techcrunch.com — Mozilla offered up FireFox 2.0 Release Candidate 3 tonight, bringing the official launch of version 2.0 all the closer. Most TechCrunch readers have probably tried previous release candidates but there are a number of things readers may be interested in considering as full scale roll-out of the new version approaches.
Oct 17, 2006 View in Crawl 4
jiberishOct 17, 2006
Did anyone else hear the Cheap Seats "Here’s What to Look For" song play in their head after reading this?
sanderscm2Oct 17, 2006
i'm newly converted to mac (meaning, within the last 3 months) and am still looking for that perfect browser...i prefer the speed of camino over that of firefox, but hate that it doesn't use rss feeds...is 2.0 any faster upon first click, than my current 1.5? and is rc3 stable enough to become my primary? i don't want to waste my time getting it only to realize that its not...opinions?
ryan83518Oct 17, 2006
Yea I hate that too. I can close a tab by middling clicking it so why do I need an X? And dont respond with, "well not everyone has a middle click button". I'd say most people using firefox do. There's an easy way to get the old Firefox functionality back though. Do the following: 1. Type about:config where you would normally enter a website and hit enter. 2. In the search bar search for browser.tabs.closeButtons and change the integer value to "3".Look here for more on the different options you can use. <a class="user" href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons">http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons</a>Now if only you could have an X on each tab and at the end of the area (without an extension to do it for you).
ahnteisOct 17, 2006
Forget the close button, the new scrolling tabs are teh SUCK. (For people who have a lot of tabs open.)Start scrolling your mousewheel a bit too early (as you move mouse toward page)? Your tabs move -- and when you go to close a window you close a different one because you didn't realize that you had changed tabs.Of course, the new skin doesn't help. The active tab is so subtle that it's sometimes hard to find the active one.
Closed AccountOct 17, 2006
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the memory issues in Firefox (and other browsers) with never go away.When people look at the memory usage of Firefox they naturally compare it to IE6. So what does IE6 do differently? IE6 runs multiple instances/processes at a time. Every time you click the blue E icon, open a new IE window, or open a link from Outlook, a new instance of IE is created; when the window is closed the instance and all of its memory, leaks and all, is returned to the OS. Firefox, on the other hand, is incapable of running multiple instances at one time (a serious defect, if you ask me) but much more importantly it uses a tabbed interface, with virtually all web browsing activity happening within a single window for days or even weeks at a time; I know I usually have two or three web browsing tasks on the go at any given time, all within tabs in a single window; the window never has an opportunity to close.Since all web browsing happens in a single instance over extended periods of time that single instance will have eventually loaded into memory every plugin available, and exhausted every rendering and scripting feature of the browser. Not even taking the bugs/leaks into consideration, that single instance will have consumed massive amounts of memory when compared to, say, a new instance of IE that just loaded Slashdot.This problem isn't specific to Firefox, but it's most visible in Firefox because it's currently the most popular tabbed browser, and tabbed browser usage dictates these kinds of memory problems. Safari, Opera, and IE7 all have the same issues when used in the same way.Your only recourse, regardless of which browser you use, is to close/restart the browser often, whenever the opportunity presents itself. This happens naturally in a non-tabbed browser like IE6, but tabbed browsers are a different story.
Closed AccountOct 17, 2006
Remember when it was Phoenix? Mozilla Browser?
doodoofaceOct 18, 2006
Is Firefox 3.0 really still scheduled for Q1 2007? Somehow I don't see it happening by then. At least not unless they call a bug fix 3.0
deusxOct 18, 2006
"CTRL-left click closes tabs just like a middle click"Not if you're on a Mac, it doesn't. :)