Firefox 3 is out! Thinking in Russian not required

GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
edited September 2008 in Games and Technology
Firefox 3 has been released!

To commemorate the big release they've done a bit of victory robot artwork, because as we all know. Nothing is complete until you've got a stonking big picture of a robot.

The robot in question:

fx3victory.jpg

You can download Firefox 3 direct from Mozilla's website, alternately you can simply download from one of the direct download links below.

Download links:

Windows:

American English Alternate link
British English (real English) Alternate link

Mac OS X:

American English Alternate link
British English (real English) Alternate link

Leenucks:

American English Alternate link
British English (real English) Alternate link

So ladies and gentlemen; engage your downloader-trons.


Essential/Useful Add-ons:


Adblock Plus
Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.


NoScript
The best security you can get in a web browser! Allow JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from sites you trust.


Video DownloadHelper
The easy way to download Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.


Greasemonkey (Greasemonkey scripts)
Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.


Vista specific add-on:

Glasser (Direct download)
Adds the Windows Vista glass frame to Firefox toolbars.

It's best shown in an image:

fx3-glasser2.jpg


Vista native look guide: (click spoiler tag)


You will need the following: Glasser (add-on), Glasser Extras, Stylish (add-on), hide menubar (add-on) and Windows Vista.

1. Install glasser by dragging and dropping the downloaded glasser.xpi file onto an open Add-ons window.
2. Decompress the glasser extras file to wherever you like, these are just simple CSS text files.
3. Install stylish as you would any normal add-on.
4. Install hide menubar as you would any normal add-on. (this is purely optional if you want to hide the menubar)
5. Now go into the add-ons window (if you have installed hide menubar you can show it by pressing the ALT key) and select options or double click on stylish.
6. Click on the Write... button. Now open for example "Vista Personal Bar - Media Player.css" in notepad, select all the text and copy it then paste that text in the text window portion of the Add Style window.

For example:

stylish2.png

7. Save the style and make sure your selected style is the only one ticked.

stylish.png

You should now find you have a very Vista native looking Firefox!

The different CSS files give you different colour schemes depending upon how you wish Firefox to look.


What's new?

A major overhaul of the engine, we're talking massive speed improvements and a much better use of memory.

Firefox 3 now uses Gecko 1.9, offering support for lots of fancy new web standards. It now passes ACID 2 with flying colours. Alas Acid 3 is not yet there, Acid 3 came about late into Firefox 3's development.

What what will people likely see as the big changes?
  • Page zoom, not only can you increase/decrease page font sizes but now you do it for the entire page too!
  • Download manager, the download manager now enables you to search among other things.
  • New bookmarks system with a SQLite backend
  • The awesome bar, words cannot describe how useful this is. If you type it, they will come...
awesomebar.png

Awesome bar in action idea courtesy of JAEF, stolen by me.

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«13456715

Posts

  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited June 2008
    Have they finally fixed the godforsaken memory bug?

    FyreWulff on
  • SzechuanosaurusSzechuanosaurus Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited June 2008
    Oh damn, I'm buying this on day one.

    Szechuanosaurus on
  • KhavallKhavall British ColumbiaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    Have they finally fixed the godforsaken memory bug?

    They claim that they've improved memory problems...


    so maybe?

    Khavall on
  • KlykaKlyka DO you have any SPARE BATTERIES?Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    They improved the problems? They should fix them!

    Klyka on
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  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I'm currently running Fx3 RC3 on Vista x64 and it's eating up 120MB of RAM. However, I have got two windows open with a metric tonne of tabs open.

    Considering this machine has 4GB of RAM in it, I think i'll be ok.

    I think all of the main memory issues in the past have been due to poorly done addons/extensions. Also, from what I hear fixing memory leaks etc was a big priority in Fx3.

    GrimReaper on
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  • Sharp101Sharp101 TorontoRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I'll leave Firefox running at work overnight with a couple tabs open. By noon the next day, I'll wonder why my machine is running slow, check the processes and remember that Firefox's memory leaks cause it to use over 500mbs of RAM.

    I mean, I just have to restart Firefox to fix it.... but it's annoying.

    Sharp101 on
  • theSquidtheSquid Sydney, AustraliaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    That's what they've apparently fixed.

    I mean, who cares how much memory it really takes up in this day and age, so long as its not ridiculous and its not arbitrarily increasing over time. As far as software design goes, that is a Good Thing.

    theSquid on
  • IcemopperIcemopper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Sharp101 wrote: »
    I'll leave Firefox running at work overnight with a couple tabs open. By noon the next day, I'll wonder why my machine is running slow, check the processes and remember that Firefox's memory leaks cause it to use over 500mbs of RAM.

    I mean, I just have to restart Firefox to fix it.... but it's annoying.

    If you're leaving it open so you don't forget about different tabs you have open, there is a way on Firefox 3 to save what is open and return to it later, so you can close it in between.

    Icemopper on
  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Icemopper wrote: »
    Sharp101 wrote: »
    I'll leave Firefox running at work overnight with a couple tabs open. By noon the next day, I'll wonder why my machine is running slow, check the processes and remember that Firefox's memory leaks cause it to use over 500mbs of RAM.

    I mean, I just have to restart Firefox to fix it.... but it's annoying.

    If you're leaving it open so you don't forget about different tabs you have open, there is a way on Firefox 3 to save what is open and return to it later, so you can close it in between.

    Yep, it's called Show my windows and tabs from last time.

    fx3-show.png

    GrimReaper on
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  • Fort1tudeFort1tude Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    that will save me from ending the process in Process Explorer so it will ask me to restore session when I restart firefox

    Fort1tude on
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  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    There's also an option when you close a window with multiple tabs that prompts: Would you like to quit, or save tabs and reopen them when you start firefox?

    ArcSyn on
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  • TurkeyTurkey So, Usoop. TampaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Will it still scan every single file for viruses?

    Turkey on
  • RonenRonen Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I know it was planned a while ago but are they finally going to stop being idiots regarding corporate distribution and provide a .msi packaged installer? I can't find it in the release notes anywhere.

    Ronen on
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  • NailbunnyPDNailbunnyPD Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Sharp101 wrote: »
    I'll leave Firefox running at work overnight with a couple tabs open. By noon the next day, I'll wonder why my machine is running slow, check the processes and remember that Firefox's memory leaks cause it to use over 500mbs of RAM.

    I mean, I just have to restart Firefox to fix it.... but it's annoying.

    To contrast, I leave Firefox running on my home computer with at least 10 tabs open for days on end, and it only ever peaks at 180MB of RAM.

    NailbunnyPD on
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  • NailbunnyPDNailbunnyPD Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Fort1tude wrote: »
    that will save me from ending the process in Process Explorer so it will ask me to restore session when I restart firefox

    With some simple searching you could have discovered the session manager in the TMP addon, or found the addon that specifically does this for you. But you may as well wait for v3 now.

    NailbunnyPD on
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  • brynstarbrynstar Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I've been using Firefox 3 since Beta 1, and the memory usage is much improved over Firefox 2 though still not perfect. Glad to hear the final release is next week, looking forward to it. I really like the location bar.

    brynstar on
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  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    brynstar wrote: »
    I've been using Firefox 3 since Beta 1, and the memory usage is much improved over Firefox 2 though still not perfect. Glad to hear the final release is next week, looking forward to it. I really like the location bar.

    At first I was kind of expecting to hate the new location bar but I see what they meant when they referred to it as the awesome bar. It's actually really, really good.

    GrimReaper on
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  • GanluanGanluan Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    GrimReaper wrote: »
    brynstar wrote: »
    I've been using Firefox 3 since Beta 1, and the memory usage is much improved over Firefox 2 though still not perfect. Glad to hear the final release is next week, looking forward to it. I really like the location bar.

    At first I was kind of expecting to hate the new location bar but I see what they meant when they referred to it as the awesome bar. It's actually really, really good.

    I have to say at first use I don't like it. I preferred the previous functionality that would keep a list of URLs I had typed in specifically to visit; I don't like how as soon as I open FF it has a bunch of my bookmarks in the list. Maybe I need to get used to it or something, but for now I just set it to zero so nothing's in there at all. I wish there was a happy medium :|

    Ganluan on
  • TubaFrogTubaFrog Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    brynstar wrote: »
    I've been using Firefox 3 since Beta 1, and the memory usage is much improved over Firefox 2 though still not perfect. Glad to hear the final release is next week, looking forward to it. I really like the location bar.

    Same experience here with the betas. No more restarting Firefox every day or so.

    Better memory-management was the only thing I was really interested in. The minor interface changes bugged me a little bit but I guess I've gotten used to them already. I'm looking forward to the final release to get my add-ons and themes back and start tweaking things to get them back to the way they were before.

    TubaFrog on
  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    It should be mentioned that the performance has gotten a very nice boost, sites like digg are now actually usable whilst loading a page with lots of comments.

    GrimReaper on
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  • GanluanGanluan Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    GrimReaper wrote: »
    It should be mentioned that the performance has gotten a very nice boost, sites like digg are now actually usable whilst loading a page with lots of comments.

    I've noticed gmail and SharePoint (of all things) loading significantly faster.

    Ganluan on
  • Recoil42Recoil42 Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Yes, the memory problems are fixed. They patched up the memory leaks, and are using a whole new memory allocator, actually the one FreeBSD uses, called Jemalloc.

    Also, there's a huge performance boost, as GrimReaper mentioned, mostly in the area of javascript, they're using a whole new JS engine that's waaaay faster. You'll notice this mostly in complex, JS heavy sites like Gmail, Google Docs, Digg, etc.... basically anything really dynamic and AJAXy.

    sunspider_may08.jpg

    Webkit will become faster again in no time, thanks to SquirrelFish, but for now, FF3 is pretty much the fastest browser in the world.

    There's also all kinds of awesome tweaks to the GUI, which you can check out a demo of here:

    http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf

    Recoil42 on
  • schmadsschmads Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Turkey wrote: »
    Will it still scan every single file for viruses?

    I don't remember the specifics (sorry!), but there is a setting for this on the about:config screen.

    browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone looks promising, though :)

    schmads on
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  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Recoil42 wrote: »
    Yes, the memory problems are fixed. They patched up the memory leaks, and are using a whole new memory allocator, actually the one FreeBSD uses, called Jemalloc.

    Also, there's a huge performance boost, as GrimReaper mentioned, mostly in the area of javascript, they're using a whole new JS engine that's waaaay faster. You'll notice this mostly in complex, JS heavy sites like Gmail, Google Docs, Digg, etc.... basically anything really dynamic and AJAXy.

    sunspider_may08.jpg

    Webkit will become faster again in no time, thanks to SquirrelFish, but for now, FF3 is pretty much the fastest browser in the world.

    There's also all kinds of awesome tweaks to the GUI, which you can check out a demo of here:

    http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf

    I watched that overview flash vid a bit ago, if you notice it was recorded on OS X. The instance of Firefox 3 is running using VMWare Fusion. You can tell because at the very start the mouse itself is the Mac OS X mouse and also even though aero basic is being used the windows have a distinct shadow. The shadow being the one created by OS X windows.

    VMWare Fusion when in unity view adds shadows to windows whereas Parallels Desktop does not with coherence (at least last time I checked).

    I find it kind of funny he went to all that trouble when he should have just used the OS X version. Maybe he did it for the largest audience of Firefox which is windows users.

    GrimReaper on
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  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    GrimReaper wrote: »
    Recoil42 wrote: »
    Yes, the memory problems are fixed. They patched up the memory leaks, and are using a whole new memory allocator, actually the one FreeBSD uses, called Jemalloc.

    Also, there's a huge performance boost, as GrimReaper mentioned, mostly in the area of javascript, they're using a whole new JS engine that's waaaay faster. You'll notice this mostly in complex, JS heavy sites like Gmail, Google Docs, Digg, etc.... basically anything really dynamic and AJAXy.

    sunspider_may08.jpg

    Webkit will become faster again in no time, thanks to SquirrelFish, but for now, FF3 is pretty much the fastest browser in the world.

    There's also all kinds of awesome tweaks to the GUI, which you can check out a demo of here:

    http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf

    I watched that overview flash vid a bit ago, if you notice it was recorded on OS X. The instance of Firefox 3 is running using VMWare Fusion. You can tell because at the very start the mouse itself is the Mac OS X mouse and also even though aero basic is being used the windows have a distinct shadow. The shadow being the one created by OS X windows.

    VMWare Fusion when in unity view adds shadows to windows whereas Parallels Desktop does not with coherence (at least last time I checked).

    I find it kind of funny he went to all that trouble when he should have just used the OS X version. Maybe he did it for the largest audience of Firefox which is windows users.

    Well, that, and IE7 doesn't have an OS X version. ;-)

    Frem on
  • NarianNarian Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I've been happily using FF3 since one of the first betas was released. :^:

    Narian on
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  • The_RatThe_Rat Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    I'm running RC3 in Gutsy Gibbon and it says Firefox is using 100kb, and Firefox-bin is using 17179869180.1GB. What is up with that.

    The_Rat on
  • RandomEngyRandomEngy Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Benchmarks show that FF3 now uses the least memory of any browser, including Opera:

    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

    So yeah I think Firefox's memory issues have largely been resolved. This article is also interesting in talking about what all they fixed:

    http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

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  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    The_Rat wrote: »
    I'm running RC3 in Gutsy Gibbon and it says Firefox is using 100kb, and Firefox-bin is using 17179869180.1GB. What is up with that.

    !!!

    That's a lot of GB. Must be some sort of error.

    ArcSyn on
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  • DritzDritz CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Linux users should watch out for the abundant use of fsync in Firefox 3.

    Dritz on
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  • METAzraeLMETAzraeL Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    mmm, 3 is so much faster

    METAzraeL on

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  • seasleepyseasleepy Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Dritz wrote: »
    Linux users should watch out for the abundant use of fsync in Firefox 3.

    Apparently, whatever was up with that is fixed now, and will either go out with the official tar of 3, the official tar of 3.0.1, and/or with the package of 3 your distro puts together. Not sure which of those has turned out to be the case, but there you go.
    I'm running RC1 or whatever Ubuntu is on here, and I haven't been seeing problems with it (although I may be a bit wary of throwing it on my Eee until I know the fix is in).

    I initially kind of hated the awesomebar, but I have since come to see its awesomeness.

    seasleepy on
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  • PatboyXPatboyX Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    My biggest hope is that they gave it the ability to close properly in 10.5.

    PatboyX on
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  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Frem wrote: »
    GrimReaper wrote: »
    Recoil42 wrote: »
    Yes, the memory problems are fixed. They patched up the memory leaks, and are using a whole new memory allocator, actually the one FreeBSD uses, called Jemalloc.

    Also, there's a huge performance boost, as GrimReaper mentioned, mostly in the area of javascript, they're using a whole new JS engine that's waaaay faster. You'll notice this mostly in complex, JS heavy sites like Gmail, Google Docs, Digg, etc.... basically anything really dynamic and AJAXy.

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/images/sunspider_may08.jpg

    Webkit will become faster again in no time, thanks to SquirrelFish, but for now, FF3 is pretty much the fastest browser in the world.

    There's also all kinds of awesome tweaks to the GUI, which you can check out a demo of here:

    http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf

    I watched that overview flash vid a bit ago, if you notice it was recorded on OS X. The instance of Firefox 3 is running using VMWare Fusion. You can tell because at the very start the mouse itself is the Mac OS X mouse and also even though aero basic is being used the windows have a distinct shadow. The shadow being the one created by OS X windows.

    VMWare Fusion when in unity view adds shadows to windows whereas Parallels Desktop does not with coherence (at least last time I checked).

    I find it kind of funny he went to all that trouble when he should have just used the OS X version. Maybe he did it for the largest audience of Firefox which is windows users.

    Well, that, and IE7 doesn't have an OS X version. ;-)

    The video is just an overview of the new features of Firefox 3.

    GrimReaper on
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  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Ah. I should probably have watched it before commenting, but my patience for online video is fairly low. It's horrible being a speed reader in the era of youtube videos. :-P

    PatboyX wrote: »
    My biggest hope is that they gave it the ability to close properly in 10.5.

    Eh? It closes pretty swiftly for me.

    Frem on
  • PatboyXPatboyX Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    It also needs mouse gestures. The one named "mouse gestures." The one it is pushing on me doesn't seem to allow multiple gestures to have different meaning depending on context.
    For example, with mouse gestures, I would hold down the right mouse button and draw a line up over a link to open in a new tab. If there were no link under my line, it would simply create a new tab.
    Am I doing it wrong?

    Edit: FF3 does actually close for me. Older versions didn't close properly once I installed 10.5

    PatboyX on
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  • SamphisSamphis Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Is there going to be a 64-bit version?

    Samphis on
  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Samphis wrote: »
    Is there going to be a 64-bit version?

    From my understanding there is no real performance difference so at the moment there is no official 64 bit version.

    However, there are some unofficial 64 bit builds for it.

    Google gives plenty of results on it.

    GrimReaper on
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  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited June 2008
    Oh snap, browser battle!

    Opera 9.5 came out today.

    FyreWulff on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Haha, that's amazing. They must have caught wind of the final FF3 release date.

    I've been using the Opera beta; Firefox still feels faster. ;-)

    Frem on
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