Well, I figured we could use an official Firefox 3 thread for people to talk about the update, issues and new gizmos they discover. I know tons of Dopers are ahead of the curve and running the Beta/RC version for a while now, but I figure the event warrants some discussion.
I went and upgraded a short while ago and it failed to import any of my Firefox 2 settings and bookmarks. Pretty damned irritating. The reason for this I assume is that I had downloaded and tested out FF3 Beta 4 several months back and still had that profile somewhere on my PC even though I uninstalled it and deleted the Programs folder for it. Because of that fact it totally ignored my FF 2 settings and just defaulted to the ancient FF 3 Beta ones. Mozilla, do you think you could have maybe offered me the choice?
Another minor quibble that seems too easy to not have planned for is that it defaulted to the Mozilla Firefox 2 folder in my Program Files folder. So now it’ll forever be labeled as such since that’s what Firefox 2 decided to call it. Very minor, but annoying for us anal folks.
The AwesomeBar is the big buzz it seems and I find it pretty cool, but it has it’s problems. First I’m paranoid that it’s using a lot of processor power in order to constantly generate that list every time I try and navigate somewhere which is bad since most people seem to prefer a lean, fast browser above all else. What happens when my history, bookmarks and smart bookmarks are fat and bloated from months of use? Also I’ll probably have to turn it off just to avoid having all the porn I look at from polluting every single destination I go to. There are occasions when other people use my machine afterall.
I grabbed the Mac version, and not a single problem yet (except that the new buttons/toolbar are ass ugly, but thankfully the theme skinning guys are on the ball). I think I like the awesomebar: I’m thinking of it as basically Quicksilver (the best app for the Mac ever invented) for a browser. Or another Quicksilver for the browser, in addition to Quicksilver. . .
It’s been pretty darn fast so far, and most of my plug-ins/extensions are updated (except my beloved Unofficial Google Translate! I am sad! Oh. . . and Firesomethingl: “all your brand are belong to Firefox”. . . I miss my Mozilla Hypnoostrich and Godzilla Gotterdammerpanda browsers).
I had to uninstall and go back to 2.0. It just wouldn’t stop tying up the processor. It made navigation so slow and freezy and frustrating that it wasn’t worth keeping it.
How annoying for you. It brought over all my bookmarks and settings just fine (even my browsing history ended up in the “Awesome bar”)… but then I hadn’t played with any of the betas if you think that’s the cause of the problem.
Yeah, the big green back arrow isn’t my idea of terribly aesthetic, but meh can’t get worked up over that; a skin will fix it for those that care.
Most of the addons updated automatically, only had to manually download the right version of Firebug for FF3.
Seems fast and responsive… the render time on the Acid2 test was amazing (I was expecting several seconds after seeing IE8 grind its way through – FF3 was practically instantaneous).
It also picked up one bug in our browser based UI product (our CSS bug – a missing Float – that FF2 hadn’t been fussed about).
My upgrade went pretty painlessly - it kept all my bookmarks and stuff (and even the tabs I’d had open, which I wasn’t expecting). I miss my old theme, but I found another one that’s not so bad.
Edit: Oh, and it looks like Shift+Delete deletes things from the AwesomeBar, so you can hide your porn.
It seemed to double-import my bookmarks, and I had to delete half of them, but that’s not better than importing no bookmarks… It also brought in my saved password data and all that stuff.
And one of my lesser-used extensions was incompatible, and I just deleted it. Two extensions were incompatible and received updates which made them compatible. (Happily, one of those was FireFTP.)
It’s a LOT faster than FF2, which was quite sluggish on my machine. It passed the Acid2 test without problem (as far as I can tell) once I enabled scripting. Is the ‘nose’ in the middle of that face supposed to turn blue when you roll over it?
I’ve upgraded on my MacBook running 10.5.3 and I’ve lost some of my extensions (nothing too big, but I’m going to want mouse gestures back soon). However, I had to install the oldbar extension and set the number of sites the address bar would display back to 30 in the about:config panel to make it look like the old version. I can’t stand the new bar. I’m going to download the Windows version here pretty soon and hope it fixes that massive memory leak I always get.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the new version, but I’m not upgrading until I get some confirmation about addon compatibility.
Specifically, I simply cannot live without all-in-one gestures, flashblock, download statusbar, greasemonkey and tab mix plus. Anybody have any issues with any of these?
Everything seems to work as it should. The Mac version looks a lot more like Safari than version 2 did. I don’t mind it, but I’m notoriously unfussy about these things, so long as they work.
I’ve been running it for a few weeks now. Originally, it didn’t have the “gestures” feature (which I love) but it does now.
I have not had it start completely hogging a processor like 2.0 used to do.
It imported all my bookmarks, and configuration information seamlessly. I like the look and the information it gives in the address bar when you’re typing.
I had the same problem. If you go to Organize Bookmarks and track down bookmarks.htm you can import them. Fiddle with them a little bit (delete your “old” ones) and you’re golden. I was pretty scared there for a bit though.
I upgraded from FF2 without a hint of a problem yesterday. It seems much faster. I’m most pleased with the del.icio.us-styled bookmark tags in addition to folders and being able to move bookmarks between folders.
I want to keep my bookmarks safe online, so I use del.icio.us, but I find managing bookmarks there is a real nosebleed. Ideally, saving or editing bookmarks in FireFox would automatically update del.icio.us.
