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Firefox 3 Experiment Is Over For Now

Posted by Mitch on Jul 6, 2008

Man, I hate when things don’t go right.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember when I wrote about my excitement that Firefox 3 was coming. Then you later read where I said I’d downloaded the program and was testing it, and there were some good things and some bad things, but the jury was still out.

The jury has come to a decision, and it’s not good. The Firefox 3 experiment is over, done, finished. I’ve decided that, for now, it’s just not worth the trouble and the things I lost. So, I’ve spent about 10 minutes getting rid of it, then getting rid of the latest update, and starting from scratch again. Well, maybe not all the way, as I didn’t get rid of my bookmarks or anything else, but you know what I mean.

What was the main thing? There actually was a main thing this time around, and it was the Google Toolbar. Seems it was incompatible with the new version, and trying to run Google Desktop was almost impossible also. I probably rely on that more than anything else, so that was a really big deal to me.

Then there were the smaller things. For instance, TwitterFox for Firefox 3 just wasn’t going to work. Actually, it worked for 2 days, and that was that; irritating as sin. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d gotten on it, but I have. Another add-on I really like is colorful tabs, as I tend to have a bunch of tabs open at once, and the colors help separate them so you know where they are. That may seem odd, but it’s the truth. And there were a bunch of smaller add-ons and some of the themes I’d downloaded before that I liked that just wouldn’t work in Firefox 3 either; heck, my few Greasemonkey scripts wouldn’t work either, though all my userstyles did work.

And finally, it didn’t save anything on my resources, which is had promised to do. Yes, it was a little bit faster, and I really noticed it with Facebook, but heck, I’m on cable; that little bit of slowness on Facebook isn’t worth all the other things I’ve had to give up by switching over.

So, I’m back to my original version, 2.0, though I’ve now run the update back to 2.0.0.15 for security purposes, and my Google Toolbar is sitting there smiling at me. Sometimes we have to learn those lessons, and this is the first time Firefox has failed me. Maybe one day all will be right with the world once again; but not now, unfortunately.

My Thoughts On Firefox 3

Posted by Mitch on Jun 28, 2008

I’ve finally downloaded Firefox 3, after saying how much I was looking forward to it. I didn’t make the record breaking download day, and I hadn’t even thought about trying because I was expecting there might be problems, and it turns out I was right, with many people being unable to get through at times throughout the day.

I downloaded it, then loaded it into a different folder than Firefox 2, so I could run both of them if I so choose later on. It immediately told me many of my plugins weren’t compatible with this version, but it found some that were, so I went with it. Then the browser opened, and I could finally take a look at it.

Initially, I didn’t see anything different, except my colorful tabs doesn’t seem to be working; ugh. TwitterFox also isn’t working, but it wasn’t working on Firefox 2 either; lousy update, and if it doesn’t start working I just might have to disable it. The theme I was was updated, but there were a few changes that prompted me to go in and alter some visuals. Some of my other plugins aren’t working all that well either; Greasemonkey is still kind of flighty, as it was with F2 (easier to say now).

However, the two things Firefox was supposed to do that made it an improvement is that, one, it was supposed to be faster, and two, it’s not supposed to use as much of your memory as F2. I’ll talk about “two” first. Thus far, it seems to be using the same amount of resources as F2 was using, at least on my computer. Now, I had turned off pre-fetching, which had made a difference on my computer, so that could explain why it’s comparable, but I was expecting something much better.

But when it comes to speed, well, it’s kind of a winner there. Facebook is the ultimate test for me. Facebook has always kind of dragged for me, and I’ve believed that they needed to probably do something with their servers. Maybe not; Facebook has never loaded faster for me. And going through all the pages,… man, it’s not hanging up anywhere. I then ran the test through many other webpages, and all of them are faster with the excepting of Ning; what is it with that site?

So, it would seem the reality of Firefox 3 thus far isn’t as dynamic as I’d been hoping for, but I like speed, and that’s a success. I know there will be updates coming, so I’ll be patiently waiting for some of this other stuff to work better. But it’s not bad as it is; I just want more.

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Error Doctor To The Rescue

Posted by Mitch on May 31, 2008

First, if you notice to the right, there are now a few sponsored links to products. I’ve added those there because, well, this is a marketing blog that’s trying to earn some money, but also because I’m familiar with most of them, including the one I’m about to write on now.

I use Firefox for my browser, and I love it. What I especially love are all the customized things you can do with it. For instance, instead of having the boring background and frame that most other people do, on the browser here on my main computer I actually have a theme that highlights the Kansas City Chiefs, because I love the colors, and because I like the team, though I’m mainly a Dallas Cowboys fan. On the Firefox browser on my laptop, I’m using the theme from the show Futurama, which has all these icons of characters from the show instead of the regular buttons.

Something else it can do is allow you to change the look of some of the pages that one visits from time to time. For instance, this is what my Google looks like:

And this is what the images page looks like:

And this is what my Wikipedia looks like:

You can download the stuff you need to do things like this by going to a page called Userstyles.org; lots of great stuff there. Anyway, once I got a taste of that sort of thing, I learned that there’s another page called Userscripts.org, which is special scripting that people have created so that you can do things on pages that you probably really shouldn’t be able to do. For instance, one script allows you to download any video you see on YouTube in a MP4 format, though there are plenty others in other formats. One that I use a lot is one that increases the size of pictures on Facebook to the size they actually are, so I don’t have to keep trying to figure out what people look like from all those small profile pictures.

On the Userscripts page, they warn you that some of the scripts might cause problems with your computer from time to time. Though I’m usually a pretty cautious guy, I figured that everything was going to work just fine, because, after all, it did with the Styles site. I loaded five or six scripts that did different things, and everything seemed to work for maybe 30 minutes. From that point on, my computer basically locked up. I rebooted multiple times, and that did nothing. I unloaded all the programs from the Userscripts program, which is called Greasemonkey, and that did nothing. I ran Regcleaner adn that did nothing either, because it didn’t know what to do. I tried running my antivirus, spyware and spam programs, but they wouldn’t work either. I was stuck.

Then I remembered that I had Error Doctor on my computer, and I decided to give that a try. When one’s system is running reasonably well, it usually completes its job in about 2 minutes. In this case, it took the program 15 minutes to do its job, but at the end of it, when I told it to fix everything, it did its job perfectly. I then ran it a second time, just to make sure, and in two minutes it was done, with nothing except some minor registry clean ups. I rebooted the computer, and everything came back just as it had been beforehand. I did load two of the scripts back, which were really the only two I’d wanted in the first place, and I’ve had no problems since.

Now, if that’s not a ringing endorsement for Error Doctor, I don’t know what could be. It’s not all that expensive, and it works wonders. So, if you’re ever in need, make sure to grab a copy. It could save you a lot of money on the back end.