Firefox 3 Beta 3 Officially Released

firefoxy writes "Mozilla has officially released Firefox 3 beta 3. This release includes new features, user interface enhancements, and theme improvements. Ars Technica has a review with screenshots. 'Firefox 3 is rapidly approaching completion and much of the work that remains to be done is primarily in the category of fit and finish. There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates.'"

Adding bookmarks

[Ctrl-Z]

In nightly builds that have been released since the beta 3 code freeze, the bookmark process has been refined further. When the user bookmarks the page by clicking the star icon in the URL bar, the browser will inform the user that the page has been bookmarked...

I've been using nightly builds for the past month or two, and this is not what I am seeing right now. I only see that box pop up if I double click the star.

Re:So...

[The MAZZTer]

http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html [squarefree.com]

• Memory leaks
  • 333078 [mozilla.org] - XPCOM Cycle Collector [mozilla.org]. (Cycle collection [psu.edu] has similar goals to tracing garbage collection [wikipedia.org] but integrates better with reference counting. Turning on cycle collection fixed entire classes of leaks, both in Firefox and in extensions.)
  • 330128 [mozilla.org] - Calling cancel() on a timer doesn't drop reference to callback.
  • Many more: 331 bugs fixed on trunk with the "mlk" keyword [mozilla.org].
• Code size and memory use
  • 296818 [mozilla.org] - Don't hold onto decoded image data for so long.
  • 143046 [mozilla.org] - Reduce memory use for animated GIFs by storing frames other than the first at the original 8 bits.
  • Take a string constructor out of line. (From 345517 [mozilla.org].) (1% code size win.)
  • 332174 [mozilla.org] - Drop SOAP support. (2% code size win.)
  • 313309 [mozilla.org] - Provide table-driven QI mechanism.
  • 407459 [mozilla.org] - [Windows] Switch from default MSVC malloc to jemalloc for better memory allocation speed and lower fragmentation.
  • Many more: 100 bugs fixed on trunk with the "footprint" keyword [mozilla.org].

Most plugins aren't working yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although if you have a mac, be sure to install the proto theme [mozilla.org]. Although if you have a mac, you also should try the latest Webkit build [webkit.org] too. Its ridiculously fast.

That is all.

Re:Adding bookmarks

[The MAZZTer]

Not that box, apparently there was a notice that appeared when you clicked the star to let you know what the star did (that the page had been bookmarked)... however the notice was both added and removed in nightlies between b2 and b3 (guess it ended up being more annoying than helpful).

Re:Is it faster?

[The MAZZTer]

FF3 is loads faster than FF2. I find that most slowdowns in FF2 were caused by extensions, but FF3 loaded with extensions is just as fast as FF2 in safe-mode. Which is fast.

Re:Is it faster?

[PhrostyMcByte]

Assuming this is a compile from the main trunk, memory usage should be better in this for Windows users. A week ago a ported version of FreeBSD's malloc was checked in. This has much less fragmentation compared to Windows' low-frag heaps which should result in less memory used over time and slightly better performance.

Re:So...

[Cassius Corodes]

High memory usage is different from memory leaks - every time you open a new tab it stores in ram some of the previous and next pages in ram. So if you do a lot of surfing on different tabs it very quickly goes up to 100MB in ram. You can disable that from the settings but you lose the ultra-quick back and forward capability.

Re:Firefox 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is all of (any of) MPL, GPL, and LGPL.

Re:Extensions

[Buran]

I get them to work by setting extensions.checkCompatibility to false.

A few still refuse to work, but most do.

Now, can someone tell me how to keep my bookmarks always sorted by name? The two extensions I know of that do this job ignore my "don't check compatibility" instructions and still refuse to show up in the menus.

Firefox 3 Mac OS X UI

[swid27]

The Proto theme is now the default in Mac OS X; no additional download is necessary.

(If you didn't click the link in the parent post, the upshot is that Firefox now looks a lot more like Safari.)

Re:Extensions

[omeomi]

Exactly! You would think there would be some 'legacy plugin support' for people to enable if they so desire.

There is. Install the Nightly Tester Tools [oxymoronical.com] plugin. It adds a "Make All Compatible" button in your Add-ons dialog that does pretty much just what it says.

Hints

[Arathon]

First of all, I would strongly recommend actually uninstalling (completely) and reinstalling Firefox if you want to use this beta. Some apparent conflicts between my extensions for Beta 2 and this install caused some of the weirdest, buggiest behavior I've ever seen in Firefox. Only by wiping my profile and starting from scratch was I able to get tabbed browsing to work correctly.

Secondly, if you're annoyed by the new theme, just switch to Small Icons. It looks fine, except for the slightly annoying "Home" button.

Speaking of the "Home" button, it's on the Bookmarks toolbar now, in case you were wondering. You can move it back where it belongs while in the Customize Toolbar dialog.

So far, I don't see a whole lot to write home about. The new theme is definitely ugly. On the other hand, the beta feels very stable and very, very fast.

Re:Is it faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've been following the development of Firefox 3, you'd know that there are several major speed, performance and memory usage improvements (e.g this [arstechnica.com], this [arstechnica.com]).

TFA is only talking about "bells and whistles" (most of which are really useful features and improvements) because it's about what's new in beta 3, not what's new in FF3 as a whole.

Re:Firefox 3 Mac OS X UI

[_|()|\|]

If they can't get those details right, they might as well not try to do a "native" theme at all.

List boxes have always been ugly in Firefox. I don't think the theme has any control over this. Buttons look pretty good in 3.0 beta 3, but there are some nasty rendering artifacts on in the tab labels.

I agree with you that the details can make or break the experience. I keep trying to use Emacs shortcuts (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, etc.) in this text area, but this isn't a native control.

From what I've seen in the last fifteen minutes, 3.0 beta 3 is a big improvement. I've been pretty frustrated with Safari's performance. I'm not a kung fu memory master, but I do know that top shows up to 400 MB RPRVT and close to 2 GB VSIZE after it has been open for a while, even with only one or two tabs open. Sometimes when I close a tab it hangs indefinitely with a beach ball, so I have to force quit. If Firefox can spare me that annoyance, I'll forgive a few UI quirks.

Re:acid 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Firefox 3.0 passes Acid 2 [ajaxian.com].

I'm hoping that they bring forward Tamarin support in Firefox. Any chance of getting fast javascript before Firefox 4?

Re:YAY!

[DudemanX]

I think they should improve the AddressBar/Dropdown to incorporate things like being able to remove a URL from the list

You mean like hovering the cursor over a URL in the list and pressing the delete key? Works nicely in 2.x

Re:acid 2?

[Asztal_]

No, not really. ActionMonkey (the project integrating Tamarin/Spidermonkey as part of Moz2) is not ready yet by a long way. According to the "old" timeline, though, there should be a Firefox 4/Moz2 alpha out in Q2 2008 (though I'm not sure I'd trust any timeline from Mozilla, old or new ;-)

http://wiki.mozilla.org/JavaScript:ActionMonkey [mozilla.org]
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_2 [mozilla.org]

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same browser session open for weeks, dozens of tabs opened while browsing aggregator sites, then dropped back down to half a dozen or so standbys once everything's been read. Firefox 3b3 seems to be an improvement so far, but I've only had it installed for a few hours, we'll see how things look in another week or two.

Harsh SSL defaults

[Skunkhead]

Been using Beta3 for a week now through ubuntu-backports, and the thing which irritates me most are the harsh settings towards wrongly configured ssl-servers. It doesn't just spew out a warning box, but tells you that you shouldn't access the site and you have to go to the preferences to set an exception manually. I never really realised how many bad ssl-certificates are out there...

Re:Changing the theme in Linux...

[GauteL]

The Linux theme fully honours the theme selection set by GTK+ now. The screenshots shown are with the Pango theme. If you don't like it, change theme in GTK+/GNOME.

Re:usability

[jesser]

First, I can't authorize *just* this extension. I have to authorize every extensions from the site, which is generally not what I want.

You seem to be describing Firefox 2. This has been fixed in Firefox 3; it takes 3 clicks to install an extension now. (The patch was in bug 252830.)

Try it without installing with Firefox Portable

[CritterNYC]

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 3 was released a few hours after the announcement. It's packaged with a launcher so it runs self-contained so you can use it from a flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc. But it's also handy for trying out the current beta without affecting your local install. You can even run it from your desktop to try it out and then delete it.

It's available from the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 3 homepage [portableapps.com].

Re:YAY!

[naylor83]

Shift+Delete should do the trick.

Re:So...

[irtza]

from what I have heard, it has to do with reclaiming used memory. if you have a a bunch of small allocations between larger page allocations, what will happen is that when memory is freed (to prevent a leak), you end up with small wholes in the memory that are not large enough for another page allocation or to return the block of memory back to the system as unused - ie only 1k of a 4k block is being used. This leads to large amounts of RAM usage. I have heard that opening a new window (not a tab) and closing old windows will occasionally alleviate part of the problem

Re:In Short

[MonoSynth]

Try the Safari/Webkit nighly builds (on OSX) or Opera 9.5 beta.

I use those browsers and wasn't imressed with the 'speed' of FF3 at all. It was, at best, less sluggish than FF2.

Re:If you close the tabs, does it free RAM or Leak

[Shining Celebi]

My typical memory-burning web surfing session is to go to Google News or especially to Fark.com, open up about 100 tabs of potentially interesting news stories, and then go read them one at a time, closing each one after I've read it. It's one thing to have the browser use lots of memory while I've got all the tabs open - but when I've finished with them all, and just have the original page back, or even hit "Home" to get "about:blank", the browser typically *still* has over 100MB of RAM and is often burning 20-70% of CPU.

I've never had Firefox use that much CPU, but many of those tabs you closed are still cached in memory (along with each of their histories) so they'll reopen really fast if you Undo Closed Tab. Closing the tabs does not necessarily mean they're going away. Changing this option [mozillazine.org] in your about:config should keep that from happening (I think), but you'll also lose some of your session restore functionality. I have it on, and I've never had any of the problems you and a lot of other people have, but I hope this helps.

Re:If you close the tabs, does it free RAM or Leak

[MikeBabcock]

How about forever? I've had sessions like that (I do the same thing with Google News myself) that eat up over a gig of RAM and never let it go, even after every tab is closed. One time I closed all my Firefox windows except the download status window just to keep the app running at all, and left it like that for two days -- still no memory released.

Closing that last window of course released all my RAM. Luckily, I have a couple gig available, but its just stupid.

Re:If you close the tabs, does it free RAM or Leak

[pwnies]

Firefox keeps by default ten previously closed tabs in memory. So even if you close 10, you won't get any memory back - because while they don't show up in the tab bar, they're still there, with their forward and back sessions stored in their entirety as well. You can recover closed tabs by hitting Ctrl+Shift+T

Re:Is it faster?

[jeremywc]

Beta 3 has one new feature that I've been waiting years for - you can now type shortcuts in the location bar to reference installed search engines.

This has been in Firefox for quite some time. I use the feature on a daily basis in Firefox 2 right now. To create a shortcut to Google, bookmark the url "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" and set the keyword to g in the Bookmark Properties.