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Mozilla: Final Version of Firefox 3 Will Ship in June

blog.wired.com — Mozilla officially announces when Firefox 3 will be out.

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  • necroprancer, on 03/27/2008, -32/+170Sweet. Firefox 2 has crashed on me quite a bit, but I'll support an open-source browser over IE and Safari to the end.
    • hank22, on 03/27/2008, -8/+20Ye, it crashes with me all the time latley.
      • fabriciom, on 03/27/2008, -36/+3Have you tried Safari? I don't know in windows but in OSX is way better than Firefox. Plus it has little things that make your surfing a lot easier and you don't notice till you get used to it.
        • AlexBellisBrown, on 03/27/2008, -0/+26Safari is good, but its not Firefox. At least with FF3 I wont get the script errors on Digg that I do now. Viva el Fox!
          • serpicolugnut, on 03/27/2008, -25/+3At least with Safari I can leave the browser open and not have it devour all my memory, as Firefox does through it's numerous memory leaks.
          • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -2/+40FF3b4... Uses less memory then Safari..period.
          • Vlatro, on 03/27/2008, -4/+13In FF2, there are some memory leaks, though it's unlikely you'd ever run into any of them in normal usage. The real problem was that they allowed extension developers to take some liberties with their code quality, assuming that the developer was experienced in programming and would support their extension. Many of the most popular add-ons however are simply not supported and packed full of bugs that chew up memory.

            FF3b4 so far enforces a stricter policy on how memory is used and thus fixes many of the problems. That being said, kiss you beloved extensions goodbye, you can't just change the compatibility heading to make it work for the new version, as was a common practice with FF2. In many cases extensions will have to be rewritten to comply, and those not actively supported today may be gone for a while until someone gets around to doing the job right.

            Also consider that many of the memory problems with firefox stem from the OS, not the program it's self. OSX, XP, Vista, and many linux variants use completely different memory management methods. When FF3 goes gold, I have no doubts it'll blow safari out of the water, and sink one more nail in the IE coffin. I'm no Firefox fanboy, I'll be the first to point out it's flaws, but those flaws are quickly addressed and even before an official release, there is a whole community dedicated to releasing unauthorized but effective patches. Safari is good, I'd put it about equal with FF2 now in terms of functionality and stability, but FF3 would win that fight hands down. Until safari put's out the next release, I think FF will be dominant.
          • gameforge, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1@Vlatro
            Two things, first, memory problems with respect to Firefox are likely to be caused by Firefox, when the same leak exists on both Windows and Linux - but I don't believe such leaks were actually caused by Firefox, particularly with most later/stable versions of FF2; I believe they were either caused by plugins like you said or a ballooning memory model that instead of releasing resources as they're no longer needed, saves them for later use (this helps speed up Firefox after it's been running, but is not a good design to begin with). In other words, I have not noticed any leaks in FF2 for at least six months on either Windows or Linux.

            I have to agree about FF3 though, it's WAY faster.

            But, the one thing that's going to keep Safari ahead of FF3 for FF3's entire life cycle is compliance - as you may have seen, Safari recently scored 100/100 on the acid3 test. Now, FF3 is a top contender scoring in the mid 70s - IE gets like 18/100, FF2 gets mid-50s, Konqueror crashes, and I think Opera is up there with FF3 in the 70s. But FF3 will likely not go above that score for its entire lifecycle; the Gecko 1.9 renderer, from what I understand, needs a bit of an overhaul before it can approach 100.
      • troye, on 03/27/2008, -1/+25Are you talking about the Beta?

        My experience is that Firefox2 is golden, but molasses-slow compared to Firefox 3. Firefox 3 beta 4 is a speed demon.

        I think that extensions can be what are making your browser crash, and causing you Firefox 2 to be unstable.
        • Vlatro, on 03/27/2008, -12/+6Exactly right, extensions are the downfall of firefox stability. FF3b4 is fast because only a small handful of extensions work with it yet. I like my 2 million extensions, but I put them on FFportable on my USB drive and keep a seperate "clean" install of FF3 on my computer.

          In my view, the extension pages at Mozilla need to be changed, complete with source code showing, a developer's talk page, a system that rates not just the concept and functionality, but the cleanness of the code. A code cheker utility would be helpful (beyond debug and syntax checking) to identify problems with coding.

          FF3 does fix dozens of true firefox memory leaks and is well worth using now if you have problems, but you need to break the extension habit for it to work well.
          • iofthestorm, on 03/27/2008, -0/+8Firefox3 is very fast even with the same extensions installed as Firefox2, it really is that much better. And there is a memory leak detector or something of that nature for fixing buggy extensions. But yeah, some extensions are really horrible at leaking memory (I believe forecastfox is one, and I've also heard Firebug leaks memory like mad, although I don't know about the beta versions of that).
      • borez, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Yeah, I've noticed that, it's been crashing all week?
        • boogie606, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1mine too and i only run adblock, talk back, and IE tab.
      • dudettea, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Your "crashings" are most likely due to poorly-developed add-ons, and not the browser itself.
      • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I use FF all the time. It seldomly and unepectly crashes about 1-2 times per month. I use XP, about 23 extensions (nothing like an irc client, and firebug is almost always turned off). The only extensions I use are browser related/interface. I really have to admit that it is odd how it crashes for some and not others.
      • microchp, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1The windows build has been mostly solid for me and the linux one crashes daily, especially on digg.
      • Beylan, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1Mine seems to be crashing a ton since 2.0.0.13 came out. Was fine before that.
    • lamiaconfitor, on 03/27/2008, -8/+17why are you being dugg down? are people really that brand loyal?
      • theaceoffire, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4A small subset of all available people are, yes.
      • orb_nsc, on 03/27/2008, -2/+7I think the first rule of Apple fandom is that all Apple products are automatically far superior to any other product. Even when it comes to something as universally loved as Firefox.
        • LordofChaosIori, on 03/27/2008, -2/+2Obviously you've never compared how Firefox runs on a mac compared to Safari. Safari is much faster, and as much as I like Firefox, I'll take speed over add-ons for now.
          • AlexBellisBrown, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3Wanna love why Apple users think there stuff is the best? Because they can´t say its not because of the price they paid for it! If you bought something worth over $1,000 would you call it crap?
    • manitoba98xp, on 03/27/2008, -18/+19Safari isn't entirely open-source, but the rendering engine is (WebKit). So it's the lesser evil compared to IE and Trident.
    • ArmchairAthlete, on 03/27/2008, -6/+15I have to concur with the experience crashing. Even on Linux where I also use it.

      Really after all the crashing, memory hogging, and hanging/sluggish performance I should've already gone back to IE or gone to Opera. I do like my few extensions though...

      Go ahead and dig me down for my blasphemy, but this is my FF experience on multiple machines.
      • julienbh, on 03/27/2008, -5/+4"all the crashing"
        Come on. Mine has crashed about once a week TOP.And most of the time because of PDF reader, so I can't blame em.
        But I have to agree about the memory leaks, 100mb for a 2 tab windows is way too much.
        • svivian, on 03/27/2008, -2/+4Once a week is still very regular.
          • Ultramagnus0001, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1Mine hasn't crash for months, ON VISTA! Strange
      • troye, on 03/27/2008, -5/+1Are you talking about the Beta?
      • giid, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I personally can't remember that last time that FF crashed on my machine, my trick, I believe is to not run many extensions, just a handful of them, and I rarely use most of them. Noscript, Firebug (w/ YSlow), Greasemonkey (although I only have like 1 working script now) , user agent switcher, IE View Lite, DownThemAll! and Throbber Button.
        • elsagacious, on 03/27/2008, -1/+8How can you not have Adblock Plus? This one extension is the main reason I use Firefox over Safari.
        • KINGGS, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1I also only use a few, Download Statusbar, Compact Menu 2, IE Tab, Linkification, No Script, & Perma Tabs. The leaks still put me under 100mb usually.
        • theycallmebubba, on 03/27/2008, -1/+3@ elsagacious - Did you know that there actually are several utilities built for Safari that work almost exactly like Adblock? You might want to give them a try, or at least check 'em out... you can go here if you're curious:

          http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/?c=Adblocking

          Good luck!
      • charbarred, on 03/27/2008, -3/+1Mine crashes on an hourly basis...it's probably the extensions, but then again, the extensions is what it's all about
        • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1what extensions are u using? A lot of them are utterly pointless, yet so many make it to the top downloaded.
    • amythewasp, on 03/27/2008, -6/+4For me, Firefox 2 consistently crashes when I follow a link from digg to computerand videogames dot com. Strange, as it the only site that has caused firefox to crash. Anyone else have that problem?
      • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -2/+10Some sites are designed for Internet Exploder....and that's it. You need to grab the IE Tab Extension, it will allow IE to load up in a tab. Therefore if IE crashes you just loose your tab and not your browser experience.

        Don't worry, FF keeps IE on a chain and will not allow harmful apps such as ActiveX, etc to load crap on your system.

        IE: "ACTIVE X... ACTIVE X! ME WANT!!!"
        FF: **yanks on chain** "Heal boy... down IE, Down IE!"
      • CedEx, on 03/27/2008, -0/+0Mine crashes when I'm on gmail for some reason. Not all the time, but on occasion when I switch from one email to the next, it just hangs. Don't know why. Also, it despite having the same extensions at work and at home, it only crashes at work. Don't know why.
      • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1You really shouldn't be loading it within a tab should you? None of your extensions will work on that tab, why not just load IE in its own window? That is the problem is that most people are installing crap exentions, which make no sense, and then complaining. The exention to launch a specific page (as well as set this as the default behavior using regex) has been avaialbe way before IE Tab.
        • Maged, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1If you use IE 6, you get tabs. If you use IE 7, it saves you from loading the UI. Regardless of IE's version, it allows you to keep all your Firefox and IE browsing contained in a single window.
    • piesforyou, on 03/27/2008, -4/+25Wow... FF crashes once in a blue moon for me. Really, hardly ever at all. Once a year on average maybe? But still... I can't wait until june!!
      • TheSpook, on 03/27/2008, -3/+5Agreed Firefox 2 has been rock-solid on all of my machines. FF3b4, however, hasn't faired so well so far (though it's still Beta).
    • stvalentino, on 03/27/2008, -5/+1for me....... since i followed the tips found here http://www.onlineweblibrary.com/blog/?p=312 to increase firefox performance, it works very well with me and can't even think for a substitution!! Enjoy the secrets ;)
    • davidlyness, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1The only time Firefox crashes on me is when I decide to load a page with 20 bazillion java applets. I should know better.

      But still... June? Too long...
    • GrantTLC, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1FF2 didn't crash all that much for me, nor was I particularly bothered about the memory- hogging: I just hated how it 'felt' to use - like wading through treacle compared to Opera or even IE shells like Avant. Plus, I didn't particularly care for having to find extensions that brought the browsing experience up to levels I could get 'out-of-the-box' from other browsers. Why Firefox still doesn't have a native Mouse Gesture capability is beyond me.

      However, If you don't mind the odd crash, the Beta of FF3 is definitely the option to choose now: much quicker in operation than its predecessor and stable enough for everyday use. FF2 users should do themselves a favour and upgrade NOW, never mind waiting for June.
    • colincornaby, on 03/27/2008, -2/+8"but I'll support an open-source browser over IE and Safari to the end." Erm, WebKit is open source... http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/browser
      • SQLserver, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2Webkit != Safari.
        • colincornaby, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2So? Safari is just a window with a few buttons. It's trivial to write a browser with WebKit. It's actually possible to write a WebKit browser with 0 lines of code.
    • theghost99, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I'd have to agree. Firefox2 either crashes on me, or I'm forced to shut it down because of the mass memory leaks that end up taking 1GB of my RAM. I can't wait for A version of Firefox that doesn't leak memory like a 40-year-old faucet leaking water.
      • AlexBellisBrown, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1I have only seen mine as high as 300mb! And im a heavy user, multible tabs and extensions.
  • AppleMacMan, on 03/27/2008, -133/+9Cool, June is right around the corner. I can't wait. I love Firefox 3 beta 4 on my brand new shiny Apple Macintosh MacBook. It supports the native Mac OS X look, lighter, faster and just far better than 2.0!

    HOWEVER

    Safari 3.1 is still the best browser on a Mac. Super fast, snap back, web clippings, sexy UI, less memory consumption, fully integrated into the Mac OS X environment, etc. Life Is Good On A Mac. 
    • jmg703, on 03/27/2008, -16/+70Your Macbook sucks. My Macbook Pro kicks your ass, weak sauce. Find something else to brag about.
    • MixedSpleens, on 03/27/2008, -0/+15Safari is not that great really, I mean its fine, but I still liked firefox better even when 2 was eating my memory and crashing every once and a while. 3b4 is great, its faster cleaner and doesnt play memory munchers, plus it still will have the stuff that makes FF great like extensions. (that are plentiful and don't nickel and dime me to death)
      As for the Mac zealotry, it might have been a necessity in 1998 when Apple had one foot in the grave, but its out dated and it makes one look a bit douchy now. bragging about ones os choice is like bragging about your shampoo choice, no one cares.
      • theaceoffire, on 03/27/2008, -1/+17Dang it, you Pantene Pro-V users always bring that up. Herbal Essences for the victory!
      • PrismSub7, on 03/27/2008, -0/+7I use zwitsal baby shampoo, no need to rape my eyes and it smells nice.
        • insertAliasHere, on 03/27/2008, -0/+11I close my eyes when I wash my hair, but yeah, to each his own. :)
    • matriculated, on 03/27/2008, -1/+14Good going on making people think that Mac users are complete asshats. Do you wear a black mock turtle neck with jeans? You're the reason people aren't moving from Windows to OSX.
      • jwkpiano1, on 03/27/2008, -2/+2Except he's just a douche. People ARE moving to OS X, despite people like him.
    • Bigworrm, on 03/27/2008, -2/+2losers 4 life
    • TheWorm, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1This guy stalks Steve Jobs.
  • mooboy322, on 03/27/2008, -10/+300great, now get my extensions/add-ons to work with it
    • troydoogle7, on 03/27/2008, -4/+23most of the popular ones are already compatible. And the beta is very stable already.
      • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2popular != good
        a lot of the popular ones are irc/ftp clients, which should never be ran within inside FF. thats like opening a gourmet resteraunt inside a departmart store.. why?

        A lot of the good ones are not as well known:
        All-In-One-Gestures
        Customize Menus
        StatusBar Organizer
        etc....

        I can't/won't use FF without those working correctly (and nightlty tester tools != fix)
        • Verdanic, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1Tabmix Plus is totally necessary for me, but thats the only one I find does not work.
    • doshindude, on 03/27/2008, -4/+1080% of them already work, and you can just modify the code for those that don't (e.g., the version compatibility number, make it compatible with 3.0.*)
      • sketec, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Digg this comment up. Does anyone have the time to write a step by step or link to it. I'd like to get mine working.
      • Troy64, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Is there a list 3.0 compatible extension/add-ons. None of mine are working.
      • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1No. "modify the code" ? You mean change the version number. The code needs to be modified so that it can work with FF3 lol, not so that the number is changed.
        • XBSHX, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Nope, most of them work with a simple version change. There are a small number of them that need to actually be updated.
          • PURPLEDRINK, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1yeah, which is kinda what i was saying.
    • sputnike, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4Agreed, I'm supprised at the number of updates for my old FF2 extentions already. I think I only have about three that aren't working just yet.
    • Maestr055, on 03/27/2008, -2/+12you can enable a lot of your extensions/add-ons even if it disables it by default.
      Pull up "about:config" and create a new boolean variable named extensions.checkUpdateSecurity set to FALSE. This will allow the extension to run, but disables a good safety feature.
      Making extensions.checkCompatibility and setting it to false is another trick

      See here: http://lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions- ...
    • notman, on 03/27/2008, -3/+1It's too bad they don't integrate a method to convert your extensions, or make them compatible, so users wouldn't have to rely on the developers to update their extensions (or to do it yourself).
      • troydoogle7, on 03/27/2008, -0/+5its an extension called nightly tester tools, that will let you do what you want above.
      • iofthestorm, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1That would be chaos for the average user.
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2And some of the top rated extensions, have been reviewed and merged as standard options now with FF3b4.

      Such as better control over TABs, downloads, etc.
    • zongamin, on 03/27/2008, -12/+6Nightly tester tools you ***** gimp
      • Okari, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Doesn't work with everything. Tab Mix Plus would never work under it.
  • grumpyrain, on 03/27/2008, -4/+171I don't know what they are waiting for. FF3 is already far more stable than 2. Browsing digg with FF2 just gives my CPU a coronary.
    • ElBeh, on 03/27/2008, -15/+8It's ugly. FF3B5 is mainly focused on improving the looks, that's why it's the last one. All they need to fix is the looks. :)
      • Cupantae, on 03/27/2008, -5/+21If you were using a computer with 128MB RAM and 500MHz processor, you would know that they have fixed a LOT more than the look.
        • ulaelable, on 03/27/2008, -1/+6Celeron FTW!
        • giid, on 03/27/2008, -0/+14I believe Cupantae means the focus from b4 -> b5 was mostly looks, not v3 in general.
        • TheWindBlows, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2chances are if you have 128 MiB of RAM you have windows 98 and can't run FIrefox3 unless you change your OS.
          • mcnearcj, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2You'd be surprised on the amount of computers that come into my shop with a P3 and 128MB with XP on it. Then, the customer's number one complaint is that it's slow as hell.
        • ElBeh, on 03/27/2008, -0/+7FF3 Beta _5_ is focused on changing the look. I'm very well aware of the other aspects the Mozilla team has done a wonderful job in improving for the previous betas. Sorry if I was opaque.
      • str1fe, on 03/27/2008, -4/+3I'm on FF3B4 right now and I happen to love the looks.
    • mGARANDEUR1, on 03/27/2008, -1/+7Yeah I was hesitant to use the new Firefox because it was still in the beta testing phase. It runs so much better than Firefox 2. Although my plug ins don't work.
    • knight666, on 03/27/2008, -1/+33Although I do have a weird issue with Digg on Firefox 3 beta 4: the pages never stop loading!
      • troye, on 03/27/2008, -1/+18Yeah whats up with that?

        I'm sort of compulsive about neatness, so I hit the STOP button so I would not see the page loading all the time.
      • chilipeppers4u, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2and some of the functions, like the "share" function, don't work until after I hit stop
      • acidandspatter, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2I've got the same. I presumed it was some ajax request that wasn't responding however Firebug said it wasn't and everything had loaded.
        *shrugs*
      • grumpyrain, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1Weird, that doesn't happen to me.
        (XP SP2 or Vista / FF3B4 with ABP + NoScript)
        Maybe it is a plugin?
      • faralen, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3I used to have that problem, but it stopped after I told NoScript to stop loading things from msn.com. It's probably an ad or something, but the connection would never close. I've lost no functionality at all with Digg.
      • Darkhacker, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3Block the item "ads1.msn.com/library/dap.js" in AdBlock.

        If you are using the EasyList subscription, it's listed as an exception (with @@ in front). Scroll down in EasyList until you find the entry and then disable it.

        This will fix the never-ending loading issue on Digg.
        • grumpyrain, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1That would be why I hadn't noticed it.
    • gritta, on 03/27/2008, -3/+41Digg is just coded awful, it's the only website I have issues with in BOTH FF2 and FF3.
      • KMartSheriff, on 03/27/2008, -4/+3It works fine with Safari.
      • Dongvid, on 03/27/2008, -8/+3also Opera. It kills me to see people using FF over Opera when they don't use any extensions.
      • diggrim, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Digg's Javascript kills my 400Mhz Web Tablet (running FF), I have to disable Javascript
      • faralen, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1http://ads1.msn.com/library/dap.js

        This is the script causing the problem, linked from every page. You'll note that it's from Microsoft. I've never had any problems with Digg on Firefox, and that's not a counter-statement that's just based on wild speculation.
    • ziptnf, on 03/27/2008, -4/+2FF3B4 crashes constantly. Maybe it's an XP thing, because it doesn't happen on Vista at all.
      • zwaldowski, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2It crashes for me on the right combination of tabs... it's a beta thing.
      • diggrim, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2never had a crash for me...make sure all your patches are installed (I used XP)
      • faralen, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I think it's just a Windows thing. I've never seen it crash yet.
      • arnoldisawesome, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Same here. Been using it a lot and it's only crashed once. (As far as I remember.)
    • Providence, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I don't know about that. It's very unstable with secured http. Logging in/out of certain secure websites is just like asking for a crash. And the continuous page loading on certain sites is annoying. I hope they fix these bugs.
    • Nudar, on 03/27/2008, -0/+5FF3 is my favorite game of all time. Go Locke! Wait. Is this the right thread?
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
      FF3 Beta 4 is rock solid. Haven't had any bugs or incompatible plugins.
    • reazal, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1As long as I am aware, Javascript execution in my Firefox 2 running in Ubuntu is far more worse than in XP. I always get browser freeze in Digg and YouTube. No-script and Adblock Plus add-ons keep the troubles at bay.
  • sputnike, on 03/27/2008, -1/+84I'm already using it, and I think it's great. Firefox two, although I used it, was a memory hog and crashed a little. Not once have I had Firefox 3 crash yet, and the memory usage is low. Thank you Mozilla for yet another great piece of software!
    • aajjcckk, on 03/27/2008, -11/+5Anyone who still uses IE is a lunatic. Down with Micro$$$oft's ***** software.
    • puppycoloda, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2ha i manage to crash everything. Crashed FF3 many times already. But each of those occurrences were on my sluggish computer.
    • daebat, on 03/27/2008, -2/+2i don't know what the hell you are talking about. I have been using FF2 non stop since its introduction and it's crashed less than 10 times. HOWEVER every time it has crashed it asks if I want to restore the page and within a couple seconds you're back to the same browsing you were doing before the crash. I think you are an idiot my friend. an idiot.
  • Bara, on 03/27/2008, -1/+15Anybody know if Google's Browser Sync works properly in Firefox 3? That's the only reason why I haven't upgraded yet.
  • batista86, on 03/27/2008, -11/+5I'd hit it.....
  • astrosmash, on 03/27/2008, -13/+4Unfortunately, the OS X version still has some serious performance issues and no smooth two-finger trackpad scrolling, which is a deal breaker for me.

    The wallstreetjournal.com site is a perfect example. Scrolling is very slow, especially with track-pad scrolling. What's worse, scrolling events are queued faster than Firefox can process them, which causes the window to continue to scroll long after you've stopped. This is a result of their move to the Cairo graphics library, and the migration from Carbon to Cocoa. A major rewrite that was necessary and will be good in the long run, but Firefox 2.0 didn't have these problems.
    • MixedSpleens, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3Personally I am getting gobs better performance on OSX, so your mileage may vary.
      as for the WSJ site I think they must be running some irresponsibly porky javascript, as if I go to the site with JS on it does exactly what you say, but with it off scrolling is fine
      • astrosmash, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1That was just an example. The problem happens on a number of sites.

        If you have to display Javascript to view a major web site like the Wall Street Journal there is a serious problem.
    • mcnasby, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1I'm having no issues with my version of FF3 for OSX (10.5.2). It's actually much faster than FF2. In addition to the browser being much snappier, the two-finger bi-directional trackpad scrolling moves like butta!
      • astrosmash, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1That's another issue: horizontal scrolling is messed up. it scrolls page by page.

        And like I said, no smooth pixel-level scrolling in Firefox like you get in other OS X apps (including Safari).
  • ardnut, on 03/27/2008, -0/+148With the latest Firefox 3 beta 4 does any one else have it where any page you visit on digg finishes rendering but then just sits there forever loading with "Transferring data from digg.com" in the status bar?
    • astrosmash, on 03/27/2008, -1/+26Yes. That's a bug.
    • uziko, on 03/27/2008, -7/+24yes i read that it's microsofts faul, it is very annoying
      • KaiSe7eN, on 03/27/2008, -4/+18Everything is Microsoft's fault.
      • secleinteer, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2sho' is, who else could've done it? surely not the mozilla dev's!
      • Tishiablo, on 03/29/2008, -0/+1lol?
    • bxblox, on 03/27/2008, -0/+11Yeah, I find myself pressing escape every time it happens to avoid having to see that.
    • Slapo, on 03/27/2008, -10/+1It doesn't with my install Firefox 3 beta 4 at all.
    • misterpony, on 03/27/2008, -0/+36Yes, I have the same thing here...and someone reported it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40356 ...
    • renegadeafk, on 03/27/2008, -1/+27You get get around it by using noscipt and forbidding msn.com. I got around it in opera by adding something to the add filter, but the same doesn't work in adblock plus for some reason.

      the reason is a bug in the msn ad scipt that has detects firefox 2 correctly but not 3
      • BlueSkyfish, on 03/27/2008, -0/+16I'm running Linux with Firefox and Microsoft still somehow finds a way to ***** up my web browsing.
    • tylerbauman, on 03/27/2008, -6/+1Never really noticed that before, meh. It's not like it's going to kill my system... ?
    • PowerInside, on 03/27/2008, -10/+2This is not a place to talk about troubleshooting..
      • ligyron, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Right. Only discuss things here that pertain to improving the quality of the article...
    • Brad87, on 03/27/2008, -2/+0Yes, it's happening to me too.
    • vanguardanon, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1That issue and the fact that it sometimes totally fails to load google mail is the reason I just switched to safari. I'll give firefox another try when it comes out but safari seems pretty cool so far. I've been testing it against the new firefox on my favorite sites (mostly phpbb forums) and it's a lot faster.
    • antijoy, on 03/27/2008, -6/+1Firefox 2 does the same thing.
    • Magnus150, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Yeah I have it, it buggers me. A lot.
  • slovencek, on 03/27/2008, -16/+1IE 8 rules ......... NOOT
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2Yep... It rules your Windows box, preventing you from making a choice to a better browser experience...it rules the corporate world making them think "duh there is only one browser....and we must use it...yeah, yeah".
  • WomensUnderwear, on 03/27/2008, -28/+0evil bloatware
    • oblique63, on 03/27/2008, -2/+12so is your mom
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Read the facts before you just blurb out "bloatware".... do you know what bloatware is even?
    • troye, on 03/27/2008, -0/+5These are his past comments. Just so you know, he is in fact a troll. He makes negative comments about anything-and-everything to illicit a response. Do not pay attention to this idiot. You've all been warned.

      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      how ironic that the official Apple browser is such a badly designed piece of crap. From the ultra-dated 'brushed metal' theme to the horrendous drop shadow abuse it is a parade of disasters, culminating in the piece de resistance - spectacularly idiotic f …

      i am literally sick and tired of people bashing me on the internet

      then maybe it's time to stop playing games and move on with your life. get a copy of MS Money, buy a suit and get with the program. Oh and ebay that Iron Man figure.

      Quicktime on windows is down there with RealPlayer as the most horrific piece of malfunctioning crapware that ever infected a Windows install. iTunes is not far behind, a monstrously laggy, leaky, overblown piece of fluff designed to reassure only the mos …
  • Padmavirtual, on 03/27/2008, -2/+9I am already using this.It's wonderful.Thank you Mozilla for yet another great piece of software!
  • uziko, on 03/27/2008, -1/+6That long? I thought for sure it would be released in april.
    • troye, on 03/27/2008, -0/+4You're not the only one who can't stand the wait.
    • Dhalgren, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1My guess is that they are announcing it now far enough out to give extension programmers time to modify their extensions. It also puts a deadline date on a calendar for them to aim for.
      • mj3clark, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1isn't an earlier date better for extension devels?? I know in other projects I follow, that plugins don't really start getting updated until the final version is out.
  • zoomtechtv, on 03/27/2008, -3/+55Gamestop is taking Preorders for five dollars down for Firefox 3. LOL
    • DannyBoy83, on 03/27/2008, -0/+14Gamestop called me last night asking me to trade in my FF preorder.
    • MethodOne, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1Is Firefox 3 a remake of the Firefox arcade game, or is it something else based on the Craig Thomas book or Clint Eastwood movie of the same name?
    • identitymatrix, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2I bought Firefox 3 at Best Buy. They gave me a wicked deal on their 5-year extended warranty plan.
    • Ezxen, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1You know Its odd but i have not bin so exited for a sowftwere release date in forever . I have not felt this way since I hear twilight princess was suppose to be released in November of 06
  • neojinge, on 03/27/2008, -4/+5HOT DIGGITY!

    Looking forward to some quality memory management
  • craigcochrane, on 03/27/2008, -4/+1Does it work with many addons? Especially the Google Browser Sync?
  • doshindude, on 03/27/2008, -2/+5FF3 is so much of an improvement from FF2...especially when it comes to digg browsing...everything loads so much faster.
    And when you use the "config.trim_on_minimize" hack, it brings the memory usage down to 1MB when minimized!
  • RyanHCO, on 03/27/2008, -1/+10I don't have many issues with my existing Firefox 2. Even browsing Digg is fine; I rarely crash unless I open tons of tabs on a Monday after not Digging all weekend.

    That said, I tried out version 3 and do not like that it integrates the "favorites" into the address bar. I prefer to have mine cleaned out and, yes, empty of "evidence."
    • Lazydriver, on 03/27/2008, -0/+4That's in any Firefox, there's always a bookmark bar.

      Just remove it..


      Oh... I see now, yeah, but I fail to see why the other people who use the computer do not already use bookmarks. So hide em somewhere else, like the inbox of your mail account in the drafts area ;-).
  • empfeix, on 03/27/2008, -9/+4I use Opera.
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -2/+1Okay, so they are not using Firefox.... but at least they made the choice rather then being the mindless zombies that think IE is the "only" browser on earth.
  • mikefitz2, on 03/27/2008, -5/+53LOL, where exactly does an open source web browser 'ship' to?
    • Lick, on 03/27/2008, -2/+2Good point. XD
    • swAppp, on 03/27/2008, -0/+9ships into the world wide web prob.
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -0/+5Ships off to FTP servers or download sites (Download.com, Major Geeks, etc).
    • troye, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2The end-user?
    • tektalk, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1It will ship to everyone who wishes to upgrade their current version of firefox, or everyone who wants a great open source browser, and have not switched to firefox yet.
    • KMartSheriff, on 03/27/2008, -0/+13Big trucks.
      • Dawggoneit, on 03/27/2008, -0/+5Umm.. excuse me, but the internet is not just a big dump truck, it's a series of tubes. Get your facts straight mister!
    • TygerTyger, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2That was my first thought too.
  • Krettis, on 03/27/2008, -1/+58 giant tankers waiting in the harbour for firefox.
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3That would be nice to see... the Mozilla logo all over the ships, trains, planes and trucks of the world....
  • jm4847, on 03/27/2008, -9/+3What's taking them so ***** long?
  • rdjurovich, on 03/27/2008, -2/+11Does this mean Ubuntu will be 8.04 with Firefox beta or 8.06 with Firefox stable?
    • allyant, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4Most likely Firefox stable.
    • yetAnotherCroc, on 03/27/2008, -0/+6Probably release 8.04 with beta/rc and then upgrade to stable (Firefox is one of the few apps that they actually upgrade between releases)
    • mggs, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2It will launch with the beta, and then update to final version when it's out.
  • gibex, on 03/27/2008, -9/+2great, maybe they solve these memory leaks
  • dcmcderm, on 03/27/2008, -3/+0One of the reasons I use Firefox over Safari is the stumbleupon plug-in...I suppose I should test it out on FF 3 or I might not be able to waste so much time at work after I upgrade...
  • Sal4, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4I still want some slightly better OSX performance out of the final version, as well as fixing some graphic bugs. For instance on the bookmarks toolbar if you hover over links, the highlight isn't a perfect rounded rectangle, it has little devil's ears at the bottom on the left and right sides, kind of annoying.

    Besides that, Beta 4 hasn't been as stable for me as Beta 3. Beta 3 never crashed for me once when I used it, Beta 4 crashes at least once a day. Also, they need to fix the downloads window not closing automatically after it finishes downloading, it'll just sit there empty, and won't close until you click it, it'll then disappear. Kind of weird.

    Either way, still a great browser though, way better than anything else out there.

    (Though I'm not sure what the point of the bookmarks tagging is? I haven't found a use for it myself)
    • theaceoffire, on 03/27/2008, -0/+4Bookmark tagging allows the built in database to return more meaningful results.
      For example, you can tag a page "download, browser, firefox" and create a custom bookmark search on your bookmark bar that show all bookmarks tagged "download", or all tagged "firefox".
      Its sort of like gmail's tagging instead of folders idea.
  • mikehill33, on 03/27/2008, -13/+5Firefox is like iTunes. Sitting on the fence of good software and bloating up beyond usefulness. Code bloat! Avoid it!
    • theaceoffire, on 03/27/2008, -1/+6Dude, I don't know how to begin to tell you how wrong you are.
      This version is smaller (Both in memory use and load time), it has garbage collection, and it is stable.
      Firefox 3 is so good that it is competing with Firefox 1.
      Please read about a topic before basing the subject.
    • astrotrain, on 03/27/2008, -4/+2Did someone slip some wacky weed in your Wheaties this morning!?

      iTunes is owned by Apple, it comes packed full of bloatware (Qucktime, Apple Updater, etc) to make your box run slower then normal.

      Firefox comes slim, and it allows the users to make the choice what to add to it. So there is noway you
      can stated Firefox is bloating up. You want bloating up then go see Microsoft's HTML coding, after seeing
      how much junk they add to a "Hello World" HTML document, you'll see the true meaning of bloat coding.
      • luchid, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3I'm sorry but your comment on iTunes is full of crap. First of all itunes was not made to "make your box run slower then normal" [sic]. Mainly because it would be stupid for Apple to make it that way intentionally. Apple updater and Quicktime aren't background services, so when they're not in use they aren't consuming any resources.
        • Katnap, on 03/27/2008, -3/+0They load on startup and most definitely do use resources.
          • KMartSheriff, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2You mean the iPod service? Yeah that's so resource intensive *rolls eyes*
          • Katnap, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1No I mean the Quicktime service, it loads on startup, and is a background service.
  • serpicolugnut, on 03/27/2008, -2/+4Firefox 3 on the Mac is a step in the right direction. Especially with the GrApple theme, which makes it look very close to Safari. That said, I still prefer Safari because it's faster, has better CSS3 support (text shadow, for instance), a better bookmark manager, better Keychain support, and with 3.1, a built-in Inspector and Web developer helpers like Network Timeline, etc. Yeah, I know about Firebug. It's nice, but it's an extension, and adding extensions in Firefox is trade-off with stability and memory footprint.

    I still pull for Firefox though. As a completely open source project, it's in all of our interests to support its development and adoption.Death to IE!
  • cadmiumpaint, on 03/27/2008, -9/+4I'm running OSX and firefox is completely uselesss to me. Slow, crashy and I hate the firefox interface. There's not much about it that I like. I wonder if it has to do with my unfamiliarity with it, or if its got design issues? To each their own, I just don't get what the big deal is.
    • gandell, on 03/27/2008, -0/+4I would have agreed with you on FF2. I used it for a while, then moved to Safari due to the issues you mentioned. But FF3 has made me move right back to Mozilla and away from Safari.
      • cadmiumpaint, on 03/28/2008, -0/+1i still don't like its interface. i'm just used to safari and how it works.
  • aajjcckk, on 03/27/2008, -12/+4Death to Internet Explorer! (and Micro$oft)
    • LightSpeed4, on 03/27/2008, -6/+0right, 10% marketshare of firefox, im sure ms is scared.
    • BerryZilla, on 03/27/2008, -2/+4What are you, 12?
  • ThirdPrize, on 03/27/2008, -6/+1Time to start thinking of an animal whose name begins with "I" for the next releases code name.
    • akkibaba, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4That's Ubuntu, and it's already been done : Intrepid Ibex 8.10
    • srodolff, on 03/27/2008, -1/+1Iguana.......Now THAT'S a browser!
  • Wiinii, on 03/27/2008, -9/+1I just wish FireFox had a page zoom similar to IE and Wii. It works really well in IE on my 1080p TV, zooms everything properly. This is the one thing that IE has over FireFox. (yes I know about the page zoom add-on, it sucks and has not been updated in ages)
  • HorseloverFat8, on 03/27/2008, -1/+3I've been pretty happy with Beta 4, so bring on the final release!
  • ilves7, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2I downloaded FF3 Beta... everything works great, except for my university wireless needs a login/password along with a security certificate, which for some reason the beta doesn't like. Tells me its a security risk and the 'add exception' button doesn't work... hopefully its fixed in the final product. Currently I have to log onto the wireless through IE and then start up FF after I've already logging into the network.
  • hanief84, on 03/27/2008, -1/+5That's gonna be long to wait. So Ubuntu Hardy Heron gonna be released with Firefox 3 Beta maybe?
    • akkibaba, on 03/27/2008, -1/+3I'm running Hardy Heron beta, and it comes with FF3beta 4. The final release of Hardy in late April will have whatever is the latest version of FF available. Apt will update to the final release when it's available in June.
  • sremick, on 03/27/2008, -4/+2Ok, so they have have 3 months now to make it not look like crap on XP.

    While I don't use XP as my main desktop OS, most of my customers do. FF2 looks beautiful, FF3 looks horrendous. As superficial as it is, appearance is going to be a big barrier to entry when it comes to converting people off IE.
    • gandell, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2Now I don't know about XP, but I disagree completely on the Mac side. I hate the looks of FF2...looks like it doesn't belong on the OS, but FF3's theme actually seems to fit the mac quite well.
  • amenic, on 03/27/2008, -6/+3Sweet. Where is it shipping to? The front page of Mozilla.org?

    • ligyron, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2No, the front page of Digg...trust me on that one
  • zl0t, on 03/27/2008, -4/+2Nice, but the Beta still got some bugs.
    I hope they fix everything...
  • Crazymaniacc, on 03/27/2008, -4/+3shipping? I want to see that Mozilla boat!
  • mcnasby, on 03/27/2008, -0/+2I've been using FF3 on my Mac for about a week now. It's actually pretty solid. Besides minor issues with Flash (which can probably be attributed to ABP), it hasn't even crashed on me. IMO the redesigned bookmarks element is insanely better than on any other browser out there. Smart bookmarks and embedded tagging is where it's at!
  • TheProfessional, on 03/27/2008, -5/+1Does it still have the hideous beta 3 theme?
  • tom2275, on 03/27/2008, -2/+9Shipping? What, across the tubes?
    • felix21685, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2i was wondering about that too! Would be interesting to get a retail box of firefox.
  • Agreb91, on 03/27/2008, -2/+1I can't wait for it. The betas work real nice so I think the final will be even better.
  • ChanM, on 03/27/2008, -1/+3Wow just installed Beta4 of Firefox 3.0 and the performance is already noticeable. Currently using a P3 500mhz 256 ram PC with firefox 2.0 browsing digg was sluggish. With 3.0 browsing is alot smoother.
  • Smlymn707, on 03/27/2008, -1/+0Thank goodness I thought I'd be using this beta forever, not that the beta doesn't work great i love it, its just weird having no add-ons any more. I also hope they'll have added a few more features.
  • BaByB0y, on 03/27/2008, -7/+2I'll stick with Maxthon 2 . I'm in love with it :p
    • TheWindBlows, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2Maxthon is just a UI for internet explorer core engine. Meaning it's not w3c compliant. If Maxthon went ahead and used the Gecko rendering engine or WebKit it would be more respected.
    • soopafly, on 03/27/2008, -1/+4Non web developers really don't care if a browser's w3c compliant.
  • felix21685, on 03/27/2008, -1/+2as long as they remove the stupid IE7 looking buttons.
  • srodolff, on 03/27/2008, -7/+2Ships!?! How many of you had FF "shipped" to you? More like will be available for download.
    • mm911, on 03/27/2008, -0/+3UPS is thrilled to begin shipping things that cannot be shipped.
  • satoriii, on 03/27/2008, -0/+1ship it crucial!
  • Soulglow, on 03/27/2008, -2/+1For those that don't know, Web Developer Tools is finally compatible with Firefox 3. It was the one thing that kept me from installing it. I'm using the OSX version.
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