Firefoxing away to Version 3

Home » Reviews » Software » Internet

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

Expert Rating :

Expert Review

Previous

next

Finally Page Zooming, enhanced text and graphics support

Page zooming finally comes to Firefox; I can almost hear users of Opera scornfully shout "So what". True page zooming feature is nothing new to speak, but certainly is new to Firefox. Previous zooming (so to speak) only involved resizing the font size. Though this method did make the text more readable on high resolutions, it completely ruined the webpage layout, and made some text unreadable. See image below.

Firefox 2's awkward text only zoom ruins webpage layouts

Firefox 3's wonderful full page zoom

The new page zoom, can make the entire webpage including all the text as well as graphic elements big, perfect for those who use higher resolutions. Shortcut for doing so is simple, hold down Ctrl button and push the middle scroll button on the mouse to upwards, downwards to zoom out. For those with keyboard fetish can use Ctrl + to zoom and Ctrl - to zoom out, Ctrl + 0 will return the page to default view mode

By default this is Firefox 3's behaviour previously assigned to text zooming, however you still have the option to zoom only text if required. Go to View| Zoom, click on the option to Zoom Text Only.

Text selection goodness
It's always easy to miss out the small improvements like Firefox's new text selection. Just like Microsoft Word, double-click a word to select it, triple-click to select the entire paragraph. Plus if you need to select multiple batches of text, hold down Ctrl and select at will. Again this is nothing new Firefox brings to the table but certainly makes life easier for a heavy Firefox user (like me).

Previous

next

Do you agree with this Review?

Yes

133

Down

23

Related Links

Sapphire ATi X1650 Pro Review

Motorola ROKR EM30

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.

Opinion Poll

Which desktop web browser do you use?
Internet Explorer

Firefox

Chrome

Safari

Opera

Other (specify in comments)
Poll Results View Previous Polls