Firefox 3 Review

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I have been a Firefox 3 user from day 1. So I thought it might be a good time to write a review. Some positive and negative points about it…

The Negative Stuff

Stability Issues

I am having some random crashes – this could be a problem with my setup. I have not heard about such a problem on other sites. Anyway, these crashes give no warning. One minute, you are browsing smoothly and the next minute you are looking at the desktop – the browser have gone away. Fortunately, Firefox has a session saver – so if you restart Firefox after a crash, the tabs you had earlier will be waiting for you.

Go Button

Firefox 3 removed the ‘Go’ button to the right of address bar. I want it back – fortunately, you can get it back using a userChrome.css hack…

Go to the profile folder of firefox. In Linux, it should be in some folder like /home/username/.mozilla/firefox/[random id].default/chrome/

Create a new file called userChrome.css and put this line in it…

#urlbar[pageproxystate="valid"] > #urlbar-icons > #go-button {
	visibility: visible !important;
}

Flash Problem

This should be a Linux only problem – and I think the flash plugin is the one that should take the blame. When I visit some pages with embedded flash, a new gnome window open up. It does nothing – just hangs around the screen. Do any of you guys have this problem?

The Positive Stuff

Awesome bar is, well, awesome

The new address bar is just great. It saves a lot of time. Its a very good feature – and I predict that other browsers will follow firefox lead and add this feature too.

FUEL Library

You users will not find this useful – but for us add-on developers, this is great. FUEL a javascript library that makes it much more easier to create XUL plugins for firefox.

Better Bookmarking System

Firefox 3’s bookmarking system is much better than the earlier one. It learned a lot from del.icio.us – now it supports tagging.

Looks Better

In addition to better color and font handling, the looks of some HTML elements have been improved(example, the dropdown/combo box). Also dragging have been improved – just try to drag an image or a link and you will see what I mean. You can see the item you are dragging along with the cursor instead of a generic icon.

So what are your opinions about the new Firefox?

8 comments

  1. Why do you need that go button .. use the enter key … LOL I am too lazy to make that coding change re…. 😉

    Yea, I too have some crashes on FC7 🙁 makes it really tough to work coz I need to have multiple website open to keep working

  2. Just wanted to comment on some things.
    The ‘awesome bar’ is awesome but from what I’ve read it comes at a great cost of memory usage.

    In Firefox 2, with 3 tabs open, I used about 10 MB of memory.

    Now Firefox 3 uses over 70 MB of memory, and just 30 MB just idling at first boot! What the hell?

    They should give people an option to disable certain features if they don’t need them OR if they need to conserve memory.

    Firefox is a memory hog, and I wish they’d address that first and foremost before adding any more ‘features’ in the next major release. I’m about to downgrade back to Firefox 2 at this rate.

  3. Oh, another comment (didn’t wanna make the first one too long) but YES I’ve encountered inexcusable crap with Firefox 3. Not only is it a memory hog but after you browse several tabs for a while you’ll get unexplained ‘freezes’ where you can’t do anything for at least a minute, then things work well for about 2 mins, then the process repeats. This most often occurs during/after viewing any flash, and I’ve had Firefox 3 inexplicably just CRASH when loading a f-in Flash file for any or no reason!
    YouTube seems immune to this, and WeGame.com is good too, but anything else is suspect.

  4. Nice Post Binny, But in My Office in Some System after installing the FF 3, its Not working, Showing a Crash Window ?.

    Any Solution ?.

    Thanks in Advance

    Anish K.S

    🙂

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