Web Worker Daily

We looked at the first beta release of Firefox 3 a few months ago, and liked what we saw. Now we’re a few months down the line, and beta 3 has just been released. With the additional betas come additional polish, as well as a few new features. At this point, much of the WWD staff has switched to this version full-time, though there are some caveats you should be aware of.

Let’s start with some of the improvements that this beta delivers. Memory management has been improved (though opening dozens of tabs can still be a drain on your system), and stability seems to have improved as well, though it’s hard to be sure with just a few days of testing. It’s easier than ever to get information on a site (just click on the favicon next to the address bar): you can find out about the security and identity of the site, as well as manage cookies and saved passwords on a site-by-site basis. Speaking of the address bar, you’ll see a new default theme there, with the OS X one using a native Mac look. The back and forward buttons have been tweaked, with the dropdown menus for the two now unified into one.

Bookmark management continues to be a major focus of Firefox 3. In this beta, the auto-complete for the address bar is improved; it searches through both your bookmarks and your history and uses records of recent visits and frequent visits to guess the most likely results. The add-on manager, too, is still being tweaked. A notable addition here in beta 3 is the ability to search for new add-ons directly from the manager, without needing to load a separate web page.

All is not completely rosy for upgraders, though. If you’re heavily dependent on add-ons, you’ll probably find that many of the ones you use are not yet compatible with Firefox 3. The upgrade installation automatically checks this and offers to look for new versions of your add-ons, but (at least for the ones I use), it probably won’t find many yet. There are ways around this - you can use the Nightly Tester Tools to force compatibility, for example, or turn off version checking entirely - but they increase the risk of a bad or malicious add-on making its way into your system. The average user is probably better served by sticking to known good code.

The release notes, too, are worth a look. This is where you’ll find a list of the most major remaining bugs. One that will hit many web workers hard is that Google Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations tend to stop responding to keyboard input if you’re using this version on OS X. There are also reported difficulties with Windows Live Mail (use Hotmail Classic instead), GMail (minor display issues), and Yahoo! Mail (use Yahoo! Classic Mail instead), among other applications. In Linux, there’s a bug that breaks printing in many circumstances.

On the plus side, it’s easy to install this version side-by-side with Firefox 2, which is our recommended way to proceed. Then you can use Firefox 3 as you main version, and drop back to Firefox 2 when you hit a site with issues. Whether you opt for the safe side-by-side or the risky upgrade installation, Firefox 3 is definitely a big improvement to this browser, and continues its path as a successful and innovative open-source project.