Ron Schenone

I Downloaded Firefox 3 Just To Be A Part Of History

Posted by on Jun 17, 2008 | 9 Comments

So today was the big day. The day when Firefox 3 final became available to the masses. The day the Mozilla team was hoping to set a world record for downloads. Which is kind of strange. It has been stated there is no current download record, so I guess their intent was to make this a first. But back on June 3rd I wrote about not joining in. I indicated that I had some serious doubts that the servers could handle the load. [See my article here.]

My purpose was not to criticize Mozilla for attempting to break a record. My purpose was to hopefully prevent an embarrassment if the servers did crash. Yet some of the responses I got in the comments section, some of which I did not approve, told me I was a trader to the cause. Not a real Firefox loyalist, a Microsoft shill and others indicated I should have sex with myself. :-)

So this morning when I read that the servers had crashed I could of taken advantage of the situation and congratulated myself for my wisdom. But instead I waited awhile and than downloaded a copy of Firefox 3 just to be a part of history and maybe, just maybe, help Mozilla set a world record.

Even though I still believe that the whole record thing is nothing more than a childish publicity stunt, I am a loyal Firefox devotee. As I have previously stated, I have been using Firefox since Firefox was in diapers. Before Firefox it was Netscape as my main browser. I have been a loyal user while most of those who criticized my stance were still crawling around their parents home on their hands and knees. :-)

Good luck Mozilla team. I hope you get your record.

Comments welcome.

PS I’m not going to install it just yet. Some of my extensions still don’t work right with version 3 yet.

[Source]

  • DJ Holtrop

    I’m seriously thinking of terminating my subscription to your “Blade” feed after stumbling over this grammatical excrement: “So this morning when I read that the servers had crashed I could of took advantage of the situation and congratulated myself for my wisdom.”

    “…could of took advantage…”?

    Sigh….

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hello DJ Holtrop,
    Thanks for pointing this out to me. It is appreciated.

    Regards, Ron

  • Denny

    . ..Me . 2 . at 6:30 . ZIP–ZIP . Done

    do I . GETS . my Name in >Guinness World Records< . :-) ???

  • Ryan

    I’ve actually given up on Firefox for the most part, I installed Epiphany which is like what Firefox was supposed to have been, small and sensible featureset, and where Firefox would be devouring 200+ MB of RAM right now, Epiphany is sitting at 96.

    Not that there’s much wrong with Firefox on Windows, the sad part is they really only care about Windows lately and the quality of the Linux version has suffered for that, it’s part of the reason GNOME is going to make Epiphany use Webkit in their next release.

  • chesscanoe

    I suppose it’s nice to set a record for “most downloads”, but for some it wastes a lot of time and bandwidth for no technical advantage. The MD5 for Fx3 Final is exactly the same as Fx3 RC3 available 2008-06-12.

  • Don Naphen

    Hi Ron; well I went and bit the bullet by way of d/loading and installing the Ver. 3 earlier this evening. It’ll take awhile to make any reasonable observations, but so far it’s not too bad. I haven’t measured the CPU usage as it’s not that big a deal right now. I’ll keep you posted as time goes on. I did opt for the “custom” installation, but it really didn’t offer much in the way of choices (??). Yeah, I didn’t want any additional frills that so often get installed when opting for the “standard” installation of any software.

    Hey Ron, didn’t you make a policy statement some time ago regarding the grammar critics Ron? Hell, I understood what you were saying. Kudos for how you handle these personal comments.

  • Don Naphen

    Wonder if he/she will notice I used your name twice in the same sentence! LOL

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Hi Don,
    I took the plunge last evening as well. It seems to be working OK thus far. No spikes in the CPU yet. All of my add-ons, I only have six, are working fine.

    Thanks for your continued support. It is appreciated. :-)

    Let me know what you think of FF3.

  • Don Naphen

    So far so good Ron. I do notice that things have picked up a bit, but that’s just a personal, unscientific observation! After a reboot, I checked out the CPU usage, and it’s down to 16%. Of course, this fluctuates as “clicks” are done during a particular session, but it is encouraging.

    My ZoneAlarm (Check Point) a section that allows me to see quite a bit of info. Here’s the breakdown:

    Kernel Mem ….. 58% @ 2398 KB
    UserMem ……… 33% @ 676 KB
    FW Mem ………. 02% @ 41 KB
    Sys Mem ………. 53% @ 26504 KB
    Config …………… 06% @ 120 KB
    CPU …………….. 16%

    Again, these figures are compiled after a reboot. Hope this helps you and your readers out Ron.

    Oh, I noticed that your server was down for awhile yesterday. Impossible to connect to your site, and also that of The Oracle. Hope things have been squared away. I also notice that whenever I scroll down your pages, the page jumps in one-line increments. This does NOT happen on any other web site.