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Firefox 3 Beta 1 Review

Posted by Zonk on Tue Nov 20, 2007 08:37 AM
from the download-yours-today dept.
Software Mozilla The Internet
DaMan writes "The newly-released Firefox 3 beta 1 has been reviewed by ZDnet and the verdict is that it is good. 'Is Firefox 3.0 going to be better? Given what I'm seeing so far, I think so. Why? Because it looks like Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users — security, speed and ease of use ... Everything about Firefox 3.0 beta 1 is fast. The download package is small which means that it comes in fast, the installation is fast, the browser fires up fast, pages and tabs open fast, the browser shuts down fast, and the uninstall process is fast and painless.'"
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Submission: Firefox 3 beta 1 is out, and it is good! by Anonymous Coward
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  • First Post ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lord_rob the only on (859100) <shiva3003&gmail,com> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:40AM (#21419367)
    If so it's made with Firefox 3 Beta 1 Yeah ! (If not, well it's made with Iceweasel 2.0.0.9)

  • About damned time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Underbridge (666784) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:41AM (#21419373)

    "Because it looks like Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users -- security, speed and ease of use"

    Well, thank the Spaghetti Monster. Why did it take so damned long to convince them that was more important than constantly fiddling with the widget layer and whatever else they were doing? Why the nearly 5 year flame war over whether a browser that takes up 2 GB of memory is technically leaking it or not?

    Who would have ever thought that having a secure browser that quickly loads pages and doesn't crash your machine would be enticing to users?

    • I've been using Camino because it's got a fraction of the overhead of Firefox and doesn't have the insecure XPI installer design.

      Pity there's not a similar lightweight native Firefox derivative for Windows.

      So... is Firefox secure, or does it still have the "I'm going to ask you to do something stupid in 10 seconds" countdown when you click on an install link for an XPI file? I swear, they have made it less convenient to install extensions in Firefox than they would have by just letting you download them and install them manually, and they've had to close at least one security hole related to this unnecessary flourish.

    • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Informative)

      by bunratty (545641) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:07AM (#21419627)
      What flamewar? For nearly two years, Mozilla developers have asked users to file good memory leak bug reports and have even supplied tools for doing so [dbaron.org]. If you're still having problems, simply report them and they can be fixed. You can report any bugs in Firefox 3 beta directly to Bugzilla, or discuss them in the MozillaZine Firefox Builds forum [mozillazine.org] first.

      • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Interesting)

        by A beautiful mind (821714) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:14AM (#21419715)
        I've submitted an explanation about the ping-pong game between the developers and the users as a story [slashdot.org] a while ago. The memory hogging problem boils down to memory fragmentation instead of memory leaks basically, that is why the devs weren't finding leaks and the users feel there are some...guess it turns out both groups were right.

        • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Informative)

          by bunratty (545641) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:28AM (#21419881)
          Yes, many users were mistaking fragmentation (and caching) for memory leaks. We've been making this exact statement for years in the MozillaZine forums. But there are actual memory leaks, also. You can't point the finger at any one cause. At any point in time, Firefox memory use is some combination of memory needed to display the open pages, various caches (not just the two people talk about all the time), fragmentation, and possibly memory leaks. The only news is that the developers are getting diminishing returns on fixing leaks, and are now turning to reducing fragmentation to reduce normal memory use.

          • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:49AM (#21420193)
            Yes, many users were mistaking fragmentation (and caching) for memory leaks. We've been making this exact statement for years in the MozillaZine forums.

            That's exactly the "nearly 5 year flame war over whether a browser that takes up 2 GB of memory is technically leaking it or not". The reasoning that just because there is a technical explanation for why it takes 2 GB of memory, doesn't help the poor user who doesn't HAVE 2 GB of memory, and thus his machine slows to a crawl, swapping itself to death.

            It may not *technically* be a leak. But it's still a problem.

              • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Informative)

                by CastrTroy (595695) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @10:06AM (#21420415) Homepage
                Maybe they need to realize when some pages that people make are taking up too much memory, or some extensions are using too much memory. If you go to a page that adds a couple new elements to the DOM every 3 seconds, and leave it on all night, you're going to end up with your browser consuming gigabytes of RAM. If you have a plugin which doesn't release it's memory, and keeps on asking for more, you're going to have a browser that takes up 2 GB of RAM. If you try to open up a huge XML file with your browser, then you're going to have a problem with the browser taking up lots of memory. Those are the only times I've ever seen my usage go above 200 MB. Under normal browsing conditions, even leaving Firefox open for weeks, I've never seen it go over 200 MB. When it does, it's because some rogue page keeps adding stuff to the DOM.

        • Re:About damned time (Score:4, Informative)

          by pfafrich (647460) <rich@sing[ ]f.org ['sur' in gap]> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:48AM (#21420179) Homepage

          See pavlov.net blog [pavlov.net] on Memory fragmentation in firefox.

          I ran in to this problem back in the days where 4MB of memory was a lot. My program needed a lot of large objects with a short persistence. The upshot of this was that the program soon ground to a halt due to swapping memory I partially overcame the problem by writing my own allocation algorithm which kept separate lists of blocks of different sizes, hence it managed to recycle much of the memory blocks.

              • Re:About damned time (Score:4, Informative)

                by nschubach (922175) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @10:35AM (#21420797) Journal
                Just last week I went to move 40,000+ small (less than 700 byte) files off an FTP server. I was lazy and decided to just use IE6's built in FTP client. I was moving the files in the background and doing other "work" in Firefox while it moved the files. A few hours later everything on my PC started closing out (crashing), even Explorer and I was left with Firefox and a few other applications running. IE, Explorer, Visual Studio 2005, and a few other applications just aborted when my machine ran out of memory (1G RAM, 2G swap).

                Why IE was using over 2G of RAM for moving 40,000 files I have no clue, but I was impressed that Firefox continued to run when even Windows Explorer (and even Visual Studio... Microsoft's "crowning achievement") shut down. I guess Microsoft doesn't plan on running out of memory when coding applications.

      • Re:About damned time (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rogerborg (306625) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:45AM (#21420143) Homepage

        Oh FFS. Open "about:blank" repeatedly and watch the memory footprint rise and rise. The issue was never with reporting, but with memory "sure we allocate it and never release it but that's not technically a leak, we just don't know what happened to it" leaks being bottom of every developer's priority list.

        The strength of open source is that many people want to contribute. The weakness is that they only contribute what they want to contribute

    • Re:About damned time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pebs (654334) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:39AM (#21420035) Homepage
      Who would have ever thought that having a secure browser that quickly loads pages and doesn't crash your machine would be enticing to users?

      What browser is crashing your whole machine? Are you running Windows 98 and browsing with Internet Explorer?

      • Re:About damned time (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Mr. Underbridge (666784) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @12:29PM (#21422671)

        The actual amount of memory used is very low. The problem is fragmentation. [pavlov.net] If Mozilla would actually tackle the real problem instead of focusing on what know-nothing users continuously claim is the problem, it would probably be fixed already.

        See, this is in fact the problem - the contempt for the user community. From a user's perspective, this debate of semantics is aggravating and pointless. You see, I don't care what the hell you call it, or even what the root cause is - memory leaking, fragmentation, whatever. In the end, it's simply ridiculous that a damned web browser ends up occupying 2GB of memory. This needs to stop now, and it should have stopped 5 years ago.

        I can't actually believe that a group of developers would have a problem where their programs memory usage gradually increased from 10 MB to 2GB over a few days, and actually release it. And not only release it, but carry it over from alpha all the way through to version 2.0.

  • Speed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ilovegeorgebush (923173) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:41AM (#21419377) Homepage

    Everything about Firefox 3.0 beta 1 is fast. The download package is small which means that it comes in fast, the installation is fast, the browser fires up fast, pages and tabs open fast, the browser shuts down fast, and the uninstall process is fast and painless.
    So it's slow, then?

  • Memory Leaks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sepluv (641107) <blakesley&gmail,com> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:42AM (#21419385) Homepage
    Does it still have memory leaks? Nothing else matters (esp. new features) until they've fixed those. They aren't *quite* so bad on Linux but my friends who use MS Windows have real problems with this.

    • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by grahamd0 (1129971) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:51AM (#21419469)

      I've found them to be worse on the Mac, actually.

      Not trying to start a flame war, I use both on a daily basis.

    • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ozmanjusri (601766) <(aussie_bob) (at) (hotmail.com)> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:57AM (#21419531) Journal
      Nothing else matters (esp. new features) until they've fixed those.

      Ah, another classic astroturf technique. Firefox doesn't do X, ergo no Firefox for anyone, anywhere!

      Meanwhile, back in the real world, millions of people are happily using Firefox without difficulty, and will continue to do so.

      • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MikeBabcock (65886) <mtb-slashdot@mikebabcock.ca> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:21AM (#21419789) Homepage Journal
        Millions of people who browse two or three pages, then close their browser have no problems.

        Those of us who leave Firefox running for days at a time have problems. Firefox consumes GIGABYTES of memory in short order for me, and yes, I see this as a major programming fault.

        • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:5, Informative)

          by LordSnooty (853791) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:46AM (#21420147)
          I run FF 24/7 for weeks on end on Windows and it never goes over 200MB. I accept it's still a lot but then I also tend to browse lots of forums with crappy animated avatars and the like. I can have 20 tabs open across three windows and it still doesn't go over 200. I'm amazed that some people find it using memory in the order of gigabytes.

          • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:5, Insightful)

            by SatanicPuppy (611928) * <Satanicpuppy@gmai3.14159l.com minus pi> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @11:02AM (#21421253) Journal
            I'm trying to come up with a way to respond that doesn't belittle you, because frankly that was a terrible response.

            Your suggestion is a workaround. It does not address the actual problem. Despite the fact that "there is no reason" to leave a program running, which is certainly debatable, the simple truth is that even under abnormal operation, a quality piece of code should not dramatically increase its memory footprint to the point of causing system stability issues.

    • Re:Memory Leaks (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jugalator (259273) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:27AM (#21419875) Journal

      Does it still have memory leaks?
      According to leak diagnostics I've seen posted on blogs, especially if they have extensions installed, it may have.

      But those leaks are up to the affected extension authors to fix.

  • Is Firefox 3 going to be better? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by archen (447353) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:46AM (#21419417)
    It's sort of sad that we go from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 and when posed the question "Is Firefox going to be better" the answer is simply I think so. But then again I don't have many complaints for Firefox if it would just work a bit better. Aside from that it seems like there has to be a better way for bookmarks, and I'm assuming that they're going to the new database format in FF3, but that isn't even mentioned here. Someone on slashdot brought up the awesome idea of having a homepage option that displays your bookmarks (maybe even drag and drop for organize). I guess that would be a cool feature I'd like to see.

  • It's so fast... (Score:5, Funny)

    by halivar (535827) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [reglefb]> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:55AM (#21419503) Homepage
    I'm posting this with Firefox 3.0.1.... from the future.

  • Release notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by dirtyhippie (259852) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @08:57AM (#21419541) Homepage
    Instead of this windows-screenshot-centric review, what geeks like me really want are the release notes [mozilla.com].

  • Yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by infestedsenses (699259) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:11AM (#21419681) Homepage

    I installed the Firefox 3 beta today as well and was positively surprised to see everything react much snappier than my current Firefox. AJAX-laden sites like GMail, Netvibes and Digg comments didn't have the usual effect of slowing down the browser to a creeping halt as they do to Firefox 2. If this holds up then I can't wait for the final release.

    But, and there's always a but: every fresh Firefox installation feels snappy. 2.0 did, and 1.0 did as well. It's always been like that, sort of like a fresh install of Windows. It's when you start installing extensions that it goes downhill, and as a web designer I need quite a few extensions. What I am waiting to see is how Firefox 3 will play along with those. I don't think the author of TFA considered that factor.

  • Browse zip files online! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The MAZZTer (911996) <megazzt AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:13AM (#21419703) Homepage

    The one feature that really floored me is that you can browse ZIP files ONLINE! That's just novel! It's hidden though (most users would rather a ZIP file download than a directory listing pop up when they click it) and you access it by prepending "jar:" to the url and appending "!/" to the end. Try it!

    It also has a much better HTML/CSS layout and better functionality for file:// and ftp:// [ftp] (and jar:) urls (has a show hidden files option for file:// and shows explorer icons for files).

    Here's some more of my favorite new features:

    Overall speed increases... tab switching is now snappy like it should be, and like it is when you don't have any extensions. I like my extensions, and now I can have my cake and eat it too!

    Places. This is probably the one feature everyone here is aware would be in FF3. Firefox 3 throws in some sample queries when you first run it and it imports your bookmarks into an SQL database.

    Bookmark favicons now update to a new site favicon even if the bookmark already has a favicon! This was a bit annoying as before to update a favicon you had to manually go into the bookmark HTML and delete the icon data.

    New download manager appearance with search and with the ability to use a Windows antivirus program on EXE files.

    Full page zoom! However, it seems to crash when I used it on slashdot.org! :(

    New Places UI for bookmark organizing.

  • One word: Management (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darth_brooks (180756) <chico@wccnet. o r g> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:21AM (#21419787) Homepage
    What's the verdict on GPO management for firefox? I've seen an XPI that allows for IE-like management of firefox from a domain controller, but it hasn't been updated in quite some time (I've tried it for 2.0.9, but the XPI will only work with 2.0.0). Will 3 support honest-to-god, grown up management? or will I still have to use hacked together scripts from "Billy Bob's house of chick, waffles, and firefox"?

    That's my biggest knock on firefox right now; trying to manage it centrally is more hassle that it's worth. I've seen the tools out there now and my choices are A. a collection of logon and logoff scripts B. roll my own MSI's and have to re-push firefox when I need to make a change or C. create custom config files at install before the machine is rolled out, then go back to and do B. if I need to make a change.

    Oh, and it'd be nice if I didn't need administrative rights to finish installing some of the updates (Either 2.0.7 or 2.0.9 wouldn't finish auto-updating unless a domain admin was starting firefox.)

  • A Mac Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tatey (1091307) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:29AM (#21419907) Homepage

    As a Mac user, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Firefox 3. For too long, the browser has felt like a foreign application that doesn't integrate nicely in to the OS X UI (Among other issues). With the abundance of third party extensions that greatly assist my general browsing and development experience; it's difficult to switch to an alternate browser.

    Now, Firefox feels like it's apart of OS X utilising native widgets and dialogues. More importantly, the proposed Firefox3 themes for OS X [mozilla.org] look fantastic.

    PS: This post was brought to you from Firefox 3 Beta 1.

  • Still using 1.5 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kuciwalker (891651) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:35AM (#21419995)
    The real question isn't whether 3.0 will be better than 2.0; it's whether 3.0 will be better than 1.5. Firefox 2 was a step backwards in a lot of ways.

  • I like Firefox but Firefox just doesn't like me, so, while I have it installed on most systems, I mostly use Internet Explorer 7 and Opera for day to day browsing.

    I guess I just question whether someone who willingly chooses to browse with IE over Firefox is qualified to measure the value of a browser.

  • More importantly for web developers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by foniksonik (573572) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @10:26AM (#21420665) Homepage Journal
    There is a few new features in the DOM, CSS and Javascript (including a good subset of XPath and XSLT) [mozilla.org] which will help offload some parts of the big script libraries to the browser.... now if only they'd get up to speed on the things that Webkit is doing! [webkit.org]

    Not that it matters really when IE7 is still light years behind ;-(

  • Acid2 Test (Score:5, Informative)

    by citking (551907) <jay@citking.HORSEnet minus herbivore> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @10:42AM (#21420917) Homepage

    It seems Firefox 3 also passes the Acid2 test [webstandards.org].

    A few other minor observations - it won't install any add-ons unless they update securely. So far the only add-ons I've been able to install successfully are GMail Notifier and Adblock Plus. I'm not complaining (since it is a beta release specifically for developers and testers). I just can't wait for development and support of my favorite add-ons to take place!

    One nice thing I noticed is that if you are installing add-ons from a site that is not in the exceptions list you can just accept it via the title bar now instead of having to open the settings, add the site, reload it, and wait again.

    So far I'm impressed! It's fast and smart.

    • Re:Preinstalled firefox? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by garett_spencley (193892) on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:09AM (#21419651) Journal
      What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory? They throw in so much of crapware but not Firefox, GIMP and OpenOffice. Why?

      Because the companies that author the crapware pay the desktop manufacturers to put them there. It's a form of advertising.

      Mozilla Foundation probably can't afford it. Although perhaps that opens up the possibility of doing a donation campaign or some such fund raiser with the community to get such spots purchased.

    • Re:Preinstalled firefox? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by HBI (604924) <pelander@NoSPAm.eyemud.com> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:10AM (#21419667) Homepage Journal
      Actually Firefox is forbidden on Dept of the Army systems. Why? Well, it requires updating separately, and is always flagged on scans. Some of the systems in question - ok, a lot of them - can't do automated updates due to not being on the Internet in the first place, and an institutional aversion to accepting updates from any source without vetting them through a security team first. So I don't imagine this changing anytime soon.

      • Re:Preinstalled firefox? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Joe Jay Bee (1151309) * <sarcasticjoe@nOspam.googlemail.com> on Tuesday November 20 2007, @09:30AM (#21419913)
        Yes, of course, that's why Windows and Internet Explorer are both bit parts in the computer industry, while Linux commands a 90%+ market share.

        Preinstalling Firefox would do a hell of a lot to gain market share for it, especially if it was the default browser. But then, to be honest, I'd rather have no web browser bundled with a Windows install, thanks very much.

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