firefox 3

[Sxotty]

I am surprised there is not thread about this yet.

What do youguys think of it so far? I just installed it and have to admit I am not yet enamored with it. All the buttons are way bigger now and they take up too much space. I am sure I can fix it, but I hate wasting time messing about.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm using it. I haven't really noticed any differences, but I haven't explored for new features.

Oh wait, I noticed that URL suggestion thingy when you start typing in the URL field. It does some sort of dynamic matching against your browse history.

 

[Karoshi]

It was mentioned in some other thread a few months ago.
I've been using 3 since beta 5, iirc.
Obvious subjective differences: speed + mem usage.
Opening 5 tabs of the thread with nice pictures at 19x12 (ridiculous sizes) would get FF over 1GB and start swapping like mad. After closing the tabs, FF2 wouldnt release the memory. FF3 does release the memory on tab close.
I have a favorites menu with sub 23 entries (the usual news sites) that i open all at once, i notice the differences, maybe because i surf on a lowly (heh) 1GB ram centrino duo XP.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I am surprised there is not thread about this yet.

What do youguys think of it so far? I just installed it and have to admit I am not yet enamored with it. All the buttons are way bigger now and they take up too much space. I am sure I can fix it, but I hate wasting time messing about.

Right click on the navigation bar -> Customise -> Use small icons

Or install a different theme all together.

 

[Davros]

Not exactly breaking news but Opera 9.5 is out as well

We've made the fastest browser in the world even faster with superior support for Web standards. Opera 9.5 is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications.
More than 2x faster than Opera 9.2 in rendering JavaScript and HTML
Faster handling of third party plug-ins
Much faster start up time
Superior support for Web standards
Built-in e-mail and newsfeeds
Download Manager with BitTorrent
Speed Dial
Mouse Gestures
Fraud Protection and EV support

http://www.opera.com/

 

[AlphaWolf]

The speed seems to have been improved significantly.

 

[Sxotty]

Right click on the navigation bar -> Customise -> Use small icons

Or install a different theme all together.

I already did that, but the RSS feed icons are large as well. Images seem oversized now that they scale with text as well.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I already did that, but the RSS feed icons are large as well. Images seem oversized now that they scale with text as well.

Remove the text and just leave the icons...?

 

[PARANOiA]

Firefox RCs 1 and 2 seems to have a much smaller memory footprint than FF2.x. After weeks of browsing with no shutdown, FF2 would be taking up > 0.5gb. I'm yet to hit 200mb+ with the new FF, and that's certainly worth the update.

 

[Miksu]

I'm loving it. The new URL field is just so great! One can type there about anything (like AMD) and the browser auto-googles for the word and redirects you to the right place.

 

[Rodéric]

I don't like the new "add bookmark" pop-up, it can't be resized, that's a pain.
I don't like the changes in the download window, now I have one more click to get what I want done, that's BAD. (more clicks = bad, stoopid designers)

 

[nutball]

Gah. The Adblock extension doesn't work for it yet. FF3 seems to still have the annoying habit of hanging up and refusing to render the rest of a page when the pocket geniuses at mediaplex or similar forget to change the batteries in their servers.

Why has my bookmarks sidebar now got two extra folders which I don't want and can't remove?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Gah. The Adblock extension doesn't work for it yet. FF3 seems to

Use Adblock Plus.

still have the annoying habit of hanging up and refusing to render the rest of a page when the pocket geniuses at mediaplex or similar forget to change the batteries in their servers.

Change the minimum page render/redraw time. Then the page won't wait.

 

[Simon F]

I just updated to FF3 and was dismayed to find that "Google Browser Sync" doesn't work. Sigh!

 

[Bludd]

Use Adblock Plus.



Change the minimum page render/redraw time. Then the page won't wait.

Where? How? Does it work in FF2 too?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Where? How? Does it work in FF2 too?

Yes it does work for FF2. The easiest way is to install the Configuration Mania add-on and use the "browser -> paint & rendering" settings from there. There are several settings that you can change that affect this sort of thing in the one place and recommended setting for your bandwidth are listed.

If you don't want to install that, you need to use about:config in the URL bar and change nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0 for broadband speeds.

Or alternately you can block the annoying adhosts with adblock if they are regularly stalling your browser. Not nice, but neither is blocking everything because of a crappy ad server.

 

[Bludd]

Hm, it is at 0 already. The problem I have is that I have some of those most annoying ad servers blocked, and thus a site that uses them pauses while loading because it waits while trying to contact those servers who are blocked by my firewall IP rules.

Thanks, though. I will check out that config mania add-on, though.

Edit: Installed config mania and I changed some settings regarding painting (there were 2 related to the nglayout.initialpaint.delay), let's see how it goes.

edit2: nah, it didn't help. Thanks for the tips, though, BZB

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Hm, it is at 0 already. The problem I have is that I have some of those most annoying ad servers blocked, and thus a site that uses them pauses while loading because it waits while trying to contact those servers who are blocked by my firewall IP rules.

That's probably your problem. If you block at the firewall, your browser is going to wait for a reply that never comes. If you block at the browser, then the browser will know not to wait.

Try blocking with adblock plus and not blocking at your firewall, and see if that makes a difference.

You might also try changing the redraw limits. This will allow FF to start showing pages sooner, but it will cause redraws to happen more often.

You can also try breaking RFCs by increasing the number of web connections. This should mean you have lots of other connections to load up page elements, instead of having just a couple and those stuck waiting for dodgy ad servers.

 

[Bludd]

Yeah, I have done a lot of that, but I feel better having it blocked by my firewall. I'll just live with it and temporarily unblock if I am in a hurry. It's not a big deal and there's not a lot of servers blocked so it's not like I run into it all the time.

 

[hoom]

Use Adblock Plus.

Ugh, they should rename it Adblock Minus.
Adblock is far easier to make wildcard type blocks from a live ad.