personal email, etc... If I remember I was on some site, I could hit the first letter or two, and the list would be accurate.

Now, pretty much no matter what letter I hit, VV has top honors... I need to type at least 2 letters and typically more.

Right now if I hit "S", I get 4 entries for VV, 1 Google, 2 Salesforce, Slashdot, and 2 for my personal email (since it uses SquirellMail)... If I hit "F", there isn't even an entry for my email login screen.

I've gotten accustomed to using the bookmarks toolbar for my main links, but I'm going to look for a way to turn this off.

oldbar. it's an add-on. remember when firefox was a basic browser where you could spice it up yourself with add-ons? now you need add-ons to fix the stupid features they throw in.

the memory usage is better though.

[Siji]

PlainOldFavorites addon.. I'd hate maintaining two sets of bookmarks and it's so much easier to use IE's favorites folder.

[Winnow]

I still haven't tried Firefox 3 (beta 4 is out now) but this is a good article on what they've done to reduce memory usage over time:

http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firef ... ory-usage/

There are some charts so I won't quote the article.

might red-x but here's one chart:

Looking at the graph:

* All browsers increase in memory use slightly over time, but the Firefox 3 slope is closer to 0.
* The _peak_ of Firefox 3 is lower than the terminal size of Firefox 2!
* The terminal state of Firefox 3 is nearly 140MB smaller than Firefox 2. 60% less memory!
* IE7 doesn’t appear to give any memory back, even after all the windows are closed!
* Firefox 3 ends up about 400mb smaller than IE7 at the end of the test!

This is just one test that I feel shows the great progress that has been made. We’ll continue working on adding additional tests that can measure more of the ways that users use their browser.
Conclusion

Our work has paid off.

We’re significantly smaller than previous versions of Firefox and other browsers.

You can keep the browser open for much longer using much less memory.

Extensions are much less likely to cause leaks.

We’ve got automated tools in place to detect leaks that might result from new code. We’re always monitoring and testing to make sure we’re moving in the right direction.

All of this has been done while dramatically improving performance.

[Neost]

I installed beta 4 today and so far it seems pretty snappy. I like some of the minor cosmetic changes too, like the back and forward buttons, moving the home button to the smart shortcut bar. Haven't used it enough to say definitively that its better than 2 but so far so good.

[Fash]

Beta 5! with improved connection parallelism, memory leak fixes, and now uses less overall memory than other browsers!

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/fire ... -beta.html

just installed it myself and it seems noticeably faster.

[Syenye]

in beta 5, I can now see thread titles!

[Funkmasterr]

I already like how they un-fucked the address/history bar/drop down.

[Winnow]

Does 3 b5 work with most of the add-ins? I still haven't tried FF 3 but want to switch for the memory fixes and rendering speed enhancements.

[Syenye]

Does 3 b5 work with most of the add-ins? I still haven't tried FF 3 but want to switch for the memory fixes and rendering speed enhancements.

IE tab still works. Greasemonkey is broken. Everything else was broken in b4.

[Winnow]

Thanks Syenye,

I found this site that list compatibility issues with add ons for FF 3.0

It was last updated April 1st

The list is in order of popularity but you can search using Control F easy enough in Firefox for the Add On you're curious about.

PicLens doesn' work yet. Some of the other's do. Ad Block works which is key and Tab Mix Plus, Super DragAndGo mostly work according to the site.

http://people.mozilla.com/~polvi/threed ... -bars.html

[Winnow]

Firefox 3 RC1 has been released so I finally gave it a go.

Not bad. Feels snappy compared to FF 2

I was able to find a replacement for "Super DragAndGo" which opens links on the page to a new tab by dragging them and saves images the same way by dragging the image and releasing.

It's called "QuickDrag"

http://mozilla.ktechcomputing.com/quickdrag/

I also found a beta version of TabMixPlus which works with the RC1 candidate. This add-in allows you to open anything you want into a new tab instead of the lame CNTR+T requirement...still can't see how people put up with that nonsense. Opening up new searches, links from your bookmarks, history and URL search bar should open in a new tab by default, not the same page.

http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7031

Tab Mix Plus Dev-Build 0.3.6.1.080406 works with RC1

With those two key Add-ins in place, I'm keeping Firefox 3 and ditching 2.

[Xouqoa]

I'm running RC1 now and I'm impressed. The response time is much faster than FF2. I'll give it a run tomorrow while I'm coding and see how it holds up. The memory leaks in FF2 killed me, so hopefully this will perform better there.

[Ashur]

I like it!

I tend to have a bunch of tabs open for a long time and in the previous version the memory leak was very noticeable. I also like the click and drag function for links/images.