spreadfirefox So, it's been a while since the guys at Mozilla set the record for number of downloads in a day (I contributed 3-fold I think) and I figured since I wrote a post talking a little bit of trash about Firefox 2 a ways back I should go ahead and comment on Firefox 3.  My biggest issue with Firefox 2, just like a lot of people, was the memory leaks.  It wasn't a very rare occurrence that I would notice that Firefox had slowed to a crawl and I'd have to kill it via the task manager while it was consuming 150 megabytes of RAM or higher.  That's pretty annoying, but I'm happy to say that since I installed Firefox 3 I can't recall having a single crash.  Kudos for fixing that problem!  Not only that but it's much easier on system resources.  Right now the task manager says that Firefox 3 is using a solid 97 megabytes of memory.  Not bad.  I have the same thing open (Gmail) in IE7 and it's using 79 megabytes but at that point we're kind of splitting hairs.

The other biggest improvement I was looking forward to was an interface facelift.  Firefox 2.0 was beginning to look a little antiquated, and when I heard that the browser was going to be optimized for the different platforms (PC, Mac) I was excited.  Let me say that after seeing the OS X version of Firefox 3 the PC version left me underwhelmed.  The most noticeable difference initially is the browser back and forward buttons.  The back button is now stressed (read larger than the forward button) and you can easily tell whether you have anything to go back or forward to because the button will be lit green if that's available.  I've found myself using it a little more frequently than I did in 2.0.

awesomebar Past that the next noticeable feature is the new address bar.  It sort of adapts to your browser's history and will "recommend" links from your history as you're typing them in.  So for instance, say you go to gmail.com a lot.  You can type just 'g' in the address bar and chances are it'll be in the top 3 suggestions so you can arrow down to it and away you go.  I kind of like this feature despite it being a bit jarring at first.  I've also heard some people complain that they don't necessarily want their browser history to be shown in big bold letters for the world to see.  If you don't like it I'm afraid there isn't a really easy way to turn the history feature (dubbed "awesome bar") off, but it's possible by editing your about:config file.  You can visit this article to learn more about that.

I'm sure there are a ton of other very useful features I'm overlooking but those are the ones that stick in my mind.  There's some other aesthetic changes to the interface on PC (rounded corners, darker tab bar) but like I said the OS X version is a lot better.  Under OS X (I'm still running Tiger on my Macbook) Firefox 3.0 has basically been skinned to look like Safari.  I like Safari quite a bit and also didn't like how gaudy 2.0 looked compared to it, so the fact that 3.0 is more streamlined both technically and visually is great.  It may just overtake Safari as my standard Mac browser, who knows.

So really that's it, a short post about Firefox 3.  I'm pretty happy with the fixes and changes overall but, as with most things these days, it's not perfect.  Still if you're a Firefox user and you haven't upgraded because you were (for some very odd reason) waiting to hear what I had to say about it - go ahead and download 3.0.  =P

Now Playing:
The Pogues - The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn
Eternal Sonata