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A test run of Firefox 3The Mozilla Firefox web browser project has just announced the first beta release of Firefox 3. The release notes explain some of the major changes in this release: ![[Firefox 3]](/images/ns/firefox3.png)
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
The list of new features in Firefox 3 includes:
Installation of Firefox 3 was simple, the tar.bz2 file was downloaded, uncompressed and untared. Running the software involved moving to the newly created firefox directory and typing ./firefox on the command line. Your author used Firefox 3 to perform a day of browser-intensive lwn.net work. The browser did not crash, and no unusual actions were encountered. Performance was initially not hugely different from Firefox 2, one noticeable slowdown was observed when switching between tabs. After several hours of use, Firefox 3 started to bog down considerably. The memory footprint of 300MB Virtual and 100MB resident was slightly higher than for Firefox 2 with a similar number of open tabs. From a user interface perspective, the browser is very similar in appearance to Firefox 2. The location bar has a few more buttons on the sides, moving the mouse over the buttons reveals the underlying new functions. A number of changes are visible in the pulldown Tools menu, but nothing is too difficult to understand. A number of previously installed Firefox 2 plugins, discussed here, worked without any troubles. The new Edit/Preferences/Applications window gives some new control on the handling of various file types. The Tools/Add-ons/Plugins window has a Get Plugins option that should streamline the process of installing add-on handlers. Despite the 2 million changed source code lines, Firefox 3 Beta 1 is in decent shape and appears to be close to ready for daily use. Since the software is still in the beta stage, it may be best to hold off on using it for mission critical applications. (Log in to post comments)
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 21, 2007 9:40 UTC (Wed) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] Many of these features are anything but new. They've been -improved- or -changed- in FF-3, but where there for quite some time. For example, Web-forgeries where detected and flagged with a warning in FF-2. Individual plugins can be "disabled" or "enabled" in the add-on manager in FF-2. Bookmarks can be assosiated with keywords, I think this was actually in FF-1, it certainly is in FF-2. With or without additional parameters.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 21, 2007 14:38 UTC (Wed) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link] > Individual plugins can be "disabled" or "enabled" in the add-on manager in FF-2. AFAIK plugins, once loaded by ff2, stay loaded until you close the browser. Are you mixing up plugins and extensions? > Bookmarks can be assosiated with keywords, I think this was actually in FF-1, it certainly is in FF-2. With or without additional parameters. Firefox-2 doesn't have a field to store tags or keywords for a bookmark. It only has a field for the bookmark's name; you could, of course, abuse it and stick a list of keywords in there - but then that list of keywords will be visible in the bookmarks menu, which is probably not what you want.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 22, 2007 1:28 UTC (Thu) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] > AFAIK plugins, once loaded by ff2, stay loaded until you close the browser. > Are you mixing up plugins and extensions? No, Firefox 3 actually lets you disable plug-ins like Flash and Java runtime; quite convenient, this.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 22, 2007 5:28 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] You open your comment with the word "No", but the rest is in agreement with your parent. She or he points out that plugins were not unloadable in Firefox 2, in contrast with this featurelist, showing it as a new feature.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 24, 2007 4:50 UTC (Sat) by dirtyepic (subscriber, #30178) [Link] > Firefox-2 doesn't have a field to store tags or keywords > for a bookmark. It only has a field for the bookmark's name; Are you sure about that? ;) http://dev.gentoo.org/~dirtyepic/misc/images/bookmark_key... Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071102 Firefox/2.0.0.9
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 21, 2007 11:08 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] I certainly did notice a speed improvement: for example, the time it takes for the GUI to respond to mouse events. Mouseover effects on web sites appear exactly on time; in Firefox 2 and earlier, they always seemed to lag behind. This gives you a feeling of "sluggishness", but you don't realize it until you actually compare two browsers side by side. Another thing I always found slow in Firefox is the time it takes, from the moment you press "Enter" on the URL bar, to having the page rendered. This is particularly noticeable when you are running a web server on localhost, but also fast sites like Google; Perhaps surprisingly, IE6 has always seemed quicker it than any other browser I tested. With Firefox 3 I can't tell a difference anymore.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 21, 2007 12:43 UTC (Wed) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] Wow! That's surprising - I've always found Opera to be fastest though I seldom use it (for various other reasons).
The meaning of a fast browser Posted Nov 21, 2007 15:01 UTC (Wed) by sht (guest, #46093) [Link] Try links' graphical version, if you want a different perspective on fast browsing :) The version of links I'm thinking of here is the http://links.twibright.com/ one.
The meaning of a fast browser Posted Nov 21, 2007 16:54 UTC (Wed) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] As far as I can see, it doesn't support CSS (among other things) at all. Not really a fair comparison.
The meaning of a fast browser Posted Nov 21, 2007 17:43 UTC (Wed) by sht (guest, #46093) [Link] It doesn't support a dozen of things that you would want from your normal browser, but trying it gives a new perspective on speed as I said. Maybe, disabling features in a modern browser would give the same or even better speed, but I can't say as I haven't tried.
The meaning of a fast browser Posted Nov 21, 2007 17:52 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well what is fair? Opera doesn't support Firefox extensions, for example. If you want fast, then that's fast. Also since Links is based on a text-based browser you have a full set of keyboard controls for moving around in the page. Plus it's rendering is very nice looking. And if you ignore the graphics what browser could possibly be better for blind people? (btw this is one of the major reasons Web 2.0 blows monkey balls. It rarely degrades well for lesser-capable browsers and people. Were as things that are designed properly, like HTML stuff or CSS stuff, do a _very_ good job of degrading gracefully. With properly designed website that takes advantage of CSS it should be perfectly readable in a non-CSS capable browser. Unfortunately the world's dependance on Internet Explorer lays waste to the best designed websites.) There is some other variants of Links that support some CSS, btw. Elinks (for enhanced links) has IPv6, CSS, and even javascript support. Not full support, but it's there. I don't think there is a version of Elink that does graphics though. Then there always is Konqueror, Dillo (which is fast, but unfortunately is dying due to not any interested developers), the Gecko-based Epiphany browser, and the brand-new Webkit-based Epiphany browser.
Dillo was never alive Posted Nov 22, 2007 16:43 UTC (Thu) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] > Dillo (which is fast, but unfortunately is dying due to not > any interested developers) Well, when they claimed to have 5 full-time devs the progress was glacial. There used to be more than plenty interested outside developers too, but those were all ignored and demotivated until they left to do something else. That was four years ago, no idea how it's today, but looking at their todo list it didn't change much, still busy with the FLTK port and CSS support. It seems the main devs are still more interested in getting funds than in outside help, or even coding. Example: HTTPS/SSL support was written independently by three people. It still seems to be on their todo list today. Features like internationalisation/better fonts support, frame support, and who knows what else were also written and simply ignored. Advice for people wanting to help out a nice FOSS project: Always read the mailinglist archive before diving in.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 21, 2007 11:10 UTC (Wed) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link] The bookmark stuff looks like a complete copy of epiphany. Even widget layout is similar :)
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 22, 2007 10:42 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] Is that a bad thing?
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 22, 2007 12:50 UTC (Thu) by sht (guest, #46093) [Link] It is a very good thing! Well, I'll probably stick to Epiphany anyway, when Firefox 3 is out, but if I were ever to switch it'd be a mandatory feature requirement from me.
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 23, 2007 4:35 UTC (Fri) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867) [Link] "which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes" Yikes, they say that like it's a good thing? That sounds to me like it hasn't been tested for 2+ years, and includes a massive amount of (likely buggy) code. Sort of like development kernel..
A test run of Firefox 3 Posted Nov 26, 2007 15:36 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] Well, it works fairly well for a Beta. It hasn't crashed yet for me.
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