Firefox 3 what was your first thoughts and/or experiences.

[WallyW]

I am big fan of firefox and eagerly awaited the release of the newest version.

Mozilla was trying to set a world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period. I don't know if they were able to do that considering all the problem I've read that they experienced. Most notably was the confusion about when it would actually be available for download.

I was eager to help them in breaking the record so I went to the site early tuesday morning ( around 7am or a little after ) and to my disappointment it wasn't there. The site said that it would be available for download at 10am Pacific Time. Well for me that meant 1pm Eastern Time. :(

Fastforward to when I finally got it and after install I was disappointed again. No webpages showing up. I kept getting this error message.
AUS: Update XML File Malformed (200)?

Doing a seach on google showed this to be a common problem. After some reading, doing what was recommended I was able to resolve the issue. Funny how I've never had this issue before after installing new updates/versions. Not really sure what caused it either.

So now I'm up and running. I like the new default theme/icons and such. Nice look. They've done some stuff with the bookmarks that I'm not sure about. Not really explored that yet. I do like what they've done with the drop down menu of the url bar. That's pretty cool.

So overall it has been a mixed experience but now that it is working its pretty cool. Still my browser of choice.
:)

[Xray]

I had Internet 6. Loved it.

Then it made me update to Inernet 7. Terrible. Froze constantly and was very slow.

So I went to Firefox. I have FF2. It is good overall, but it freezes sometimes for a few seconds at a time when trying to change sites.

So I went to Opera Internet. My only complaint is it doesn't like PicEasy or sometimes streaming video or audio doesn't work. However it rarely freezes, if ever, so that's my internet of choice now.

I didn't know they updated FF, so I'll have to try out the new version now and let you know.

Edit. I just DL'd it. It's fast. I like it a lot (so far).

[WallyW]

It may take some time for all the themes and extensions to be updated and compatible but it is an awesome browser as is.

[maz]

I would hate to be without Firefox nowadays . :)

[Xray]

I would hate to be without Firefox nowadays . :)
FF3 is good, but I still prefer Opera Internet.

[punch]

If you've not already done so , here's an easy way to improve FF3's preformance

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

[weird121]

firefox 3 loads faster for me rather than firefox 2 which took time to load..haha

i think its ok and great compared to internet explorer which doesnt seem to work any more on my computer...

[Kingofrock]

firefox 3 loads faster for me rather than firefox 2 which took time to load..haha

i think its ok and great compared to internet explorer which doesnt seem to work any more on my computer...

It was a long time ago when IE worked well (read never).

Havn't tried the new FF3 but I got sick and tired of IE a long time ago so I switched to FF and I havn't regret that yet!

[WallyW]

I got sick and tired of IE a long time ago so I switched to FF and I havn't regret that yet!

Amen. Switch and never look back.

[roxfanuk]

i have been with FF3 beta for a while before the final release. Then the other day I upgraded to final.

Right now i rolled back to FF2 mainly cos i use a lot of add-ons which aren't yet compatible with FF3

FF3 in general handles memory a lot better than FF2 - i used to get horrible memory leaks in FF2 so the browser would grind to a halt. Having said that, i experience more crashes with FF3 than with FF2... so i currently have mixed feelings...

[Xray]

FF3 loads slow for me. Takes over a minute fom the time I click on it. Still with the Opera with the 5-10 second load time.

[UberSoldat]

I use Firefox since its 1.0 version. And I love it. I tried Opera too and I truly liked it, but I still prefer Firefox. Now, with the 3.0, it's much better. I love to write one word related to any of my favourites and see how the link appears automatically. It's faster than 2.0 too, so how can I say? It's perfect!

(IE isn't an option for me).

[stevieb72]

FF3 made my adobe flash player go away. anybody have the same problem or know of a fix?

[Arseman]

I had to switch to Firefox 3 because my firewall/xp didnt like my Firefox 2.0.0.14 nor 2.0.0.15 versions anymore for some reason.

First thing I noticed when I opened FF3 for the first time was that they seem to have fixed the memory overleak problem. Thats really good but I also noticed that the whole firefox 3 eats a lot more memory than the older FF2. Also the url bar invention is straight from hell and the fact that you cant turn it off without using the about:config trick is really bad.

Firefox 3 doesnt seem to crash or atleast during the last 5 hours it hasnt crashed even once. FF2 had a bad habit of crashing from time to time. Also almost all of my favourite plugins work in FF3 and they seem to work very nicely.

After fixing the url bar shit FF3 seems ok. Its way heavier than FF2 but I believe that the FF3 is more stable and the memory problem has been finally fixed. Hope they improve FF3 to right directions in the future patches. If not then Im jumping all the way to the Opera camp. Now I use them both side by side. Opera for certain tasks and Firefox for others.

[tefku]

Safari works perfect :)