Loading ...Firefox 3 Alpha 6 now available
Mozilla has released the sixth alpha of Gran Paradiso, Firefox 3 development name. This release comes with a very short delay to the original schedule which is an important achievement considering Alpha 5 was delayed for about a week.
Some minor but nice updates have been added like a cleverer close dialog. In Firefox 2 when you have several tabs opened and have set it to ask for confirmation when closing multiple tabs, it doesn’t make much sense when Firefox asks for confirmation if you have set it to start with the windows and tabs from last time (in Options/General). Now, since it will start with your tabs and windows anyways it just closes. But if you haven’t set it this way it will ask if you want to save the current tabs and windows and have them available the next time it starts. A very nice improvement.
Another enhancement is the addition of a permanent Restart button to the Add-ons manager. Since almost every action in the Add-ons manager requires a restart (like installing, uninstalling, disabling, updating and changing the current theme) I find it a helpful addition.
Another improvement I am not so enthusiast about is the ability to define a keyword for search engines. As you may know, keywords are small words associated to a search engine you can use in the location bar followed by the search terms to perform a search. In the past, there was no obvious way to define new keywords and the process involved bookmarking a search results web page and manually editing the web address. Now it’s just a matter of selecting the search engine you want to add a keyword to in the Search Engine manager and press Edit Keyword…
Since you need the search bar on sight to access the Search Engine Manager and add the keywords I am not sure of how useful it will really be.
Other improvements include the addition of support for site specific preferences as previously reported and the ability to remember a web page text zoom as an example of what this new feature allows.
In the background, SQLite, the database engine that now powers the download manager and Places has been updated to the latest version. The download manager now shows download speeds in MB/s or GB/s as needed instead of KB/s only which could render hard to read numbers.
Other improvements include previously reported XPCOM Cycle Collector that will help reduce Firefox memory consumption and the ability to edit web page contents on the fly.
Current nightlies are being labeled prea7 which would suggest a seventh alpha is expected. This would push Beta 1, originally scheduled for late July, to August’s end. I don’t like delays but if a new alpha is on schedule it is more likely that not many features will be trimmed from the final Firefox 3. I’m still holding to a December Firefox 3 release estimate.
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July 3rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Finally we get something! Here we have a few minor improvements. The optional tab restoration will be very helpful. That’s actually something IE7 pioneered, and I really liked it. Next, there’s the well-needed restart Fx. Site specific preferences is another minor improvement. I don’t think I’ll be using it much, though. Those search keywords sound lame. What I really wish they’d do is make the search box automatically jump back to your default search provider after a given time interval. If that cycle collector has a noticeable impact on memory usage then that should be welcome. As far as the content editing, maybe that will become big in the future, but I doubt that will catch on soon. What I really want is private browsing and location bar enhancements. What happened to enhanced notifications, password manger enhancements (like not remembering failed logons)? Hopefully these will come in the very necessary alpha7. What about places which has been delayed over and over again. It’s starting to sound like this revolution will just be the addition of tags.
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July 4th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Some nice little improvements there.
netster: The rendering engine will be a revolution. The UI should only be an evolution. There’s an extension that will switch your search engine back after 90 seconds, but I can’t remember its name.
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July 4th, 2007 at 2:11 am
There is an extension for EVERYTHING. The thing is, using many extensions can really kill Firefox’s speed and stability. It’s great to have some things built in. Fx2 added many small, great features. Fx3 spent most of development on page rendering. Now we get a few minor changes, but no really useful features. Keeping up to speed with rendering is great, but this must be complemented with some real UI features. You don’t want people to say “oh boy I have an update,” start Fx3, then say, “I guess not.”
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July 4th, 2007 at 2:15 am
I thought this Cairo engine was supposed to pave the way for some great features. Where’s Opera-like page zoom? Where’s real site print preview and printing? The problem is, there is so much to do, and only 1 (if even) alpha to go.
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July 4th, 2007 at 9:07 am
You also failed to mention that this is the first version of Firefox with real native form controls for GTK2 under Linux. Its something thats been wanted for ages but it’s not being mentioned anywhere.
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July 4th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Mike, I’m aware of the GTK2 change but it’s hard to explain in words. Just finished setting up another Ubuntu for this specifically. As soon as I can get some screenshots I’ll add it. Thanks.
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July 4th, 2007 at 11:04 am
“failed to mention”
What’s up wid dat?
Chill man. Percy is doing MozillaLinks in his spare time.
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July 4th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I’d like to switch to Firefox, but until they add the AutoLogin feature that Slimbrowser has, I’ll be sticking with Slimbrowser. Please add AUTO-LOGIN!!!
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July 4th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Yeah, I’m sorry. I knew that was a poor choice of words but only after I submitted the comment. :)
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July 4th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I’m not a developer so do not have that perspective. But the comments about taking extensions into the core of FF itself concern me some. For many users the magic of FF is in the fact that there are a thousand different ways any ten people want to work with their browser. For example, I would never use a feature or extension that automatically does anything with or about a search engine. I am very particular about the search engine preferences and manually edited a bookmark that now sits on my tool bar. So taking this from an extension may be an enhancement for some but “bloat” for me. And that’s the case with a great many features. I personally use way more extensions (52 at last count) than most people would consider sane. FF takes longer to start but after that she still sings for me and she’s singing almost exactly the songs I want.
It must be very difficult for Mozilla to decide what are “core” features and what should be left to the choice of the user through the extension library. But I think the general principle should be to err on the side of caution, keeping anything that is in a gray area out. No one is denied the ability to get the extension and the code remains as tight and subject to as much personalization as possible.
My two bits. I also want to say that while I don’t generally participate in the community because I don’t really have a meaningful contribution that I could make, I am immensely grateful to the coders and the volunteers who maintain the flow information, such as Mozilla Links. I strongly doubt that I am the only one who routinely reads the announcements and discussions without making ourselves known. In my old Fido days we called them lurkers
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July 4th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Looks good, especially the memory cycler which was sorely needed since v2.0
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July 4th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
I’m considering an upgrade. Does this version crash/has bugs?
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July 5th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Seems like some good updates overall, I’m looking forward to putting them through the gauntlet. The multi-tabbed closing I know is a feature others in my family enjoy, although I hate it, so I’m sure they will like this enhancement.
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July 5th, 2007 at 1:03 am
I’m glad to hear that :)
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July 5th, 2007 at 1:13 am
The software does look set for a near December release, and by all accounts, it will no doubt be the best Firefox yet.
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July 5th, 2007 at 2:27 am
This is the link to get Firefox 3.
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Mozilla-Firefox-Final-Download-5787.html
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July 5th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Was wondering about the search engine keywords. Could I type into the url bar, say “goog” then the term I want to search for?
If so that would make it useful, otherwise, i don’t see a point…
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July 5th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Yes you can but as you can see it is not an obvious feature: Mozilla Links first issue featured how to do this in the Better Mozilla section:
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2003/09/mozilla-links-newsletter-1-september-2-2003/
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July 5th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Umm netster007x , you may want to do a little research. SessionSaver predates IE7 by a wide margin, so much so that the feature set has been reimplemented in other extensions such as Tab Mix Plus.
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July 5th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
CTRL + SHIFT + T
The above shortcut restores tabs in Mozilla Firefox that are accidentally closed!
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July 5th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
@belg4mit: IE7 is the first browser I saw to include this feature. What other browser got the feature before it? If another browser did beat IE7, IE7 still beat Fx in getting this.
@Jordan: You can get a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that makes your saved passwords into auto-logons for specified sites. It’s called AutoLoginJ and it should be at userscripts.org The site won’t load right now, though
@Bios: Hopefully future versions of Fx (or any software) are better than their predecessors. What I think should be looked at in an update is change. Is there a large positive difference between the new version and the old version. Honestly, from what I can tell so far from Fx3, I think the best update was Fx2.
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July 6th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I hope they’ll take some time to fix the stability issues with the current version of firefox.
After some of the latestest updates for 2.x firefox have become very unstable crashing daily(sometimes). Not just on my Laptop, old PC and new MacPro but also at colegues, friends and family who are running firefox.
There are also some bugs causing a “cannot click anything” state and for me it have just become too much.
Currently i find IE7 more stable than firefox and that is a sad fact.
I hope version 3 will bring back some of the Coolness that Firefox has to it but untill then i will stick with opera(win) and Safari(osx)
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July 7th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
send firefox3 for my notebook please
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July 9th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Sounds to me like open source is working. Afterall, both keywords and Places already exist in the downstream Linux browser Epiphany. That’s right, I’ve been enjoying that stuff for months now!
But that’s the great thing about open source. Another group takes Mozilla and makes some improvements. If enough people like it, Mozilla brings those back into Firefox.
Viva la revolution!
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July 14th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I think “Do not ask next time” should be replaced by the more intuitive “Do this every time”
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July 17th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
netster007x: you’re a moron. addons exist for a reason. just because YOU want a specific feature included in firefox doesnt mean everyone else has to suffer any form of bloatedness if they don’t want or need it. saying something like ie7 pioneered tab restoration shows how little you know seeing as microsoft were basically the LAST to jump onto tabbed browsing in general.
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July 17th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I’m sure a lot of these feature aren’t just for me. When they started Fx3, they planned some features to include. They didn’t plan many (to prevent bloat) but they did plan some. I think we should get most of these features. Otherwise, what’s the fun of a new release? Look at places. That was supposed to make Firefox revolutionize browsing, by bringing advanced search and management to bookmarks and history. Now the most we can hope for is some useless tagging feature?! If there were no features added, why bother using new releases. Last I checked, Fx1 uses the least recourses.
I know IE was very late in getting tabs. That’s why I switched to Fx in the first place. I never claimed IE was first to get tabs. What I did say is IE7 pioneered the tab restoration option dialog. I haven’t seen a browser other than IE7 (and Fx3a6 which just got it) to have this feature. I think IE7 brought made this mainstream, and so I give credit where credit is due. If you disagree, give me an example.
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October 21st, 2007 at 5:34 am
Yes, doees this firefox have zoom ?
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October 25th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Is version 3 near completion and which of the alphas is a safe bet for a intermediate geek? I’m mostly interested in getting the Gecko engine 1.9.0 max version on this machine. Is it available for separate download and would it work with 2.0.0.8? A program I am interested in checking out requires the new Gecko engine. (Wonders too if this would work with Thunderbird and K-meleon?)
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November 1st, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I work on web, firefox have changed my life in better. I have suerfd more of 1 million pages with firefox.
Where I can found the most stable copy to download of firefox 3?
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November 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Firefox is geting better day by day, but there should need some more improvement in font rendering so that they feel smooth in high resolution LCD displays.
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November 12th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Yeah! I try thi now on my new laptop!
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December 10th, 2007 at 1:56 am
The features of firefox 3 beta 1 version is really good.but the iconic representations shown when a file is downloaded is too difficult to understand… it increases learning time that would actually bore a user
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January 4th, 2008 at 12:58 am
i try the firefox 3 beta2…..i like it..but some how i cannot play the songs on this website http://www.hmongmusiconline.com
any ideas…? i already install the windows media plug in…but it does not work either…please let me know….thanks..!
shoua
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February 13th, 2008 at 4:19 am
This browser the best one of the another browser
Thank you for your post
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