Firefox 3.0 Beta 1

Sarge

Distinguished Member
Firefox 3.0 Beta 1
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Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 3.0, moving the browser one step closer to a general release. Though a tad delayed than originally expected, Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 comes packed with innovative features and enhanced security tools, which probably makes it worth the wait.

What's New in Firefox 3 Beta 1

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

More Security

* One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can test it here.
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.
* Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.
* Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

* Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
* Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
* Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.
 
You are welcome Guru, I've just installed my Beta 1, and I'm about to run it, right after I close this Firefox window. :smile:
 
Good luck - let us know what you think!

According to this memory leaks have been fixed - it's about time!
But unfortunately, New York Times has an article that claims Mozilla is planning on shipping a 3.0 final with bugs in it just to meet deadlines.... :x
Mozilla Won't Fix 80% of Firefox 3.0's Bugs - New York Times

Mozilla Corp. will fix just 20% of the bugs now in Firefox 3.0 before the final version is released next year, the open-source developer's Web site revealed Wednesday.

As Mozilla pushes to post Beta 1 of Firefox 3.0, it has asked developers to prioritize already-identified bugs so that the most important can be fixed. But according to notes of yesterday's Firefox 3.0 status meeting, that will leave about eight in 10 bugs untouched.
"We have 700 bugs currently marked as blockers," the notes read. "That's too many. We're asking [requiring] component owners to set priorities on blockers, as a first pass of what bugs should be Beta 2 blockers. You want it to be about 10% of blockers, or what you can get done in four weeks."
 
Oh damn, those are bad news.

I'm on Beta... and on first look, I love bookmarks organizer :smile: and usual browsing works good :lol: Most of the add-ones are dead. Thats what I saw on first look.
 
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Wouldn't surprise me if they did. Time of the most important thing. With Opera 9.5 Kestrel on the move now and IE8 in the works for next year Firefox has to get something out now in order to try and stay ahead of them. I would get this but i have a hard enough time running Firefox let alone trying a beta of theirs. :tongueout:
 
Oh damn, those are bad news.

I'm on Beta... and on first look, I love bookmarks organizer :smile: and usual browsing works good :lol: Most of the add-ones are dead. Thats what I saw on first look.

Unfortunately, I don't bookmark. Perhaps it's a forced habit because of how often I format, but I just commit any URIs I come across to memory... and if I forget them, they're never more than a Google search away.

I posted about the stupid bookmarks engine or a year or two ago: Firefox is wasting its time on an SQL-powered bookmarks database instead of fixing and addressing more important and directly-beneficial aspects of the browser - seems like a serious misallocation of resources to someone's pet project to me.... :wtf:

Wouldn't surprise me if they did. Time of the most important thing. With Opera 9.5 Kestrel on the move now and IE8 in the works for next year Firefox has to get something out now in order to try and stay ahead of them. I would get this but i have a hard enough time running Firefox let alone trying a beta of theirs. :tongueout:

Have you actually heard anything official about IE8?

Addendum:

Whatever my feelings about Firefox, I'm a sucker for cute animals... I just love the furry thing they got the inspiration from:

491px-Ailurus_fulgens_RoterPanda_LesserPanda.jpg


Cute!!!!!!!!

What the Fire Fox Isn The NeoSmart Files
 
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Guru, that red thingy you posted is CUTENESS!!!! :grinning:

I'm so lost without my bookmarks and cookies, when I format I used to paste all urls into txt file and save it, and later load it back and bookmark it one by one, its painful.. And now in Firefox 3.0 I can save all bookmarks into one file and load it anywhere! That is the most useful feature I saw in Firefox so far, and I was praying for it while back :grinning:
 
Opera is one-up there: you can associate your bookmark list with an email address, then retreive or synchronize bookmarks from any PC in the world.

So if I add a bookmark at work, and go home, I'll find the bookmark there too :smile:
 
Guru i have not heard anything official other than they plan on working on it and getting a beta out 1q of 2008.

As for the bookmarks. I have a bunch of them. But with Firefox, IE or Opera it is simple really. In Opera i just Export them as both Opera bookmarks and HTML bookmarks. After a format and re-isntall i just Import them all at once. So this whole bookmark thing with Firefox 3 to me will be useless. Plus this is already in the works for Opera 9.5 Kestrel. If you Sync your Opera 9.5 all you have to do after a format and re-isntall is log back in and all your bookmarks are there again. So it sounds to me like Firefox is taking a not from Opera on this one.

All in all, fox is good. But it is so heavily dependent on the extensions to make it work right. Need fasterfox to make it be faster than IE and almost as fast as Opera. At the same time it does have some usefulness with NoScript nad other extensions. But mostly just for people who are to lazy, no offense Sarge, to figure out how to do things like that in other browsers. I have a urlfilter for Opera that i have saved with my bookmarks that i update with some new ad block url's everyonce in a while and just load that up with Opera. No ads. Dont need no extension.

But all in all it is jsut personal preference on what browser we use. I know some that like Safari for Windows.
 
I'm offended :tongueout: Kidding.

Yeah Opera is nice, I can't say a word about anything bad in Opera. As a matter of fact I'm planing on using it more often and see how it goes, its gonna be hard cause after years of firefox, all shortcuts wont work... but we'll see.

(Bed time, 3:20 AM :tongueout:. Good night.)
 
Night sarge!

It's 4:20 AM here.... still burning the midnight oil trying to get this darn project done.
 
Sarge i wrote up a small little tut about Opera a while back.

Opera Customization Settings - TechModo

That shows you some of the custom settings that make life a little easier when using Opera. As i said you can export your bookmarks right from Firefox and then Import them to Opera. If you want i will write up that guide as well.

I just feel bad. You guys are talking how it is 3 or 4 AM over there and as of this posting it is just past 11pm here. :tongueout: Sometimes it is great being 5 hours behind GMT. :lol:
 
:lol:

Don't feel bad, I certainly don't mind! (yes, I'm in a good mood becaues I finished that 30 page report and got 45 minutes of sleep.. the latter I was not expecting) :grinning: :tongueout:
 
Sarge got the ones for IE and Firefox done. Sadly at this point in time Firefox is the worst. You can not import your bookmarks easily. I have another method for that. but it isnt the best way to do it. So just use the method i described for the safest possibilties.

Internet Explorer Import/Export Tutorial - TechModo
Importing Bookmarks to Firefox - TechModo

There is the IE and Firefox one. Do the IE one first. the do the firefox one. Till version 3 of Firefox you cant get any better import than the method described.
 
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