My Thoughts On Firefox 3

Posted by Mitch Mitchell 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.