I am posting it in Firefox beta 3 and it seems to be much faster than Firefox 2.

Im currently using it, cant say I notice much if a speed increase, but I will have to use it for a while to really notice.

If anyone knows how to get it working in Ubuntu I kind of want to know.

Hmm, can't say I see too much of a difference and it still refuses to display my gmail mailbox correctly unless I use "/?nocheckbrowser" thing. Also none of my plugins from FF2 are compatible with this, so I think I'll pass it for now

This post was last modified: 11-20-2007 12:24 PM by galson.

How's the memory usage on it?

""How's the memory usage on it?""
Not all that different. Scripting seems a LITTLE faster, but still nearly as slow as IE's. The difference in scripting speed with Opera's was not only considerable, but the latter is even increasing the gap significantly. The memory hogging "bug" in FF is still there, so FF3 is still likely to squat 150 megs of ram quickly enough. Cold start didnt get improved apparently, and the continued absence of a preloader for the FF engine is still as puzzling as before.

""none of my plugins from FF2 are compatible with this""
Theyre artificially set with a limit on wich max version to work with . Once these extensions are tested with FF3 and verified NOT to be troublesome, the number will get bumped. You can also up it yourself, so that they work anyway.
in each extension there's something like this. this specific extension would work in 3.0 alpha 1 but not alpha 2 or any earlier version than 1.5 (makes sense for 1.5, extension framework endured significant change), for example:
<em:minVersion>1.5</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>3.0a1</em:maxVersion>

Hmm.. haven't noticed much difference in performance over the past week or so. Cold start seems marginally slower, I've had a few bugs, only a few of my plugins work, and all for some minor changes? (to my eyes anyway). For a major version, I'm not impressed (but then again, I've never seen *any* changes to the eye in the minor versions).

Though it's definitely improvement over FF2, not in the performance book though, i've already caught it using 130MB today during a JAVA induced crash Atm, it's using about 40MB. Not that memory usage matters to me, I have 2GB of memory...
Despite this being a beta, I doubt it's performance will turn around. Maybe Firefox 4 will be worse than IE7?

But Firefox is still my favourite browser for many reasons. Mainly for it's customization, the fact that it does everything I want it to, it's interface is nicely structured and it works.

java needs an update then. using older java and flash versions in betas is asking for crashes
the big issue is that not only the requirements MUST decrease, the execution speed of the regular everyday task MUST also increase from what it is now, NOT decrease. If FF3 is slower than FF2, I wouldnt care about the reduced memory usage or cpu consumption, there are enough way to bring that down without sacrificing speed and efficiency

Firefox beta 3 is out, I just got the update a few minutes ago.
The memory usage has decreased quite a bit, and they've changed the interface a little - the home button has moved to the bookmarks toolbar by default, next to "Smart Bookmarks" and the stock icons have changed (note the back and forward buttons, which operate in a similar way to IE7).
Other than that, there's a few minor changes. You can find a full list on the change log.

cold start times have not improved apparently (20 seconds?? reduced memory consumption isnt much of an "improvement" then), so bummer for those frequently opening locally-stored html files... Opera still wins (3~4 seconds even for big htmls)...

This post was last modified: 02-14-2008 05:29 PM by Hard Core Rikki.