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Firefox 3 Beta 1 Review 588

Posted by Zonk from the download-yours-today dept.
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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Firefox 3 Beta 1 Review More

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Review

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  • First Post ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lord_rob the only on ( 859100 ) <shiva3003 AT gmail DOT 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... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by argent ( 18001 ) <(peter) (at) (slashdot.2006.taronga.com)> on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @08:45AM (#21419411) Homepage Journal
      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by alexhs ( 877055 )

        Pity there's not a similar lightweight native Firefox derivative for Windows.
        But... Firefox is already a lightweight derivative... of Mozilla Suite (SeaMonkey)... Or so I've heard... four (five?) years ago... :P

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bhima ( 46039 )
        I was using Camino last year and then it just sort of stagnated.

        Now I'm doing the Firefox - Safari shuffle.

        • Re:shuffle (Score:3, Informative)

          by datapharmer ( 1099455 )
          You aren't alone on doing the shuffle - at least among OSX users! Firefox is great because of the extensions, but FF2 is just bloatware on OSX and it is dog slow. When I updated to Leopard I decided to give Safari another shot. I added in Pithhelmet, SafariStand, and SafariBlock. All it lacks are auto-updating blocklists and it is far faster than FF ever was and it Acid2 compliant to boot!

          As a long time Firefox user I hate to say it, but I may not go back to Firefox for quite some time (unless FF3 is a

    • 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: (Score:3, Informative)

              by bunratty ( 545641 )
              Yes, I agree with you 100%. A browser taking up 2 GB of memory and making the computer slow to a crawl is obviously a very serious problem. No one could possibly disagree with you. Please report it as a bug, along with how to see that outrageous memory use. There is no flamewar. There is no way that memory use is caused by normal fragmentation or caching, which together normally account for only several tens of megabytes of memory usage.

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

                by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @10:06AM (#21420415)
                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: (Score:3)

          by hitmark ( 640295 )
          problem is that many users dont know the diff between a memory leak and a ram cache. they only see the browser eat up 100's of megs in the windows program manager, and go screaming memory leak all over the place.

          its like listening to some office rat talking about programming a computer when all they do is save a excel file (it has happened to me), and you know that no matter of times you correct them they will say the same the next time you bump into them...

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

          by pfafrich ( 647460 ) <rich&singsurf,org> 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, 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?

  • 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?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by T-Bone-T ( 1048702 )
      I can only hope it doesn't have as many grammatical errors as the summary.

    • Starring Keanu Reeves (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.
      No, I saw this browser before, it's not slow. I think it's called "The Browser That Couldn't Slow Down."

    • Re:Speed... (Score:5, Funny)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:49AM (#21420189)
      It's so fast you have to think in Russian just to control it.

  • Memory Leaks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sepluv ( 641107 ) <blakesley AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @08:42AM (#21419385)
    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: (Score:2)

        by Xiaran ( 836924 )
        Second. I use FF on a daily basis on OS X, Windows and linux and the memory problem is the worst on the mac.

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

      by ozmanjusri ( 601766 ) <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .bob_eissua.> 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: (Score:2)

        by sepluv ( 641107 )
        >>Firefox doesn't do X, ergo no Firefox for anyone, anywhere!>millions of people are happily using Firefox Including me I should point out. I've used it since the first public release (Phoenix 0.1) and it has been my primary (and pretty much only browser) since Phoenix 0.2. I have also filed many RFEs and bugs, but I'd rather the developers worked on debugging memory leaks before working on those (esp. as memory leaks are indirectly responsible for most crashes).

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sepluv ( 641107 )
        (NTS: Preview is my firend.)

        Firefox doesn't do X, ergo no Firefox for anyone, anywhere!

        Leaving aside your ad hominem attack, that is a straw man. I didn't say people shouldn't use it, just that their working on other things (e.g.: features) doesn't matter to me (and many other users) until the leaks are fixed. In fact I encourage others to use it, I have the t-shirt (literally) and fluffy toy mascot, and I've persuaded organisations to adopt it as their default browser on all their PCs.

        millions of peopl

      • 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by RpiMatty ( 834853 )
          I don't understand why people leave a web browser open for days at a time, especially firefox, with its built in session saver.

          Close firefox when you are done for the day. When you start it back up it can show you all your tabs from last time. That does help with the memory usage issue.
          If you don't trust the session saver, then bookmark all tabs into a folder with the date. Then tomorrow you know which folder has all your bookmarks from yesterday.

          What are the reasons for leaving it running while you are asl

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

            by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy@nosPAm.gmail.com> 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: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Rogerborg ( 306625 )
          You HATAH! Firefox doesn't 'consume' that memory, it just allocates it and stops anything else using it. That's totally different, from all valid points of view (excluding users', and what do they know?) and only a paid Microsoft shill would claim otherwise.

        • 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: (Score:3, Informative)

            by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
            I have the same experience. I figure it's either some rogue extension, or some weird webpages that people visit that actually lead their browser to consume gigabytes of RAM.
      • Is it that you don't know the answer to the question, or that you don't like the answer?
    • Dunno about memory leaks, but I know that all versions of Internet Explorer barfs on any page that has over about 200KB of text, while Firefox loads it incrementally and without freezing.
    • Yes, it still has memory leaks. I'm sure all popular browsers have memory leaks. Memory leaks are like crash bugs. You can make crashes less and less common, but it would take nearly a miracle to produce a browser that never, ever crashes no matter what. Similarly, Mozilla developers have worked for years to reduce the leaking of memory, but you can't expect a release with absolutely no memory leaks whatsoever. Mozilla developers report "Our extensive testing shows an occasional leak here and there and we a [pavlov.net]

    • 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.
    • Agreed, something similar to the one Opera has with smaller icons would be quite useful.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by dosius ( 230542 )
      Haven't the bookmarks been stored in an HTM file since Netscape 2? Aren't they still stored in bookmarks.html?

      It's not that hard to point your homepage there, if you really want it...though...why?

      -uso.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Use iGoogle as your homepage and add a bookmark gadget, either to the main tab or to a bookmark tag. Heck you could even do a bookmark tab with multiple widgets per category. That way your bookmarks are available anywhere and if you set google as your homepage they are only a alt-home away. I love my firefox addons but Google has done as much the change the way I use the web as the Mozilla Foundation.
  • 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? Is Mozilla foundation working with any vendor to preinstall it?

    The steadfast refusal by the major vendors to pre install Firefox, the public apathy in not demanding Firefox is quite disturbing. These major PC vendors, really don't like to compete on price alone. Brand differentiation is a big thing for them. But why do they try the diff

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Gigiya ( 1022729 )
      The vendors don't care because the consumers wouldn't, either.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by stranger_to_himself ( 1132241 )
      Why would you demand Firefox from your vendor when you can install it yourself 30 seconds after you get home? The idea that having Firefox preinstalled would influence anybody's choice of vendor is nuts.

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

        by Joe Jay Bee ( 1151309 ) * <jbsouthsea AT gmail DOT 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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by drew ( 2081 )
          He wasn't arguing that it wouldn't be good for FireFox to have vendors pre-install it. That's pretty obvious. He was arguing the OP's claim that it would be a good brand differentiator for the vendors to preinstall Firefox. I think he has a point. Most users who know why they should be using Firefox know that they can download and install it for free in less than five minutes. So why would I, as a customer, make a choice of which vendor to purchase from based on a piece of free bundled software? It wo

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by corpsmoderne ( 1007311 )

      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? Is Mozilla foundation working with any vendor to preinstall it?
      Ho yes, more and more PC makers are pre-installing Firefox, Gimp and OpenOffice... along with Ubuntu...

    • 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.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:10AM (#21419667)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Actually Firefox is forbidden on Dept of the Army systems...ok, a lot of them - can't do automated updates due to not being on the Internet in the first place,

        If they can't get on the internet, why do they need firefox? Makes sense to me that it wouldn't be allowed if there's no reason to have it in the first place.

  • Memory usage (Score:2, Informative)

    by dfdashh ( 1060546 )

    From the release notes [mozilla.com]:

    Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.

    I'm optimistic, but we'll see in time...

  • It's so fast... (Score:5, Funny)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <bfelger@gmai l . com> on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @08:55AM (#21419503)
    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].
    • I was about to ask WTF happened to them. They weren't linked from the download page, and I couldn't find them elsewhere on the site.

      If the initial review had linked to the right page I would have seen "Requirements ... Mac OS X 10.4 and later" and not bothered downloading it until I got in to work (still on Panther on my Mac mini).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doti ( 966971 )

      Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
      And obviously the author of the del.icio.us extension will use this to synchronize the tags.
  • I leave my laptop on for days at a time, just putting it to sleep when I'm not using it. This mostly works, but every couple days I have to quit FireFox and relaunch it, because it becomes so slow as to be unusable. For example, holding the mouse down on a scroll bar arrow causes it to scroll one increment every ten seconds or so, rather than scrolling rapidly as it should.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by bigbigbison ( 104532 )
      I"m sure that many of the memory leaks have been fixed. However, they may not be the biggest problem. One of the developers has been making some really interesting posts about Firefox's memory fragmentation problems. http://blog.pavlov.net/ [pavlov.net]
      Those have yet to be solved.

  • Worthwhile Benefit? (Score:3)

    by greginnj ( 891863 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:08AM (#21419641) Homepage Journal

    the uninstall process is fast and painless
    Does anybody really care how fast Firefox uninstalls?

    • Re:Worthwhile Benefit? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Datamonstar ( 845886 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:11AM (#21419679)
      Anyone who is uninstalling it.
    • Giving users an "easy way out" is important; it builds trust by showing respect up front. Letting people know they can get rid of something lowers the resistance to try it.

      How would you like to try a roller coaster that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, except you couldn't see where (if!?) people were supposed to get off afterwards.

      Users will feel safer trying to install a program if they know it will uninstall cleanly, or at least be easily removable (as in: programs that live solely in their install d

  • 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.gmail@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 ) <clipper377@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> 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.)

  • From TFA:

    When a browser starts to edge near to consuming 500MB of RAM on a regular basis, something is wrong.

    And all the screenshots are done in Windows Vista!? So, apparently the guy doesn't think there's anything wrong when an OS consumes more than 500MiB of RAM just to boot, right?

  • My automatic update keeps demanding that I install IE7. Any way to shut this off?

  • 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.

  • I got this trying to log in:

    name:NS_ERROR_DOM_WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
    message:Node cannot be used in a document other than the one in which it was created
    lineNumber:463
    I wonder if GMail gets errors...

  • 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.

  • Should we even take this guy seriously? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Critical Facilities ( 850111 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:57AM (#21420285)

    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 ;-(

  • And the magical link that everyone wants is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @10:26AM (#21420671) Homepage Journal
    ... right here: Get Firefox 3 Beta 1 [mozilla.com]

  • Acid2 Test (Score:5, Informative)

    by citking ( 551907 ) <jay@NOspam.citking.net> 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.

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