Mozilla released a major update in the form of version 3.0 of their popular browser Firefox yesterday and I guess like the rest of the world even I wanted to upgrade immediately and check out the final/finished product for myself, but I guess the frenzy to get the latest Firefox was so high among all Firefox aficionados that the site itself was not available for most of yesterday with it timing out continuously and resisting all attempts to even visit the website to garner a download. This only goes to prove how popular Firefox has become and should only add to Internet Explorer’s woes. Don’t tell me you are still using Internet Explorer, I hate to hear bad news of any kind!!!
I did manage to get a sneak in today morning and immediately went about downloading Firefox 3.0 and could not wait to put it through its paces and find out for myself what all the improvements are, though Mozilla has stated that most of them are under the hood and not visible to the general user. One of the first things, as is usual with Firefox, are that all the add-ons need to be updated to be compatible with the latest version and this is a point I would add to my wish list that all add-ons are upgraded to the latest stable versions at least every time Firefox is launched and especially with any upgrade in Firefox itself. One thing I did notice was that Firefox did not crash as soon as I loaded it up after its installation. You would know from my previous blogs that every beta release that I tried of Firefox would crash immediately on loading it up and I just was not able to checkout Firefox 3.0 in its beta stages. Thankfully that has been fixed now and I am able to browse without any crashes or bugs.
While updating the add-ons a new feature I noted with version 3.0 is a show information tab on the right hand side that provides more information on the add-on being upgraded and information on bug fixes and changes in the new version. Updating add-ons went without a cinch and needless to say those without updates and not compatible with version 3.0 were disabled. Firefox as always needed to be restarted with the upgrade in the add-ons and I do note that this restart does take its time and Firefox is not superfast to load up like Opera. Opera is my favorite browser and my mainstay so it’s natural I will be putting Firefox 3.0 through its paces by comparing it with Opera above all else. Interestingly Opera too released version 9.5 of their browser just a few days ago and what else can I say except that Opera 9.5 rocks baby!
Now back to Firefox 3.0. Some of the new features in version 3.0 are:
- One-Click Bookmarking to manage bookmarks better. There is a star in the address bar to the right and one click on the star will bookmark the page, two clicks to change the location of saving the bookmark and also tag it at the same time. One advantage of this is that Firefox saves this information and looks into your bookmarks too when you begin searching for a website or enter any keyword in the address bar and displays bookmarked links and also pages from your browsing history for selection.
- Instant Web Site ID. Online safety has always been a strong feature with Firefox and this continues in version 3.0 too. Clicking on a site’s favicon will bring up information about the site and further clicks give more information like the times this site has been visited, does it save passwords, etc. Clicking on my site’s favicon brought up the dialogue “This web site does not supply identity information”.
- Performance boost. Firefox claims Improved Memory Management, Smaller Memory Footprint, Faster JavaScript, Faster Page Load, and Graphics Engine Improvements in version 3.0. Guess this will bear out with regular usage, but then I always keep an eye out on the RAM/CPU usage and have found from personal experience that Firefox has always been high in these two departments with a lot of tabs open especially. I will be making Firefox 3.0 the default browser on my system for a while to check out how improved is the performance and will be providing an update in due course.
- Full zoom. As per Mozilla “visit your favorite news page and read the caption under the picture – or view the picture itself in a size you can see. An elegant new zoom feature lets you swoop in and see entire web pages. They scale in the way you’d expect them to, with all the elements of a page’s layout expanding equally, so you can zero in on what matters.” Self explanatory to the core I am sure!!!
- Smart location bar. This is a new feature that I am sure many will love. This features a quick way to visit sites you frequent often even if you don’t remember the address completely. The new location bar learns with extended usage your personal preferences and in due course will start throwing up links and webpages based on your past browsing history. This is more like an auto complete feature found elsewhere but Firefox customizes it to a degree that’s more personal based on your past browsing history. Again this feature will need extended usage to find out how useful it really is.
Other features like password manager, anti-phishing, add-ons manager, customization, feed reader, spellchecker, tabs, etc. continue with enhancements. My first choice is Opera, but even if it’s not yours you still owe it to yourself to get Firefox and check it out for yourself. At the very least it will keep your browsing safe and do much a better job at protecting you online compared to good old and useless Internet Explorer.
My Firefox Download Certificate!
My other blogs on Firefox -
Firefox Add-Ons – Customize Your Firefox!
Firefox 3 Beta 4, Firefox Add-Ons Customization, And Chilling At Home Reading Blogs!
