Firefox 3 is out! Thinking in Russian not required

GrimReaper

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:



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:




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:



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



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...

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

FyreWulff

Have they finally fixed the godforsaken memory bug?

Szechuanosaurus

Oh damn, I'm buying this on day one.

Khavall

FyreWulff wrote: »

Have they finally fixed the godforsaken memory bug?

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


so maybe?

Klyka

They improved the problems? They should fix them!

GrimReaper

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.

Sharp101

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.

theSquid

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.

Icemopper

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.

GrimReaper

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.

Fort1tude

that will save me from ending the process in Process Explorer so it will ask me to restore session when I restart firefox

ArcSyn

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?

Turkey

Will it still scan every single file for viruses?

Ronen

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.

NailbunnyPD

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

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.

brynstar

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.

GrimReaper

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.

Ganluan

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

TubaFrog

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.

GrimReaper

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.

Ganluan

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.

Recoil42

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.



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

schmads

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

GrimReaper

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.



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.

Frem

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.



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. ;-)

Narian

I've been happily using FF3 since one of the first betas was released. :^:

The_Rat

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.

RandomEngy

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/

ArcSyn

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.

Dritz

Linux users should watch out for the abundant use of fsync in Firefox 3.

METAzraeL

mmm, 3 is so much faster

seasleepy

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.

PatboyX

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

GrimReaper

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.

Frem

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.

PatboyX

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

Samphis

Is there going to be a 64-bit version?

GrimReaper

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.

FyreWulff

Oh snap, browser battle!

Opera 9.5 came out today.

Frem

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. ;-)