IT Professionals

Firefox 3 – Ready To Roll?

Posted by on May 28, 2008 | 3 Comments

Still having mixed feelings about the release of Firefox 3 as it currently has some serious bugs on Linux, due to the the system killing fsync bug. Allegedly, it is fixed, but I have yet to see evidence of it. Despite that frustration and the fact that 90% of the add-ons I use are now useless, I am sure it will be a great release!

Other things that keep driving me back to older versions of Firefox include the way it auto-completes URLs. While I am sure the main release will surely have a way to turn this “suggestive” url feature off, for the time being, it has taken some getting used to.

Perceived memory improvements have been generally invisible to me but perhaps they are there as I have not spent a ton of time watching my system resources for changes. The browser does seem a bit more stable, with the exception of me working with the Flash 10 beta/alpha/whatever. That is certainly not perfect, but Linux users, if Flash 9 is making your CPU hit the roof, try this beta – it does help a great deal.

What is Firefox 3 really giving us?

Honstly in the end, not a whole heck of a lot over version 2 thus far. To be totally fair, we are still in release candidate phase. But outside of possible phishing protection and maybe improved performance, I am just not feeling the new url box at all.  Am I being unreasonable?

  • Julian Horn

    Mi Matt,
    IF this version is so buggy in the user experience, are you comfortable that there are no flaws that compromise security? (I only use it very occasionally so have not tried it)
    It seems to me one of the justifications for Firefox in the past has been that it is safer than IE 5, 6, 7, Yet now, I wonder whether it is . . .

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Julian: Overall this is a good question, but I still have to point out – all browsers have compromised security at some point, these flaws are always there.

    Just having phishing as a possibility regardless of protections is a security risk. That said, no, much like previous versions, security risks are dealt with quickly when they do pop-up.

    Good security approach is to ensure that:

    - The FF browser is set to warn you if it is attempting to install extensions without your knowledge (sort of like IE and ActiveX).
    - Keep Java disabled when not in use.

  • grannar olice

    You might be.

    Linux may have problems with it, but I don’t hear of similar on Windows.

    What I do hear is it renders javascript [now too commonly used for everyday web pages] like the wind, compared to other browsers, even revered Opera. Also read the memory glitches have been decreased.

    In the Windows arena, one can Google portable versions of all sorts of versions of Firefox: released, beta, or alpha. Certainly easy enough to download and run safely on your limited user account.

    All I can suggest is try one and see. Having and using more than one browser [for example, for different purposes] is becoming a very cool and productive way to go, with increased familiarity and RAM. Heck, I even run Off By One to do some things!