Firefox 3 Do you use it?

[RickyDicky]

After waiting for the bugs to be worked out, I finally moved from Firefox 2 to 3. What a steaming pile of crap! I have never been more disappointed with an upgrade. Awful hangs, using 99% CPU, extensions and add-ons that didn't work or added annoying new encumbrances. It made fonts for many sites all f'd up and even made Windows behave more badly than usual. Fortunately I reverted without any problems - so far!

Maybe I just wasn't doinitrite. Anyone else have similar problems?

 

[kbryc08]

I haven't had any problems with FF 3.0.5. like you have mentioned. The only add-ons I use are NoScript and Flashgot. Maybe once in a blue moon will a page freeze and then I'll have to close it via Task Manager.

Dunno if it makes a difference but I'm running FF on Vista Ultimate x64.

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I had a similar negative experience between 2 and 3. Then it unexpectedly corrected itself. Maybe the same will happen for you, Ricky.

 

[jupiter999]

Too many extension will slow down to freeze...

 

[handyman]

I use it and it is a lot slower than it used to be, but I do have quite a few extensions.

I will try jupiter999's suggestion and see if that helps

 

[Skyraida]

It's been fine for me, with the exception of certain add ons that don't appear

 

[ghost3128]

Presently using it no problems encountered.

 

[Gemeines]

Tried it and it was fine, had nifty features similar to Opera Browser.
I also liked the way it looked better. I was happy....

....Until I tried to use IDM (internet Download Manager) which is an extension I use to bulk download rapidshare and megaupload links.

It crashed every time I tried it. Also right clicking and doing "save as" caused it to lock up most of the time.

No thanks Mozilla, I will stick with 2.

I should have listened to the old saying... "Dont fix it if it aint broke."

I use vista Ultimate 64 bit as well.

 

[jupiter999]

It's best if you could report this to IDM website and Mozilla also...

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I should have listened to the old saying... "Dont fix it if it aint broke."

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." ^_^;

And yes, I would agree that that saying is very appropriate for software and hardware upgrades. However, in Firefox's case, my understanding is that Firefox 3 was not purely cosmetic. It was largely concerned with several security loopholes which were inherent to the architecture of Firefox 2. Like all browsers, it has proven penetrable and exploitable itself, but I guess my understanding is that "people who use Firefox 3 today are as safe as people who used Firefox 2 in 2006; but people who use Firefox 2 today are playing with fire." Or some such. I could be wrong, *shrug*, don't really know much about the Mozilla project and don't really care, just so long as it's free, fast, and spyware-free.

 

[RickyDicky]

Thanks for all your replies. I did do the upgrade for the security upgrades (have since reverted to FF2,) especially phishing protection. I use NoScript w/ FF2 and AFAIK protects me. Am I wrong?

I do have a passel of add-ons. I use FlashGot w/ Free Download Manager. I was using FlashGet but my Avast antivirus kept giving me warnings when FlashGet updated every month. Something about VBS. I'm not sure if it actually had a trojan, or it was just the way the software was coded. The support sucked; with no one from software support visiting the discussion forum, so I ditched it. I do miss it 'cause it was fast and had nice features and easy interface.

The many other add-ons I use are:
Adblock Plus
ColorfulTabs
CookieCuller
Distrust
DownloadHelper
DownThemAll!
Flashblock
FlashGot
Free Download Manager
Greasemonkey
Linky
Location Navigator
NoScript
QuickZoom
Session Manager
Tab Scope

Happy F'n New Year!!

 

[jupiter999]

I highly reccomend Adblock Plus
NoScript is good, but sometimes a bit annoying because it blocks too much...
Of course tweaking had to be done, so not much issue if using it.
I think FlashGot is the most popular addon to everybody...
The other, no comment... Because sucking too much resources...
Above is my own experience only...

 

[RickyDicky]

Did some poking around on the interwebs...decided to try and run FF2 and FF3 at the same time...it works but it's not perfect. Oddly it works better than when I tried to upgrade. IMO FF3 is kinda just FF2 with a sprinkling of the best add-ons built in. That "awesome bar" is just F'ing awful. Found a cool black Google stylish add-on er theme that I really like.

 

[jagoan]

sometimes FF won't load pics or it load slower than IE. I hate it. used to be good.

 

[fr0stbyte]

Huh? FF3 works wonderfully for me. IE sucks like a turtle with cane.

 

[cattz]

The only thing I could complain about in firefox 3 would be that it seems to absolutely freaking hate PDF's if you run into one and click on it thinking it's a link, heh. Will almost always crash the browser or make it freeze up for quite a while (I have pretty high system specs also which makes it odder)

Also, I guess it seems to hate quicktime if you run into it (very rare thankfully in this day and time) almost in the same manner.

But really, it's the same, and it's really quite streamlined with the interface. Although it took a while to get used to it, did pretty fast I guess.

 

[guy]

^ You might try the "PDF Download" extension. When you click on a pdf link, it will pop up asking if you want to download it as a file, view it in an online pdf-to-html converter, or simply open it up in the browser.

Personally, FF3 has been running quite well for me. The only slowdowns I get are with AJAX-heavy websites, but I rarely get any complete freezes. I'm actually running quite a number of extensions too:

Adblock Plus
All-in-One Sidebar
CustomizeGoogle
DownThemAll
DragDropUpload
FireFTP
Gmail Manager
Google Preview
Greasemonkey
Linkification
Menu Editor
Minimap
Mobile Barcoder
Organize Status Bar
PDF Download
Personal Menu
Read it Later
RefControl
ReloadEvery
Screengrab
Stylish
Tab Scope

I was previously using NoScript out of security concerns but frankly NoScript's algorithms simply are not optimized. It actually caused FF to slow down more in trying to filter through all the blocked pages rather than to simply let them all load as normal.

I agree FF3 isn't quite as major an upgrade to FF2 (although in my experience FF3 manages its memory usage better), but I think this will change with FF3.1 when TraceMonkey (the new javascript engine) is released. With TraceMonkey, AJAX-heavy pages will perform significantly faster.

 

[Rhinosaur]

I use it, never had a problem.

 

[CoolKevin]

I have used FF3 for a little while now, and I have no problems,

Thank you Guy for suggesting PDF download

 

[cattz]

I was previously using NoScript out of security concerns but frankly NoScript's algorithms simply are not optimized. It actually caused FF to slow down more in trying to filter through all the blocked pages rather than to simply let them all load as normal.

Ah well, I've been using noscript for probably years, really is all you need and maybe some simple utility add-ons.

Can be annoying, but I much prefer blocking out all the spam, scripts, and advertisement stuff then any negatives you could say it has.

Dunno, if anything it gives YOU control over the sites you visit to more then a degree.

Don't think anyone could talk me out of using it after all the use it's given me, heh.