Mozilla has released a third beta version of Firefox 3, bringing about 1,300 changes to the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 Beta 3 should be more stable, perform faster, use memory more efficiently, and fit in better on various operating systems than its predecessors, Mozilla said.
Beta 3 of Firefox 3, shown here running on Windows XP, uses new interface elements made of vector graphics. It helps improve performance, Mozilla said.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Having tried the new version out for a while this morning, my top impression hasn't changed since beta 2: the best thing about the new version is faster performance. Pages load faster.
Other improvements, according to the Firefox 3 release notes, include a better tool for seeing who owns a Web site; better protection against sites known to install viruses, spyware, or other malicious software; the plugging of 350 memory leaks that previously could waste more and more computer memory; the ability to locate downloaded files; a better tool to find and install plug-ins; and , now enabled by default.
The new Firefox beta can be downloaded from the Mozilla Web site, including versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux localized for several languages.
The new Firefox beta also adopts more of the native style of Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Linux--the latter having been a point of some contention earlier given some technical difficulties. Also interesting from an interface standpoint and giving the beta a new look is the use of vector graphics for elements such as the back arrow and reload button.
I like Firefox 3's new location bar drop-down feature, in which Firefox presents various sites I've visited or bookmarked. For example, typing "can" retrieves a list that includes various Canon Web sites I've visited as well as Icanhascheezburger.com. (Alas, though, everyone's favorite LOLcats site seems to have a rendering problem with the new browser in the form of 10 "favorite" buttons.)
Beta 3 apparently improves the "frecency" formula that selects what to display in the drop-down list based on how frequently and recently you visited the sites. My only beef with the location bar drop-down so far is that it's a visually chaotic jumble of URLs, favicons, and titles in different fonts and colors.
Coincidentally, I was able to give the new Firefox 3 beta a short stress test, and it fared much better than its predecessor.
I found a misbehaving Flash ad Tuesday that made Firefox 2 chew up about 98 percent of my CPU power and thereby caused my system--especially Firefox--to slow to a crawl. Today, I found that same ad on another Web site while trying the Firefox 3 beta, and although it, too, maxed out my CPU, Firefox now was usable, though sluggish.
Firefox 3 sports a new add-on manager to find, add, disable, and uninstall plug-ins.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)There are some reasons I won't be moving full time to the new beta, though.
Unsurprisingly, given warnings in the release notes, several plug-ins I use still aren't compatible: Foxmarks, del.icio.us, Fotofox, and FireFTP. And Yahoo Mail only can be used in its older classic mode for me.
For the Yahoo Mail problem, there's some hope: Mozilla is waiting on Yahoo for a bug fix for the mail site, and the Firefox release notes now offer a less pessimistic warning that the newer Yahoo Mail interface "may not work for all users right away."
The release notes also warn that Windows Live Mail doesn't work; a plug-in must be installed to play Windows Media Player content on Windows; Firefox often will stop responding to keystrokes when using Google Documents on Mac OS X; and printing is broken on many versions of Linux.
Flickr's new Uploadr 3.0 beta lets users change the order of photos, among other things.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Flickr has begun public testing of a new version of its Uploadr tool to send pictures to its online photo-sharing site.
The new version gives more elaborate control over photos before they're uploaded, said Flickr's Robert Crowley in a Flickr forum posting announcing Uploadr 3.0 beta software Monday. The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site posted a second beta Wednesday that fixed several issues.
"With this version you can select any number of photos and add titles, tags, descriptions, sets, and privacy data for those photos. You can also drag your photos into a different order," Crowley said.
Alas, though, it seems there's no mechanism for setting geoprivacy, which governs who can see where on a map your photo was taken, if you're among those who takes the trouble to geotag your photo and set Flickr to capture the data when you upload.
The beta software is available as a downloaded for Windows and Mac OS X.
Mozilla released Firefox 3 beta 1 on Monday.
(Credit: Mozilla)A few months later than had been planned, Mozilla released on Monday night the first beta version of an overhauled Firefox, the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 beta 1 includes a number of significant features that Mozilla said should improve security, ease of use, rendering of Web pages, and location of previously visited Web pages. And for the new era of rich Internet applications, the browser can run Web-based applications even when the computer is disconnected from a network.
The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux at Mozilla's download site in 20 languages. You can also download the English versions for Windows or Mac from CNET Download.com.
Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the dominant Web browser, the open-source rival has achieved a critical mass of users--Firefox has been downloaded more than 400 million times--and it's now common for designers to make sure their Web pages work with the browser. Even Microsoft has bowed to the reality, testing its Live.com Web sites with Firefox and helping with technical issues such as playing Windows Media files from Web pages.
According to the release notes, the core Gecko rendering engine--the component that interprets Web page instructions and draws text and graphics on your screen--has seen major changes in the upgrade to the new version 1.9 used in Firefox 3.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability," the notes said. Those changes "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."
The Firefox 3 beta had been due to arrive in July, and there's no word yet on when the software will come out of beta. "The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users," the release notes said--a polite way of saying it'll be ready when it's ready.
The location bar automatically presents Web pages with the text you type.
(Credit: Mozilla)
A quick test
A quick test of the new browser revealed that various important sites including eBay, Gmail, Amazon.com, and Icanhascheezburger appeared to work fine.
However, I got error messages at two, both with snazzier Web 2.0 user interfaces. Yahoo Mail threw errors and choked, and Adobe Systems' Buzzword online word processor told me the browser wasn't supported. On the other hand, others rich sites were happy, including Picnik and Flickr's Organizr.
Even in just a few minutes of use, I found the location bar's automatic search handy. It popped up lists of previously visited URLs and page titles that contained the words I typed into the location bar, trimming a couple steps out of a few searches.
Yahoo Mail wouldn't work for me with Firefox 3 beta 1.
(Credit: Mozilla)One of Firefox's chief merits is the large collection of extensions that can be downloaded to bring new abilities to the browser. Alas, all four of the ones I use--Fotofox, FireFTP, Delicious Bookmarks, and Foxmarks--don't yet work with the new beta. That's no surprise--the release notes warn such breakage is likely.
Another feature I've been eagerly awaiting is the support for color profiles, which lets people see photos correctly even when they're encoded with color systems besides the long-in-the-tooth sRGB standard. It's not enabled by default, but I switched it on and was delighted to see the test images in a CNET News.com story displayed correctly.
New features
Besides Gecko 1.9, there are a number of areas of change for Firefox 3. Among them:
• Security. New features include the ability to integrate antivirus software with downloads; one-click Web site identity verification; automatic testing to make sure plug-ins aren't older versions found to be insecure and automatic disabling if they are; and support for Windows Vista parental controls.
The location bar indicates bookmarked Web pages with a star.
(Credit: Mozilla)• Ease of use. Touted improvements include downloading that can be resumed after the browser has been restarted or network connection reset; users can zoom in and out of Web pages in their entirety, including layout, text, and graphics; plug-ins can be managed centrally with the Add-On Manager; and mailto links can now launch Web-based e-mail applications such as Gmail, not just local applications on the PC such as Outlook.
• Personalization. Web pages can be bookmarked with one click and tagged with a double-click (though the interface looked rough to me); the aforementioned feature provides a list of possible matching Web pages based on what you type in the location bar; and a new Smart Places folder provides access to pages that are frequently visited or that have been recently bookmarked and tagged.
Qualcomm's handoff of its Eudora e-mail software to the Mozilla Foundation has taken an important step: release of the first beta version of the software, 8.0.0b1.
Mozilla already has an open-source e-mail program, Thunderbird, and the new Eudora will be a branded offshoot with some new features, according to the release site. In addition, a related extension called Penelope will provide some extra features to both Eudora and the regular Thunderbird.
Eudora rose to popularity in the dial-up days of the Internet, but it was mostly supplanted by Microsoft Outlook Express and by Web-based e-mail services. Qualcomm launched its last commercially supported version of its classic Eudora last October. However, six Qualcomm Eudora programmers are now working on the Mozilla version.
The beta version is available for Windows and Mac OS X.
(Via Slashdot)
- prev
- 1
- next
