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Author Topic: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3  (Read 11067 times)

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Broni

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5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« on: June 05, 2008, 11:38:07 AM »
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,146279/article.html?tk=nl_cxanws

1. Much Better Performance

 If you've used previous versions of Firefox you've likely had this experience, perhaps frequently: you're working away, but gradually become aware that something is horribly wrong with your PC. It's sluggish and apps take forever to load. You open up Task Manager and find that Firefox is chewing up 95 percent of your CPU cycles. Once you kill the browser and start over, you're running fine again.

I can't remember the last time I've had that experience with the Firefox 3 betas. Mozilla developers borrowed some memory management tricks from the Free BSD operating system for the Windows and Linux versions of Firefox. (They say memory management on Macs already worked pretty well.) The effect is clear. The browser is much less likely to commandeer too many system resources. And Firefox's developers worked to make sure that add-ons, notorious memory thieves, don't cause problems either. They've rolled in cycle collectors that help prevent extensions from locking up RAM and not giving it back. They're also distributing tools to third-party developers that will help them build more abstemious add-ons.

2. The "Awesome Bar"

Okay, so the official name is the Location Bar, the field where you enter URLs you want to visit. But beta testers have nicknamed it the Awesome Bar and it is, well, pretty awesome. Enter text in the Location Bar and a dropdown list appears of pages from your browsing history that include that text, not just in the URL, but in the page title or the page's tag (see #4 below). The list even includes Gmail messages that include that word in the subject line. If you've already visited a Web page, there's a good chance it's useful to you. The Location Bar lets you very quickly search that useful subset of the Web.

3. Can't Miss Warnings

 Lots of browsers have had phishing warnings before (including Firefox), but they've been wimpy. Usually they involve some part of the address bar changing color or some icon popping up near the URL. The problem is they're too easy to miss. I'm not looking at the address bar when I'm waiting for a page to load. I'm looking at the main well of the browser where the page will display.

But there's no danger of missing one of Firefox's new warnings. When you enter the URL of a suspected attack site, Firefox brings up a full-page warning. With a click, you can see a detailed explanation of why the site was blocked. Or you can just click "Get me out of here," which takes you to Firefox's start page. If you really want to live dangerously, there's a small link that lets you ignore the warning and proceed to the suspect site.

4. Better Bookmarks

If you like a page, you just click the star in the Location Bar and it's a favorite. A dropdown box lets you name it, choose a folder to put it in or add a tag to categorize it. Bookmarks (and your browsing history) are now stored in a database, which means you don't have to spend so much time organizing bookmark folders. You can perform detailed searches of your bookmarks, then save that search as a special folder. Any new bookmarked page that fits the criteria automatically goes in the folder.

5. Whole-page Zooming

 If your eyes aren't what they used to be, it's nice to bump up the size of text on Web pages, as Firefox 2 will do. But it only changes the text size -- the other elements remain the same size. That makes for pages that look like The Incredible Hulk, with words bursting through the boxs and tabs that are supposed to contain them.

The new Firefox magnifies everything on the page equally. Everything remains in proportion, but becomes easier to read. And the next time you visit that page, it'll display at the same level of zoom.

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2008, 12:57:15 PM »
Been using the latest beta release candidate and so far I've enjoyed it. Still seems like it uses a lot of memory but maybe that's require (I've been averaging around 120MB). However, it does seem to give back the memory as my dozens of tabs are closed.

The one quirk I've found so far that I don't care for is that one of my custom pages that helps me do news on Computer Hope is not saving the password like previous versions of Firefox did. Other password pages work, just not this one. I'm sure though it's probably something to do with how I created the page and not Firefox, probably something to help with security.
Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein

Broni

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2008, 01:07:01 PM »
Quote
Still seems like it uses a lot of memory but maybe that's require (I've been averaging around 120MB).
With today's huge amounts of RAM, we have on our computers, I always tell people, not to worry about, as long, as Firefox CPU usage stays low.
Right now, my FF2 is using 200MB of RAM, but CPU usage is at 0-1%.
I'll have to check FF3 on my XP, though.

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2008, 01:11:34 PM »
As long as the memory comes back if I close tabs I'm fine with as much memory as it needs.  I've used FF2 in the past and have been up to 400-600MB of memory, with only one tab open.
Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein

Broni

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2008, 01:21:08 PM »
I just checked FF3 RC2 on XP....
1 tab open - 58.5MB - CPU 0-2%
5 TABS OPEN - 70mb - CPU same
back to 1 tab - 67.5MB - CPU same

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2008, 01:18:05 PM »
I'll wait for the full release version.

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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #6 on: June 08, 2008, 05:50:09 PM »
I hate to say it but I still think some memory issues exist with it. I ran the latest release candidate on my primary XP machine which can sometimes get 15+ tabs open in multiple browser windows. I was up to around 250MB Mem usage today so wanted to see if it'd be able to release some of that memory being used. I closed all tabs and only left the Computer Hope forums open and was stuck at 190MB and 00-04 CPU usage.

Restarting Firefox got me back down to 51MB. Maybe I'm hoping for too much and it is better than what it used to be. Just would like the ability to get it back down to less than 100MB without having to restart the application. :)
Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
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Aegis



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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #7 on: June 08, 2008, 08:38:18 PM »
Quote
I'll wait for the full release version.

I'm with you on that, D.  (Like that's any sort of endorsement!)   ::)

I will occasionally dive into the proverbial deep end of the pool, but I usually prefer (and truly appreciate) those who test the waters before me.



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Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
« Reply #8 on: June 08, 2008, 11:00:28 PM »

AlexeyGfi



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    Re: 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3
    « Reply #9 on: June 16, 2008, 01:25:56 PM »
    I agree about memory Usage. Near 20 tabs + flash in half of them and better for me to restart FF.

    One more plus: if U close FF with many opened tabs, in next time U can restore them.

    But for me, as JS and DHTML-programmer, FF better then other, because Firebug are maded under Firefox. After Firebug running-life, I economy a half of time to testing code.  ;)