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FireFox 3 released
(23 posts)
One of the things that I like about these forums is that they are so very civil. No flame wars here or shouting matches. Even disagreements can be handled with respect. But -- (you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?) -- after the previous thread on FF3 and now this one I just have to say this:
The whiny pitch of the Opera fanboys is coming irritatingly close to trolling. Why participate in a FF3 thread if you are devoted to Opera? Why start a thread about FF3 just to dis it?
I have a favorite browser, favorite apps and all of that but I'm not trying to convert people to what I use.
Not a fan boy. I actually still only use FF. I was playing with the beta of opera and liked it. But i missed some of my firefox extensions. I was merely pointing out that FF3 was supposed to be lighter on resources, but it still seems like it uses alot. Was asking for other user opinions to see if anyone else had any different experiences with FF3. Maybe others will post tweaks that will make it use less resources and maybe load pages faster. I'm going to look at the FF2 tweaks and see if they will work in FF3 if they have not been built in already.
InDiSent, sorry that you got caught in that sweeping fanboy comment I made. Clearly you are not one based on your calm and fair-minded response. I certainly have seen FF2 hogging memory, so I look forward to seeing how much improvement FF3 has made in that area.
I'm curious what makes any browser "way faster" (with lots of aaa's) than another. I primarily use FF2, and sometimes IE7, but I don't feel like either one of them is slow. Perhaps because I have a broadband connection and a fast system this is not an issue? Even a busy page with multiple columns of text, graphics, and links loads in about 3 seconds, even when items are not cached. Does Opera load a page instantly, or are we talking about the difference between 1.5 and 3 seconds? Maybe Opera is better at caching so that cached pages load faster? I'm just not seeing any sluggish performance on my setup.
Well, here I am typing this message in Firefox 3.0. The install was easy -- very fast and installed clean over FF2 and remembered all my settings. All but 2 of my add-ons work, but most importantly NoScript is here. Just from an initial look-and-feel standpoint it is not that much different. As for speed, it feels quite snappy here on my old P4 box running XP SP2. As above, I don't sense any sluggishness.
It is still using more memory than I would think, but it's not a big deal. I have plenty of RAM, 2 GB, so let the browser have what it wants. 66 MB right now with one window and 3 tabs open. I like the awesome address bar. I key in "howt" and it finds "How To Geek Forums" with the full URL ready to load. Too bad private browsing (aka porn mode) didn't make this first release, but it will be along someday.
Other than these first impressions, it's all much too soon to tell.
@ Scott W
No real scientific basis. Opera just seemed to load the pages noticeably faster. I've got plenty of RAM 4GB, but i was hoping that this version of FF would use less RAM. Honestly, i think i'll stick with FF anyway. I'm used to it and happy with the way i have it setup. I've got 20/5 for my broadband connection. I must admit, i'm one of those people that expects the page to load the instant i click it.
As a former FF user I would be interested to hear about your experience with FF3. Maybe when the dust has settled, one of you FF3 fans could start an FF3 experience thread so that those of us who stand on the sideline will get some input. Maybe that will give us reason to reconvert - or not.
I downloaded Firefox 3 as well. I actually did a complete uninstall of Firefox 2 (using Revo Unistaller), to get rid of all the tweaks I had did, etc. I have installed almost all of my extensions back (1 does not have a new version yet). So far I am impressed. It still seems to take up a lot of memory, which for me is somewhat bad, as one of my systems has 1GB of RAM and the other has 768MB. I have installed it on the machine with 1GB of RAM and, as I said, it does seem to take up a lot of memory, but, as The Geek said, it doesn't seem to bog the system down like Firefox 2 did at times. Hopefully it wont do it even with 20+ tabs open. I do agree with ScottW though, private browsing would have been nice, and maybe some way to keep it from search through some bookmarks, especially on a multi-user machine.
Random Questions...
Does anyone know if you can download the other default themes? For example, download the Vista, Mac, and Linux themes for XP?
I was just curious.
Does anyone know if Mozilla reached their goal on download day?
The goal, as I see it, was to get in the Guinness Book of Records. We may not know if that happens for some time. As far as numbers, the 24-hour count looks to be north of 7 million downloads. There was no previous record to break, so this will be the number to beat for the next crew that makes an attempt.
Even more impressive is that Firefox 3 has already surpassed Opera in market penetration as measured by websites that track browser use. Maybe that's not very impressive since Opera seems to fill a small niche in the browser space.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9971672-7.html
Lighthouse, I guess that you are talking about "save on exit". It's listed as a new feature, but it's not new to me. Maybe they just changed the default so that it saves your tabs. You can turn that behavior off. Even if you use it, you can turn of the prompt-to-save message.
Nice gesture by Microsoft,
http://www.neowin.net/forum/in.....pic=644492
It's obvious to see why some would have Mozillis envy.
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