Wow. Just tried it out and I was browsing Lifehacker when everything slowed to a crawl on my PC. I checked the task list and Firefox was just gobbling up memory - it got to 568mb before I shut it down. :D Guess I'll wait a little longer...

quagmire0

@Jeff: The same thing happened to me with the Lifehacker posts disappearing, but disabling didn't fix it. However, completely closing Firefox and opening it again (not using the restart button) did.

DK.

dekay46

@Jeff: I just experienced the same "can't see comments" problem, although I hadn't changed anything on my system. A few moments later, FF (2.0.0.9) crashed. When I restarted it, comments appeared again. Strange....

cronimi

It's almost like there's an anti-aliasing problem on Google sites, especially Gmail.

levjoy

I'll install it. It can't suck any more nuts than 2.0.x on my Mac, so I've really got nothing to use. If it gets too bad I'll just switch back to Camino/Safari where I'll continue to do without extensions until 4.x. Please Firefox, don't crush my hopes and dreams this time.

MudMt

@levjoy: I have NOT seen this.

However, good news for Mac users, this version of firefox finally "feels" fast. Maybe it's just my powerbook g4 1.5 ghz, but firefox 2.x was always a dog. So far, not in this version!

nsxstorm

Another question - any Digg users notice that any page on the site never seems to finish loading? I've noticed that I always have either a "Waiting for www.digg.com..." or "Read www.digg.com" in the status bar, and the tab loading icon is constantly spinning. I do not experience that when loading the same pages in, say, IE7.

Jeff

Interesting. I installed the Nightly Tester Tools and enabled All-in-one Gestures v. 0.18.0. After doing that and restarting FF, I was no longer able to see the comments on any LH posts.

Disabling the extension and restarting fixed it.

Also - others who are interested in the memory utilization in 3.0 might want to check out the RAMBack extension. (via this Wired blog post.)

Jeff

Looks good! Any idea when the full version is out?

Djmckee

(That was to Levjoy. Obviously, as none of the rest of us are real.)

NineTailedFox

You are crazy. Your computer isn't even turned on, you're just gazing at a blank screen. This is all in your head.

NineTailedFox

I'm surprised people are complaining about out of non compatible extensions. Haven't you heard of Nighty Tester Tools?
[www.oxymoronical.com]
It wont make the extension work perfectly but it got my install to work almost exactly as it did for 2.0.

DanPinto

I'm on a Mac, and the text in Gmail messages looks really bad, almost unformed. Has anyone else noticed this or am I crazy?

levjoy

Yeah, I'm willing to wait for this. Let's hope it won't be in beta too long. I'll be ready do see that little 3.0 update window pop up :D.

ChristDude

@JEROMY: the program dir is not an issue, it's the profiles I'm concerned about.

piotrusc

@MiddleGeek:
The FF Beta 3 default install directory is Program Files\Mozilla Firefox3 Beta 1 so it will not overwrite your existing install.

I was happy that it did read my existing FF bookmarks and extensions (although most were incompatible).

jeromy

@MiddleGeek: It won't replace it unless you tell it to. I tried it out last week and the only problem I had was the lack of working extensions (I could've fixed them manually but....)
If you uninstall the beta, you may find you need to reinstall your regular Firefox to re-assert itself as the primary browser. My system reverted to IE after the beta was removed and having 2.0.0.9 try to claim 'default' just wasn't working.

xanderificus

If I install the beta, will it replace my existing FF installation? (Like if you upgraded from 1.9 to 2.0.) I seem to remember one of the FF betas allowing you to have 2 FFs installed when one was an unstable beta. I want to review this but don't want to replace my stable release.

Thanks!

MiddleGeek

I got it and it looks like it will be pretty nice I had to go back to my 2version so my extensions would work but I'm looking forward to the new version.

Ninehand

For everyone who don't want to fix their extensions manualy and/or install nighty tester tools:
Just go in about:config and create new boolean key named "extensions.checkCompatibility" and set it to false

Anyway this build is pretty good, only 2 of my extensions are broken: 1passwd and Foxmark synchronizer :(

alekc

I like the changes and can't wait for the final build. I won't go into the bugs as they are a part of the testing process. One annoying one(but livable) though is that when I start FF2 or beta it keeps checking the add ons and goes to the thanks for updating to firefox page. Since I'm in windows i'll do a restart of the computer and reserve my reviews for the next beta.

guyfromtrinidad

Seems to be working pretty well over here, thanks for pointing it out LH.

jalopwill

Yep, I've used the nightly tester tools for ages for the compatibility problem.
As far as posts on LH, I've had the problem of disappearing posts from time to time on my normal Firefox 2 installation. Closing the browser and restarting usually fixes it.

I'm not game enough to try FF 3 yet :)

da5id_nz

I just did the normal install and for some reason can't open Firefox 2.0. (I had found something in Wiki software that wasn't working in 3.0 and wanted to check if it worked on the older version. I consequently had to use the dreaded IE and found it was only not working in 3.0) So any help on running 2.0? I opened it from the start menu and it just opened 3.0.

Destrox

Memory problems are fixed with this which is linked in the article [blog.wired.com]

jalopwill

@quagmire0:
If you are having the memory problems, check out this add-on.
[blog.wired.com]

jalopwill

@ Middlegeek, xanderificus, piotrusc,

please check this tutorial on how to create an alternate profile for firefox if you want to test version 3 and beyond. you can use both FF2 and FF3 with this config but you can run only one instance of that version of the browser at a given time. you cant have both.

villageindian

The Lifehacker Better YouTube extension is disabled for me with a message saying that 'this extension does not provide secure updates' . Everything else seems to be fine except for a few crashes here and there.

13 ideas

@VillageIndian - Thanks very much!!

MiddleGeek

I had a rather lousy go on my first attempt at this beta. This time around, it *ran* fine, but FF3b1 slowed my computer to a crawl and took about 10 minutes to actually close. Ugh. I might try to debug it (and I do have some peculiar hardware), but I'm quite happy with Opera as my primary browser.

Maybe now the memory leaks are solved, FF will take second-place in my personal browser wars, but for now, I'd rather use IE7x64 over FF.

tigerhawkvok

@quagmire0: I got ~850Mb with three tabs. Took a few minutes to get it closed.
I could count the pixels of the Task-Manager window as they appeared on screen. :D

PuckeL

I've been using the Gran Paradisio alphas for some time now. Alpha 7 seems more stable than this release. While I haven't seen the source, this really seems more like a FF 2.1 with the new Gecko 1.9 engine, not 3.0. Looks like the folks at Mozilla are trying to attract some more attention with a mild improvement.
That being said, it is an improvement. I like the new address bar (though I had that already with the great Locationbar add-on) and it handles PHP pretty nicely. I'm not a fan of the new buttons added to the toolbar/addressbar that I can't customize fully; probably an about:config hack to be found there. New versions, new tweaks.

Kafka

ok just tried this out, found the proto skin ok, but the bookmarks toolbar seems to be broken and where is the mac os dictionary? this still isn't a proper mac app it doesn't support services STILL! i've got a good mind to head back to safari

Gonzie

I've had FF3 open and running since yesterday. It's currently using about 234M of memory. I have 14 tabs open, including my Netvibes page (which has about 75 feeds across several tabs), Reddit, Google News/Finance/GMail, Slashdot, wsj.com, Ask MeFi, Facebook, and a couple of forums.

I am using the RAMBack extension, but the only time I've ever seen it free up any significant amount of memory was after closing my Netvibes tab and clearing the caches.

Jeff

Come on guys, the abbreviation for Firefox is fx/Fx, not FF.

kaushalmodi

fx/FX is what is normally used at film/movie lingo to mean effects or special effects like one can find in the Star Wars series. so i'd be hard to mean FireFox using fx/FX.

FF is more like it. get FireFox. (see the two F's there?).

BlackBeard

Well, it seems the back button in Firefox 3 does not work. This can be problematic. Also, when you open a new tab, it does not automatically go to the address bar so you can start typing in the address. You have to manually click up there.

Brendan Ross

yes it should feel faster, as it has a newer, faster rendering engine.
It also successfully renders ACID2.

I'm quite impressed with this BETA, and it is deffinately a rival to Opera. Dunno if ill be switching just yet though, there are still allot of features I prefere in Opera.

Although this BETA DOES appear faster than Opera...

possumboy

I will try this, but to be honest i dont think you are gunnu get much better than the latest versions of Opera.

Firefox continues to annoy me but Opera just keeps getting better & better!

possumboy

QUAGMIRE0,

I think we've got to the root of the problem that you and some other Firefox 3 Beta 1 testers are seeing.

Starting yesterday, we began receiving reports, like yours, of a new memory/cpu usage issue that happens shortly after a normal startup and can spike the CPU and chew up hundreds of MB of RAM. This is apparently happening to people with new profiles or in profiles that have a very outdated list of bad sites for the Phishing Protection feature and the Malware Protection feature.

What's going on is that soon after Firefox is started, Firefox tries to fetch updates to the site forgery and malware lists -- the lists of bad sites that allows Firefox to warn users about suspected Phishing and Attack sites. If the profile has very outdated or no local lists, as is the case for a new Firefox profile, Firefox is trying to bring down these rather large lists in one big chunk rather than slowly in small chunks. This causes Firefox to consume large amounts of CPU and memory and can slow the users machine to a crawl.

This problem is due to the change in the "SafeBrowsing Protocol" which only affects Firefox 3 Beta 1 and nightly build users. If you're on Firefox 2, this isn't going to affect you.

The work-around for this problem was for us to throttle it on the server side. We've done that and if you try Firefox 3 Beta 1 again, it should be fine.

asadotzler