Tag Archives | updates

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is Out

Apr/03 in Firefox News

beta-5-preview

The last of the Firefox 3 betas has hit the scene, and at this point it is hard to believe they are still finding things to improve on.  So where are the improvements from Beta 4 to Beta 5 of Firefox 3?  Well this is what Mozilla says:

Firefox 3 Beta 5 includes more than 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility, providing platform and user interface enhancements, and resulting in the fastest Firefox ever. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta.

Be sure to check out all of the release notes, and to take a full tour – Mozilla Links has you covered yet again.  So if this is the latest of the betas, what does come next?  The next release should be a release candidate version which will be what we can expect to see in the final process.  With the release candidates they will be having more people test things out and kind of polishing little things here and there. 

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Firefox 3 Isn’t Ready…Yet!

Mar/24 in Firefox News

Reuters Messes Up So should you or should you not be using Firefox 3 yet?  I would say for 90% of the population or people using Firefox, no.  You should at least wait for the release candidate versions or the final version.  The fact of the mater is, even though Firefox 3 looks good it still is not done yet.  The idea of bringing this topic up started after reading a post over at Cybernet News:

There is a lot of talking going around the Internet about Firefox 3 Beta being ready for mass usage. It’s because of an article by Reuters where the creators of Firefox supposedly told them that the Firefox 3 Beta is ready for everyone to use after months of being in development.

So I thought I would do what I can to help spread the words too about Firefox 3 being nice, pretty but not ready for prime time just yet.  Just to give you an idea of how long you should wait – I haven’t even replaced Firefox 2 yet.  Personally I’ll wait till it goes into the "release candidate" versions so that I can get ahead of the curve with some of your questions about it.

Also major "shame shame" on Reuters for not doing their homework on this.

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Firefox Themes with Version 3?

Mar/12 in Best Themes

Looking for Firefox 3 Themes?  Check out the Best 5 Firefox Themes HERE!

Mozilla, do we have a problem?

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I have a feeling I am not the only one who is wondering about this one.  What will happen to all the current Firefox themes once Firefox 3 goes final?  It seems like a handful of theme designers are having issues with getting their themes to look right with the new Firefox 3 interface.  Will they all have to start from scratch again?

The above screen shot was taken from TwisterMc – who is describing his own issues getting the iPox theme to work correctly.

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Firefox 3 Beta 4 in the Wild

Mar/11 in Firefox News

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is ready for download. Well there was some confusion yesterday on if it was out or not, so I decided to hold off on this till today. Yet again, Mozilla continues to surprise and amaze with improvements to the core product. Two of the biggest updates I would say would be:

  • Speed:
    Improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in significant improvements. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 4, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
  • Memory usage:
    Some new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 Beta 4 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.

You can check out the full list of improvements and updates on the release notes and as always, Mozilla Links has an awesome in-depth review of this newest Firefox beta release.

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Domination from Firefox 3 – Beta 3

Feb/15 in Resources

There is no doubt that a lot of people are excited about Firefox 3. With those who loved Firefox 2 things just keep getting better. For those who thought Firefox 1.5 was the best – the hope to see a return to the browser they love.

Here is your mostly Firefox 3 Beta 3 link roundup for this week:

Firefox Media of the Week

Is Firefox the new “F” word?

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Firefox 3 – Return of the Beta 3

Feb/13 in Firefox News

Firefox 3 Beta 3 is released out for testing purposes. Are you getting excited yet? Here are some things worth taking note of in the newest Firefox release:

  • [Improved in Beta 3!] Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases that continue to increase page drawing speed in Beta 3. This release also features over 90 changes that improve performance over the previous beta.
  • [Improved in Beta 3!] Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
  • [Improved in Beta 3!] Memory usage: Over 350 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. Beta 3 includes more than 50 improvements to memory use over the previous beta.

Check out the full Firefox 3 Beta 3 Release Notes to read more about what is better, what has changed and what may stay the same. As an interesting side note – I think it is about time Mozilla started to remind addon developers to update their work to get it ready for Firefox 3.

Here are the results of our latest poll:

Continue Reading →

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Firefox 3 – More Beta 2 Goodies

Dec/20 in Firefox News

Firefox 3 Beta 2 just rolled out and I have to say things just keep looking better and better. I mean, I’m not really all that disappointed with Firefox now but with what is being done there are tons of improvements on the way.

This recent release includes approximately 900 improvements over the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Awesome news all around.

Here are a few more details worth mentioning:

Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.

Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.

New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and displays where a file came from.

Are we we excited yet? How about the news that 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more.

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Pirillo Talks Firefox 3

Dec/01 in Entertainment

For long time readers, you’ll remember that Chris and Lockergnome were the main supporters of me starting this site and getting the word out about the Firefox Facts e-book. Where here are some of his thoughts on Firefox 3.

Still got much love for Chris, and he’s got some good and bad things to say.

Interesting video – maybe I should do a few video Firefox podcasts?

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Released: Firefox 3 Beta 1

Nov/20 in Firefox News

This is something everybody and their grandmother will be covering over the next few days, so I thought I should say something about it. Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now ready for testing. Still for “testing purposes only” this version promises to deliver…

  • Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking for insecure plugins.
  • Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X.
  • Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart search bookmark folders, direct typing in location bar searches your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
  • Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
  • Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 300 memory leak fixes, and a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks.

List of feature courtesy of developer.mozilla.org.

+ Download Firefox 3 Beta 1! 

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