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DailyTech under Firefox 3.0 RC1
Mozilla soldiers ahead with Firefox 3.0

When DailyTech last reported on Firefox 3.0, Mozilla was still playing around with Beta 3. Since that time, the Mozilla released Beta 4 and Beta 5 iterations along with numerous nightly builds. Over the weekend, however, Firefox 3.0 eked closer to final code with Release Candidate 1 (RC1).

The development of Firefox 3.0 has been a long and steady process, but RC1 gives Mozilla more firepower in its ongoing battle with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and to a lesser extent, Safari and Opera.

Firefox 3.0 is built on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform and includes better memory management, improved performance, enhanced security features, and improved usability. Other new features include built-in antivirus protection, easier password management, a new download manager and improved integration with Windows and OS X.

According to Mozilla, changes specifically attributable to the latest release of Firefox 3.0 include:

  • Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
  • Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
  • Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.
  • Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

Firefox 3.0 RC1 is currently available for download in multiple languages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.

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Transition...
By oTAL on 5/19/2008 11:27:29 AM , Rating: 3
It would be nice to have a "compatibility checker" to automatically see which of my extensions are working on FF3 and which I'd have to live without. The only reason I'm not making the jump today is that things are working pretty well on FF2 and I have it tailored to my needs...

Anybody wanting to share their experience transitioning?




RE: Transition...
By noxipoo on 5/19/2008 11:34:37 AM , Rating: 2
i use FF2 for work and java/EMC (navisphere) stuff doesn't work right in it yet. that is why i rolled back.


RE: Transition...
By StevoLincolnite on 5/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: Transition...
By murphyslabrat on 5/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: Transition...
By Omega215D on 5/19/08, Rating: 0
RE: Transition...
By FITCamaro on 5/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: Transition...
By amanojaku on 5/19/08, Rating: 0
RE: Transition...
By FITCamaro on 5/19/2008 1:27:37 PM , Rating: 1
Yes.

In the words of Stewie. "THOSE AREN'T BOOBS! THEY'RE LIES!!!"


RE: Transition...
By amanojaku on 5/19/2008 2:06:40 PM , Rating: 1
Touché, you win. As consolation I'll take her "boobie" prize. :)


RE: Transition...
By B3an on 5/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: Transition...
By tastyratz on 5/19/2008 8:54:22 PM , Rating: 3
http://florchakh.com/2007/07/16/firefox-girl-the-r...

its true, get over it guys

shes hot but whatever.
as far as firefox goes back in ff3b3 days there were a lot of incompatible plugins. while the plugins in 2 now aren't going to work with 3 I find many popular plugins have updated with a version to work with v3.

3 is so substantially better than v2 it would take a major hit in functionality with a significant plugin for me to think twice.
I use half the ram, pages load faster and more consistantly... seems to just work much better in every area.


RE: Transition...
By StevoLincolnite on 5/20/2008 12:39:22 AM , Rating: 2
Yes she is hot, But what makes her hotter is the firefox logo :P


RE: Transition...
By Zurtex on 5/19/2008 11:36:11 AM , Rating: 2
While not everything works yet, the transition at this early stage has been a lot better for me than I remember the transition from 1.5 to 2.0. It felt like months before I could get everything working nicely again, but now I've got pretty much all the important extensions I wanted (had to download a beta / sandboxed item here and there).


RE: Transition...
By AmazighQ on 5/19/2008 11:42:01 AM , Rating: 2
the most important/populair addons work on FF3
only Dictionaries and your favoriete theme wont proberly work(if you read this then you see alot of errors that cause my Dictionaries doesnt work).
addons like Adblock plus, IE Tab, Noscript and Download Statusbar are working in FF3 RC1.
i have used every FF3 beta and this FF3 RC1 is more stable and faster.


RE: Transition...
By Connoisseur on 5/19/2008 12:14:00 PM , Rating: 3
No offense but if you need dictionary to correct that many grammar and spelling mistakes, you might just need to pay more attention in English class...


RE: Transition...
By Omega215D on 5/19/2008 1:06:39 PM , Rating: 4
Me fail english? Thats unpossible.


RE: Transition...
By Bender 123 on 5/19/2008 1:29:22 PM , Rating: 3
That is perfectly cromulant the way it is stated. The release of FF 3 will imbiggen the soul.


RE: Transition...
By FITCamaro on 5/19/2008 1:25:04 PM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately tools like inline spell check have just made people lazier and lazier when it comes to spelling and grammar. However, at the same time, the fact that people still make mistakes when they exist says even more about how lazy people are.

*cough* Kinda talking to you DT editors. *cough*


RE: Transition...
By gilboa on 5/19/2008 1:37:00 PM , Rating: 2
You are aware that native English speakers are a minority, right?
(Or as I like to put it: My Piglish is far better than your Hebrew...:))

- Gilboa


RE: Transition...
By gilboa on 5/19/2008 1:39:38 PM , Rating: 2
(For those of you who failed to understand what Piglish means: Piglish == bad English.)

- Gilboa
"Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English." (5'th element)


RE: Transition...
By SilthDraeth on 5/20/2008 10:38:58 AM , Rating: 2
Bad English is supposed to be called Engrish.


RE: Transition...
By dever on 5/19/2008 3:01:51 PM , Rating: 2
I would think that on an English language site, English speakers would be fairly prevalent.


RE: Transition...
By heffeque on 5/19/2008 7:09:13 PM , Rating: 2
You forget that most people on earth know how to speak/read/write more than one or two languages. One of the most common second languages is English, one of the main reasons most native English speakers barely know any other language.


RE: Transition...
By sld on 5/20/2008 4:08:38 AM , Rating: 2
Yes I am aware that Americans are not native English speakers.

Mixing up the apostrophes, wan't, dont, cant, plural of apple is apple's.... good grief!

"Native" should be synonymous with "barely passable".


RE: Transition...
By AmazighQ on 5/20/2008 1:34:37 PM , Rating: 2
im not born in an english speaking country
and all the english you see me type is 50% self learn
so for me a dictionary is the only way i would ever know the correct word/grammer


RE: Transition...
By smitty3268 on 5/19/2008 12:06:44 PM , Rating: 2
I first moved to FF3 beta 5, and all 5 of my extensions worked. When I updated to RC1 4 of them stopped, with Adblock Plus being the exception. I assume the rest will probably be updated in the next week or so, but YMMV. Lesser used 3rd party extensions are probably much less likely to work.


RE: Transition...
By vapore0n on 5/19/2008 12:52:04 PM , Rating: 2
FF3 RC1 just came out

Give it some time for the addons developers to catch up.


RE: Transition...
By Omega215D on 5/19/2008 1:08:18 PM , Rating: 2
Odd, I would think that the NoScript extension would be able to run on FF3 beta. I usually wait for the end version so I wouldn't know as of now but the extension page did list FF3 beta.


RE: Transition...
By SilthDraeth on 5/20/2008 1:34:29 PM , Rating: 2
Noscript works. I updated to RC1, and then it said noscript didn't work, so I had it check for an update, and noscript has an update for RC1.


RE: Transition...
By MooseMuffin on 5/19/2008 12:15:41 PM , Rating: 2
The only extensions I consider essential are adblock plus and noscript, and both of those work in the RC. Most of the other ones I use work too, and the few that don't work aren't enough to get me to go back to FF2, which is slow and memory hungry by comparison.


RE: Transition...
By Polynikes on 5/19/2008 12:24:58 PM , Rating: 2
I was just thinking the same thing. I'd rather not upgrade without all my extensions working properly.


RE: Transition...
By Moishe on 5/19/2008 12:41:57 PM , Rating: 2
Working well just like the last beta.

Firebug beta required, but flashblock and forecastfox work great. Haven't run into a single problem.


RE: Transition...
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 5/19/2008 12:54:57 PM , Rating: 3
For add-ons that are incompatible, I just use the Nightly Tester Tools add-on to force compatibility.

Works just fine for all of my extensions with the exception of the "official" Google Toolbar. So I use Googlebar Lite instead.


RE: Transition...
By nitrous9200 on 5/19/2008 4:12:25 PM , Rating: 3
Don't want to wait for your extensions to be updated?
Type about:config in the address bar and hit enter. Then right click and choose New > Boolean. Call it extensions.checkCompatibility, OK, and make it false. Now the extension compatibility check won't be performed and all of your addons will load. All of the ones I had (7 of them) work just fine, and it's likely most of them will.


RE: Transition...
By TheOneStorm on 5/19/2008 4:13:25 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know about extensions.. but in the case of addons, when you install FF3 (first time ran), it tells you which ones are not compatible. Would be nice if you could find out ahead of time though...


RE: Transition...
By barjebus on 5/19/2008 4:25:54 PM , Rating: 2
Our company builds and writes software for small devices that are usually part of a larger network, and require the ability to log in from anywhere in the world using SSL/https.

We only use self signed certificates or our manufacturers certificate on them, and are frustrated that we will be forced to buy individual licenses for each piece of hardware in the coming years as pretty much any decent browser these days makes a user jump through about 4 hoops to get around a self signed certificate. Anyways, that's my big annoyance with FF3.


RE: Transition...
By probedb on 5/20/2008 4:23:48 AM , Rating: 2
Just use: http://www.oxymoronical.com/web/firefox/nightly

Allows you to override extension compatibility :)


Good
By rudolphna on 5/19/2008 12:46:26 PM , Rating: 1
Ive been using FF3 since the 3rd BETA, and it works well for me. Much faster than IE7, though add-on compatability still needs, some work, (which is to be expected). I just updated to the RC Version. The only problems ive come across was that FF3 B3 didnt work with Yahoo! Mail. Also, AVG Safesearch is not compatible. Its not a big deal though. Firefox All the way. =D




RE: Good
By baadcatj on 5/19/2008 1:20:55 PM , Rating: 1
I too started with FF3b3, then b5 and now RC1 - all primarily because I couldn't stand the problems with FF2. AVG SafeSearch was working fine in b5 so I expect it will be very soon in RC1;

I'm no fanboy as I use both FF and IE at the same time for different reasons - primarily way too many tabs open to have them all in one browser and for switching between work and multiple personal projects. Perhaps though I can get two iteration running on different desktops of Aero or Compiz.

Anyway, definitely loving FF3.


RE: Good
By HeelyJoe on 5/19/2008 1:44:02 PM , Rating: 2
Why don't you just open up a new Firefox window instead of having two browsers open?


RE: Good
By ImSpartacus on 5/19/2008 3:24:02 PM , Rating: 2
You do understand that you can open multiple FF windows (ie: 'open in new window' command).

I personally just use one browser. I've had 20-30 tabs open at once on FF2. It wasn't pretty. Usually, 2-8 is more manageable.


RE: Good
By heffeque on 5/19/2008 7:13:24 PM , Rating: 2
For people who use a lot of Tabs, TabMixPlus is usually a must-have. I personally feel like going from FF to IE when I go to a non-TMP FF.


Showstopper bug in RC1
By FireTech on 5/20/2008 5:10:13 AM , Rating: 2
Maybe I missed it with the 'FF girl" talk but has anyone mentioned that RC1 has a showstopper bug and will go to RC2 at least?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43334...




RE: Showstopper bug in RC1
By Zurtex on 5/20/2008 8:07:47 AM , Rating: 2
Well that's why we have Release Candidates, so much wider testing can go on.

Also noticed this server side bug has popped up that is blocking Firefox 3 release: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43359...


RE: Showstopper bug in RC1
By FireTech on 5/21/2008 5:11:42 AM , Rating: 2
I realise that but a few sites are giving the impression that RC1 is almost the same as the final release, which it obviously isn't going to be in reality and some users may not be aware of that.


By jeromekwok on 5/19/2008 10:04:10 PM , Rating: 2
The RC1 is now my default browser. It is as reliable as FF2. More reliable than IE7 for sure.

It seems the FF3 built in addon updater did not get all latest extensions. I tried to download and install the latest versions from the original author's site. I can get all essential extensions in FF3 without a problem. Adblock plus, save image in folder and free download manager all work fine.

I don't see FF3 uses less memory than FF2 does. But the new features like auto-complete url bar and page zoom are great.




article?
By zinfamous on 5/20/2008 2:18:05 AM , Rating: 2
for some reason, I find it really hard to focus on this article...

....




By mtdewcmu on 5/20/2008 2:36:26 AM , Rating: 2
I am using the latest version of Firefox2 and I have been having terrible problems with stability for a long time. In fact, I don't know if any version of FF has had acceptable stability for me. After browsing for a little while, I will click a link and FF will spin forever, acting as if it's trying to hit the page, but never getting anywhere. In order to visit the page, I have to restart FF, which means I have to close all browser windows so that the FF process dies. Then the page will come up immediately. Of course, before long it happens again. Maybe something about my ISP exacerbates the problem, but it is still clearly FF's fault. This level of stability is unacceptable in such a mature piece of software. The only thing keeping me from using IE is the fear of IE's poor security.




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