Firefox 3 Beta 5 is out: Better than IE, but still work to do

(Credit: Matt Asay)

Mozilla just released Firefox 3 Beta 5, the last beta release before Firefox 3 goes to "release candidate" status. It feels even faster than before, and includes over 750 fixes over Firefox 3 Beta 4. It's getting rave reviews. Progress, right?

As can be seen in the screenshot at right, however, Beta 5 introduced some problems, at least for me (Mac OS X 10.5.2). I like the back button. It's a great tool. Even so, I don't need three of them. I've been trying to find ways to flush this out of my browser but have failed.

I'm not complaining. It's beta software and I have 100 percent confidence that this will be fixed in the final release. But I'm still surprised to see a bug this glaring find its way into otherwise exceptional software.

The good news? Just by mentioning this I am certain I'll get a fix. That's the power of open source. Some of us know how to whine; others know how to fix. The fixers will take care of whiners like me.

[davemc]

I miss the Home button. The entry on the bar just doesn't do it for me.

[neilq101.]

Soooo... put it back on the main toolbar then. Such is the beauty of custom interfaces. Also, I think it works better there, and if they would implement a way for it to automatically jump up to the main toolbar when the bookmarks bar is turned off, I think it would be just about perfect. Also, the new beefier refresh button is a big improvement over b4, but the keyhole thing still looks weird. I guess that can be skinned as well, and it certainly looks great in Ubuntu, but the old look was good in XP, and it isn't great for usability either.

[skr_2000]

Dear Matt,
I am surprised to see the bug in the screenshot you have posted here, as I have just installed Firefox 3 beta 5 on My Mac Mini Running Mac OS X 10.5.2 but there is nothing like that. (I simply copy pasted the new beta over the other beta in the application folder). There was no change at all in the look and other layout of the browser. Did the new theme replaced my old beta 4 theme? I don't know.

[juswil95]

I also currently use the latest Leopard system on my Macbook and fortunately didn't catch this bug. Beta 4 had a lot of stability issues when using my personal Yahoo email account, but with Beta 5 it seems to work great! Love the new UI!

[patdiscala]

Older betas lost the back/foward buttons. I opened customize toolbars and added them from there I beleive more than once. Now they seem to have fixed the bug so more then one shows up. Go to customize toolbars and drag the extra buttons back to the list.

[Matt Asay]

This fixed it. Duh. Not sure why I didn't think to customize the toolbar. I just went in and selected "Restore the default set" and it's back to normal.

[TravelingmanVA]

Matt,

This is a known bug that is being worked on:

Bug 425079 ? Multiple back/forward buttons in toolbar
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=425079

Joe

[asadotzler]

Matt, do this. View -> Toolbars -> Customize... and then click "restore default set" and you'll be all set.

- A

[Picatta]

I don't know what people are saying about the home button--I'm running firefox 3b5 on ubuntu studio 8.04beta, and I see it between the stop loading button and address bar.

[Karl Viklund]

FFb5 rox.