Firefoxing away to Version 3

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Firefoxing away to Version 3

Nikhil Rastogi, Jul 06, 2008 0909 hrs IST

The enhancements to the latest version though not revolutionary are certainly noteworthy.

Great upgrade, faster rendering and memory efficiency, excellent security, new address bar is a welcome and incredible extensible.

Firefox 3 no longer supports older OSes such as Windows 9x series; same with Mac OS X versions 10.2 and below

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After roughly three years in development, the venerable browser - Firefox - has only gotten better with age. The version 3 has many new enhancements that I'm sure you'll love. The enhancements aren't revolutionary but are certainly noteworthy. Firefox 3 also brings to the table very many small improvements that go a long way in terms of usability and security.

Although Firefox is very good at what it does best, it did have some nagging issues. Luckily with the success of Firefox 2, the makers didn't rest on their laurels but worked to improve Firefox and lo we have the new improved version.

Smarter memory management, Faster Speed

Firefox version 2 was known to be a memory hog. After initial cold start of browser, it just kept on growing in memory, consuming more and more of memory (so very Microsoft lol). Version 3 has been improved quite a bit from this standpoint. This is achieved by using a new rendering engine, Gecko 1.9 which not only effectively reduces memory fragmentation and removes memory leaks but also renders pages faster and uses fewer system resources overall.

In fact several important features of the Firefox browser were incorporated from other open source technologies such as the FreeBSD project. The new improved memory allocator called "jemalloc'' was written by FreeBSD developer Jason Evans for the FreeBSD 7 operating system.

According to Stuart Parmenter, Firefox developer, posted on his blog, "Our automated tests on Windows Vista showed a 22% drop in memory usage when we turned jemalloc on." For those who'd like to dig in further regarding Firefox 3 memory usage, here is a blog by John Resig who ran tests of various browsers' memory usage including Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer 8 beta and Safari.

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Tag keywords

Firefox Version 3 Review new rendering engine Gecko 1.9 bookmark management Page Zooming enhanced text and graphics support.

Discussion Board

(23) Comments

Sumit

,Bhubaneswar, on Dec 05, 2008 09:03 PM

for me ie rocks :)

Bart

,Eat my Shorts !!, on Nov 10, 2008 05:50 PM

Nice !!

marcia adams

,medway, on Jul 09, 2008 03:45 AM

need to download

Ranabir Ghosh

,Kolkata, on Jul 07, 2008 11:37 AM

There is one downside I found about Fire Fox 3.0, that is there is no option to alphabetically sort your book marks like the previous versions.

Anubhav

,Kolkata, on Jul 07, 2008 09:58 AM

Overall a very good browser.. haven't even used IE for ages now. Nice review from the team

hamid

,bardubai, on Jul 07, 2008 09:44 AM

is best browser

FES

,Miles City, on Jul 07, 2008 06:10 AM

Well, since I have been never used Firefox before, I think I'll stick with Window Explore.. but is that memory usage take big paticipate upon my computer?

Akshay

,Delhi, on Jul 06, 2008 04:18 PM

Are you sure the search in add-ons isn't a beta feature? I am using the final version. It just has the search in downloads window, not the add-ons window.

Noam Nelke

,Beer Sheva, Israel, on Jul 06, 2008 04:27 PM

I think it's an extension that adds those search boxes and "sort by date" buttons. I've used the betas and it wasn't there either.

John

,delniaso, on Jul 07, 2008 05:05 AM

I am also using the final version and it has de addon search box...

Dr. P2P

,Tempe, on Jul 07, 2008 05:00 AM

Problem of systematic crashing has not been addressed. I run an ALIENWARE 9750 with Vista 32 and Sp1. FF3 has crashed every day without fail. A cute dialog box pops up and tells me the obvious (Fire Fox has crashed!!!). The box asks what page I was on, than transmits the info to FF3 central.

Angad

,Delhi, on Jul 07, 2008 03:05 AM

Whoever thought the memory usage would improve is a jackass. FF3 is using 111,315K of memory as i type this, with NO other tabs, or even background programs running. It's like the Vista of the browser world...

Anonymous

,So Cal, on Jul 07, 2008 04:34 AM

Oh please... get over yourself. The memory consumption will obviously vary depending on what sites you view and the many variables associated with browsing. e.g. image quality, dynamic content, plugins, addons, blah blah. if you are seriously sweating 100 megs, you seriously need to chill and upgrade whatever POS you're using. If you can do better... build your own browser.

William

,Atlanta, on Jul 07, 2008 03:39 AM

I have the following results which are apparently different from some of you. FF 3.0 with 7 open windows 68MB

Bhaskar

,Bengaluru, on Jul 07, 2008 02:42 AM

I still don't know why people use IE........ Evry other browser is better than IE and of course FF3 is the best of the lot.

Kate

,Dallas, on Jul 06, 2008 03:40 PM

I'm certainly not seeing any improvements in memory usage with FF3. It quickly zooms to 100,000K on my Intel-based Dell 8300.

brian

,Greenville, on Jul 06, 2008 06:15 PM

I am disappointed too, pretty soon after opening Firefox memory usage is well over 100,00

eddie

,phoenix, on Jul 06, 2008 09:19 PM

My firefox is running at over 200k, is there anything i can do to lower the memory usage?

Zak

,LA, on Jul 07, 2008 02:33 AM

Same thing here

michael

,oxford , alabama, on Jul 07, 2008 12:20 AM

ff3 is much slower in linux fedora 9 and ubuntu hardy but i think there working on the bugs

sachin

,goa, on Jul 07, 2008 12:19 AM

firefox is great but most of extensions that were available with previous version are not available and there seems to some bugs to be ironed out.also new IE 8 is quite fast like firefox

Mark

,Apopka, on Jul 06, 2008 06:44 PM

Wow! for a dummy like me, this review is very instructive. Now, if there is a FF3 manual out there, think I need to do serious reading.

Giovannina

,Reno, on Jul 06, 2008 10:55 AM

Firefox is great! Can't wait for V3 to be available to me.

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