The speediest browser so far

May 20, 2008 6:39 AM

Firefox 3 - The fastest It's finally out and it is already becoming on the best, fastest browsers ever. It's Mozilla 3 RC1!
posted by maxyRO (15 comments total)

It's very fast and stable. I've been using the previous Beta for a weeks, now. Just be sure not to write over 2.0, since lots of things won't work with it. Yet.

And to think, there are some people still using IE....
posted by BrooklynCouch at 6:43 AM on May 20, 2008

I actually find IE7 to be much more stable than Firefox 2. (But then, I'm on Windows.) Maybe 3 will be an improvement.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:46 AM on May 20, 2008

Erm.

I don't want to be that guy, but this is kind of a lame post.

So fine, I guess I am that guy.
posted by kbanas at 6:49 AM on May 20, 2008

As long as Quicktime doesn't crash it, I'm on board.
posted by fusinski at 6:49 AM on May 20, 2008

Have they done anything to improve the memory consumption yet?
posted by pyrex at 6:50 AM on May 20, 2008

I've actually been using the beta for a few weeks (it came with Ubuntu 8.04). My reaction is: Meh.

Now granted, I also just got new hardware, so I probably wouldn't even notice faster running and smaller footprint. But featurewise, FF3 isn't all that great.

Claimed pros:

• Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
• Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.

I was very excited about these since they were my two major complaints. But I haven't seen either of these in the wild, since neither of these is something I do very often.

Actual con:

• Ugly, space-wasting address bar history with bad behavior and option to disable deliberately removed from about:config. (Typing "am" in the address bar, for instance, no longer just brings up amazon.com, but also a page where the title (not the url) was American or whatever.) Oldbar doesn't totally fix the problem, despite the claim.

posted by DU at 6:50 AM on May 20, 2008

It's finally out and it is already becoming on the best, fastest browsers ever.

I think you just became on yourself.
posted by ColdChef at 6:51 AM on May 20, 2008 [6 favorites]

So, what, they're admitting that they didn't get things right the first two times, and are hoping we'll believe that the third time around is the charm?
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:51 AM on May 20, 2008

Correction: Oldbar no longer claims to recreate an exact clone of the FF2 bar, if it ever did claim that:

Note that the underlying autocomplete algorithm is the Firefox 3 algorithm, not the Firefox 2 algorithm. oldbar only affects the presentation of the results.
posted by DU at 6:52 AM on May 20, 2008

I think you just became on yourself.

And prematurely at that.
posted by JaredSeth at 6:53 AM on May 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

There is a new Netscape! CRAZY!
posted by chunking express at 6:57 AM on May 20, 2008

You know what's cool? Multiple simultaneous selections! You can highlight text and then hold down the Ctrl/Command key and highlight some other, discontinuous block of text. You can then copy all blocks to the clipboard at once.

I'll use this all the time.

Why isn't this built into the major OSes?
posted by grumblebee at 6:59 AM on May 20, 2008

.
posted by caddis at 7:00 AM on May 20, 2008

Saying a product is out and then pointing at a release candidate isn't exactly accurate. RC isn't exactly a beta, but it's not exactly a final release either.
posted by bDiddy at 7:05 AM on May 20, 2008

RC Blue
posted by Sys Rq at 7:06 AM on May 20, 2008