IT Professionals

Firefox v3 Bugs?

Posted by on Mar 21, 2008 | 17 Comments

Received this today and it certainly got my attention:

Hey Matt,

I just tried Firefox 3, you might want to give a warning to your readers. This thing will trash your bookmarks and also mess up your contact list on hotmail. It imports it’s info from IE and doesn’t let you “not” do that. I had not used IE for months and my bookmarks were completely out of date. To make things worse, FF3 doesn’t have the ability to fix it, you can’t import from anything but IE. Needless to say FF3 is gone and I’m a little PO!

Now maybe I am missing something, but this would certainly bother me a great deal if it had happened to me. Are other Lockergnome readers having a similar experience? I have used Firefox 3-Beta in Linux a number of times, but have not installed the new browser on my Windows box yet.

Obviously, I am looking forward to hearing from other users to see if this is an ongoing bug. Have a great weekend.

  • vr2xsw

    I encountered the same problem with Firefox 3 for windows and have to built my bookmarks from scratch, very sad :( !

  • Arne

    I started to use Firefox when version 3 beta 2 was out. Had no problems importing my IE6 Bookmarks. The only thing I had to do rearrange them a little into new folders that was more suitable for me (should have done it long ago).

  • http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan Price

    I’ve been using Portable FF 3.0, which doesn’t import squat. So I don’t have a clue there.

  • Plenty Groover Jr.

    I’ve just recently installed FF3 beta 4 and while it didn’t give me a choice about my bookmarks, it did only import them from the stable version. Maybe he installed an earlier version of the beta??

  • Paul

    Hey Matt
    Follow up on my letter from yesterday, when you tried FF3 on Linux, how did it handle the bookmarks? I don’t want to go through the same thing again. Also, I still haven’t figured out the contact list problem. The names are still in the list, but don’t show up when I try to forward or send anew mail. Any idea how to fix that? Thanks for your time.

  • Brandon

    I didn’t notice anything wrong with my bookmarks or hotmail contacts. Then again, I don’t think I’ve touched IE or hotmail since I formatted about 4 months ago….

  • Wayne

    Try the Firefox Portable that’s not Beta search it out, anyhow what do you expect it’s say’s (BETA) duh,

    Try this–http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

  • Al Gottlieb

    Had the same poor experience with ff3 beta 4. First, my bookmarks were not picked up. Had a clean bookmark folder. I then imported my backup ff bookmarks. It did pick up my add-ons although many were were not usable because they hadn’t been upgraded which was to be expected. I did have lock-up problems when I tried to use my usable add-ons and, although I did find ff3 faster than ff2, I had other usability problems. When I uninstalled ff3 I couldn’t use ff 2.0.0.12 and got an error message and the browser never opened. I finally used a system restore (made one before I installed ff3) but still had the same problem, and I finally had to download and reinstall a fresh copy of ff2. After a reboot it’s working. The bad experience is chalked up to it being beta and I liked it enough to say that I will definitely use the final release candidate.

  • Wally Holloway

    I installed the beta 4 of FF3, and didn’t have this problem at all. It picked up my FF2 bookmarks and worked just fine. I’m on WinXP.

  • Bob C

    I installed FireFox 3 beta 4, the only problems were that it said that my extensions from version 2 would not work and would be disabled. The extensions were Adblock, Flashblock, Foxmarks, and IE Tab. Even though it warned me that they would be disabled, they do seem to be working fine.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/pinguin pinguin

    MY FFX3 b2 works fine no bugs… yet!

  • Tim

    Well, right now it installs “along side” firefox 2. So it is essentially a fresh install of firefox rather than an upgrade.
    It doesn’t erase your bookmarks, but it is true that it only imports from IE.

    I’m sure when the final comes as an “upgrade” rather than a “standalone” then it will surely migrate your bookmarks.

    As for MSN contacts getting messed up? I use gmail, but have a hotmail account. I logged in and nothing seemed out of wack to me. Only spent 10 mins or so at the site though.

  • Mark Hill

    Odd–I’ve had no such problems with Firefox 3 beta 3. My extensions don’t have Firefox 3 versions yet, but I didn’t find that surprising. Bookmarks are fine, and I’m able to run either 2.0.012 or 3 beta 3 interchangeably.

  • Paul

    thanks for the feedback folks, it seems strange that the same program would be so different with pretty much the same OS. Tim said his was a fresh install, mine upgraded FF2 with no options on the import. I’m thinking they should not have said it was ready.

  • http://www.calcresult.com Mike

    So, have you visited bugzilla and raised a bug report, or do you just expect the problem to fix itself?
    When you have done so, please post the bug number here, so that everyone can take note.

    Thanks.

  • JLentz

    I installed Firefox3Beta4 and successfully imported bookmarks from Internet Explorer. About two weeks later, upon browser startup I was prompted to import again. Clicked allow, and bookmarks all disappeared except for the default Firefox ones. Luckily I had a backup. You can make and restore a backup. Click the Bookmarks Tab and choose Show All Bookmarks. Click the Import and Backup Tab at the top choose the appropriate action. An ounce of prevention can save a ton of headaches.

  • David

    I have been USING FF2 for a LOOONG time.
    I have it set to NOT update AT ALL (Period).
    Every “few” months or so ……………. it decides “on its own”
    that it wants to CHANGE that to “update”.
    Next time I turn on the PC…………….. BAMM.. I am hit with
    everything being updated.
    AND guess what??? …… I loose my bookmarks, custom setting, the
    whole “shabang”.

    I have learned to “backup” those settings. I even have them setting
    in a “nice little folder” in the FF2 settings folder.

    With firefox… it is the “norm”.