"While Firefox 2 used less memory than it's predecessor, Firefox 1.5, we intentionally restricted the number of changes to the Gecko platform (Gecko 1.8.1 was only slightly different than Gecko 1.8) on which Firefox was built. However, while the majority of people were working on Firefox 2/Gecko 1.8.1, others of us were already ripping into the platform that Firefox 3 was to be built on: Gecko 1.9. We've made more significant changes to the platform than I can count, including many to reduce our memory footprint. The result has been dramatic."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-07-16
I've been using the nightly builds for about three months now, and I've only had it crash on me once...so you may want to give it a second chance.
From my experience, it definitely feels faster, the improvements in rendering are nice, and the new location bar makes it superior to any other browser. I love being able to type part of the title of a page (when that isn't even part of the URI) and have it pull up matching pages. With sites like OS News that have /story/#-style URIs, it's invaluable.
They need to add a grammar-checker for Thom, though, to catch that "it's" (a contraction of "it is" -- before "predecessor") should be "its" (possessive form of it). 
One thing to note, though: I had to edit the install.rdf file for AdBlock (by default, it isn't set to work with 3.0.*, but you can tell it that it's compatible by editing this file). Long use of Firefox + AdBlock has made it my one cannot-live-without extension.
Should you want to hack AdBlock (or any other extension that will work, but isn't developer-approved for Firefox 3), you can find the install.rdf here:
firefox_profile_dir/extensions/{########-####-####-####-############}/ install.rdf
And you're looking for a block of XML like:
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{########-####-####-####-############}< ;/em:id>
<em:minVersion>1.5</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>
You want to make the maxVersion look like my example.
Note: {########-####-####-####-############} indicates that each # is a random hex value. If you're not sure where to find your Firefox profile, see:
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles
EDIT: alternate HTML characters worked in the preview, but not in the post...and my em-dash is apparently encoded incorrectly, despite Firefox using UTF-8 and the page using UTF-8... o.O;
Edited 2008-03-14 04:45 UTC
Member since:2006-01-23
From my experience, it definitely feels faster, the improvements in rendering are nice, and the new location bar makes it superior to any other browser. I love being able to type part of the title of a page (when that isn't even part of the URI) and have it pull up matching pages. With sites like OS News that have /story/#-style URIs, it's invaluable.
...
I've had a similar experience both on Mac OS X and Windows. I'm a bit annoyed with the new "keyhole" look and functionality of the backward and forward buttons and list, but they work. The Mac OS X version retains the list on the buttons, which is extremely convenient but definitely not quite right. Speed is excellent and rendering is better than I had expected, though the improvements are of a lesser degree on Windows than on Mac OS X.
I tried beta 4 (not 3.0b5pre) the other day as my Firefox 2.0 replacement and I've got to say that it was horribly buggy for me, in contrast to the nightly builds. After a short time, it failed to respond to the keyboard or mouse and reminded me of a very early Firefox 1.x. It went away very quickly. Hopefully, beta 5 will be more usable for me.
Member since:2006-02-21
Been using Swiftfox (http://getswiftfox.com/) on my Ubuntu for weeks ("Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox" for Linux, based on FF 3.0 for a while now), very usable and much better looking on Gnome than 2.0
Member since:
2005-12-15
I tried the first beta but it kept crashing every time I tried to 'right-click and fix' a badly spelt word with the British dictionary.
Burnt me a bit, unless you can convince me it's more stable now?