Second Beta of Firefox 3: Still Mainly for Developers
December 20th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 6 Comments
Mozilla is out with a second beta version of its Firefox 3 browser, which includes a slew of enhancements over Firefox 2. However, as I mentioned after testing the first beta version this release is still intended for developers and compatibility testing. It has lots of great interface enhancements and renders pages faster, but if you use it this early in the release cycle, you’ll run into problems such as not being able to use your favorite extensions (although if you check the reader comments on Nightly Tester Tools at the end of the link above you’ll find workarounds for this).
The final version of Firefox 3 will be available next year, and you can learn about the major enhancements to it at Mozilla’s site. Firefox 3 is based on a new Gecko 1.9 web rendering platform, and fixes more than 11,000 problems users reported in version 2. The most noticeable improvement over the second generation browser is how much faster web pages render.
The second beta version of Firefox 3 beefs up the browser’s password management, improves graphics and font rendering, fixes hundreds of memory leaks, includes anti-virus integration, has better support for table layout, improves security, and more. The browser’s password manager now checks to see if the right password was entered before it gets sent, and you can resume downloads across sessions—a handy feature.
Mozilla has provided release notes specific to this new beta version if you’re inclined to try it out now. There is also a feedback page where you can give Mozilla feedback. Amusingly, the name of the feedback page is Hendrix, after Jimi Hendrix. Feedback, get it?
As noted in the release notes for beta 2, and as was true with the first beta, “users of the latest releases version of Firefox should not expect their add-ons to work properly with this beta.” That will keep many people from using it at this point. However, in my use, the page rendering is so much faster and the use of memory seems so much more efficient that I’m now finding it useful to use this new beta version and go without my extensions. This new version also works nicely in conjunction with Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail engine. If you’re a regular user of Firefox, once version 3 is compatible with all of your favorite extensions, you’ll definitely want to upgrade.
Are you planning to try the new beta version of Firefox? Have you tried it already?
6 Comments Post your own comment
Matthew Griffin says: December 21st, 2007 5:07am
It seems like only yesterday I got the upgrade dialog box asking me to install Firefox 2.0. Normally, I like to try stuff out before everyone else but I think this time I’ll wait a little while for some of the bugs to get worked out. Honestly, I’m enjoying Flock so much right now, I don’t know if I can ever go back.
John says: December 21st, 2007 8:41am
Just upgraded yesterday and Ive been really happy with the upgrade in terms of usability and memory issues but my one problem is that google reader breaks really badly. (Everything shifts right). Hopefully there will be a fix for this soon.
Brad Walker says: December 21st, 2007 5:08pm
I found this easier than using Nightly Testing Tools to enable extension compatibility: http://www.dotnetwizard.net/?p=175
Check the google cache, because the original site seems to be down.
Stephen Carlton says: December 23rd, 2007 3:25pm
The FF3 bookmarks organizer is a pain to use. Why not keep the Firefox 2 organizer? You can still easily move/edit bookmarks there.
Web Worker Daily » Archive End of a Browser Era « says: December 28th, 2007 11:00am
[...] - spinning off the open-source Mozilla Foundation, which is still going strong. Indeed, with the imminent release of Firefox 3 things are looking brighter than ever for the open source version, which provides the most serious [...]
dotNETwizard says: March 9th, 2008 8:55am
the method Brad Walker says did not work, we removed that post after a lot of people complaining that it did not work. Our policy is not to provide incorrect tutorials or info. so the post is removed. and we are not down. we are still running on http://dotnetwizard.net