@TehOompa: I don't know, I'll install it now and see.

theNitwit

@swalve: it's a test for a browser's capability to display pages according to w3c standards.

Quine

What's an acid2 test?

swalve

Beta 1 passed the Acid2 test, but for some reason Beta 2 doesn't. It could just be an oddity on my end, has anyone else experienced this?

TehOompa

According to Mozilla bug 289480, comment 172, the problem with the acid2 test is actually a server problem, not a Firefox problem.

mykmelez

Yay, they fixed those memory Leaks!!! That's one of my biggest problems with this browser, and now I'll never have to deal with it again! (hopefully)

Crazysamz

@theNitwit: Good to know. That's so odd, it worked in Beta 1, I wonder what was changed to make it break.

TehOompa

Made it portable and trying it out now. I wish you could filter addons by release. Not as dramatic a change as was FF1 to FF2. Nice though...

Silentheero

Since FF is basically unusable for developers without firebug, I'll mention that you can get a beta that works with FF3b2 at [fireclipse.xucia.com]

llimllib

@swalve: sorry left out the link for the test you can get it here [www.webstandards.org]

guyfromtrinidad

@swalve: you can find the test . Testing it in Vista shows that it is very close to passing the Acid2 test, which is really good for a beta, have done some testing with the memory leaks and in this release it is far improved.

guyfromtrinidad

Btw, I've sent feedback saying that it doesn't seem to be working.

theNitwit

@TehOompa: No, it's not just you, it seems to have trouble displaying the part where the eyes are. Has a scrollbar instead and above it, there's a black part which turns orange with black text reading "Skip to." Is that what happened to you?

theNitwit

Anyone know if you can use Greasemonkey with this release?

jdoree

What would be even better, is if they finally fixed the download manager bugs period.

Most importantly: The annoying "I'm going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs and drink a cup of coffee while waiting for the download to start" bug (FireFox is completely unresponsive during this wait), and the "I never remember to automatically download the filetypes you told me to remember to automatically download by selecting that radio button and hitting the OK button" bug AKA the "I am always going to ask you to save the file, and where to save it no matter what you pick" bug.

Of lesser importance: The "All option buttons are grayed out on the Save As window, but you can click them anyway" bug.

Good to see the security and stability improvements listed though - a built-in site advisor and automatically loading an about:blank type page instead of a phished/forged page is very nice indeed.

It was also nice to read that they are now allowing you to link your webmail to the mailto: instead of having to load Outlook. Gmail ftw!

thejynxed

@MuhammadSchwarz: You can also go into your about:config and add the following flag:

extensions.checkCompatibility

...and set it to False. Of course, use at your own risk.

Misterc

I look forward to using it... but only after I can be sure that I can use greasemonkey/stylish scripts and have my bookmark/address/google bar all together. Great to hear they are fixing the memory problems.

LessIsMore

Greasemonkey incompatibility:
I renamed the .xpi to .zip, opened the install.rdf, and changed the max. version to 3. Renamed zip back to xpi and drag-n-dropped over Firefox. Works fine so far. (This solution is not mine: I saw it in the Greasemonkey extension discussion at mozdev.)

MuhammadSchwarz

@mykmelez: Awesome. That means it wasn't Firefox getting worse.

theNitwit

I use simplemail (ff extension email client not that other email client) so mailto isnt much of a problem...
shrug
but the fact that firefox3b2 is here and without the memory problems it had last time is great

atomic1fire

Nightly Tester Tools (firefox extension) sometimes comes in handy
as far as some extensions go this is when it can
mostly because Im lazy and about:config
ect is too much work

atomic1fire

It's awesome that Firefox is incorporating some of the best features of various extensions. The new auto-complete functionality replaces "Autocomplete Manager", the webmail link (which required an add-on before better gmail), and maybe I can uninstall Download Statusbar if the new manager is good enough. I try to keep extensions low because they slow down browsing, even on a fast computer. Now I just need Firefox to ctrl+tab by recently-used order.

davebarboza

There's also a prototype Mac OS X skin with this release. It makes the browser look so much better for Mac users. That was one of the main reasons I never used Firefox on my Mac (and lack of 1Password support for Firefox). I might be tempted to switch again if the final release is as good as it seems. For now, it serves as a test browser for when Safari goes wonky, and for Stumbling.

lordkertaz

So what's the actual drop in memory footprint look like? With just ffb2 by itself, how much is it using resource wise? Will I be going back to ff? Cause the memory leaks were what pushed me to opera... when you can't check mail or browse the web while rendering a project, it bums you out... I'd like to see some hard numbers on that if anyone has them...

leadster618

@atomic1fire: I also heartily recommend Nightly Tester ([www.oxymoronical.com]), especially if, like me, you a zillions of extensions you absolutely can't live without.

Some still won't work (BetterGmail 2, for example), but a lot will.

Stéphane Gallay

for a moment, my heart went pitter patter when i read the title of this article. i quite enjoy firefox but to know it'll be even better is a treat. my biggest wish going forward? that it's less of a memory hog!

cheesebubble

@leadster - I suppose you can take ff3b2 for both a performance test and mem leak rigorous test to see what you get. Just pretend as if you're a software engineer tester or QA and not just reg. layman consumer... :-) Start by making some test cases for both performance test.

mr_oshodi

Wait.. Ah stuff it. I can't figure out how to edit my comment, so:
Does this build contain the experimental <video> support?
([www.bluishcoder.co.nz])

SohumB

Does this build contain the experimental support? ([www.bluishcoder.co.nz])

SohumB

You forgot to mention this:

Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.

From [www.mozilla.com]

rungss

@Stéphane Gallay: gotta love those nightly tester tools....all my extensions seem to work so far!

robmcbell

"Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged"

Wow, I knew FF is a memory hog, but I didn't know it was so bad =P

Pete

"Cocoa Gestures" now enabled in Beta 2. So long Safari...

Al.Leong

The location bar alone is worth the download. :-)

dekay46

Safari 3 or whatever they just released for Mac has made me ditch Firefox over there, but at my work PC, I'm definitely hoping for the best.

Jarick

@Crazysamz: I refuse to stop using FF, but yeah, the memory leaks are sick at best. If that was the ONLY thing fixed in FF3, I'd be happy. But I'll wait on an install until there's a non-beta.

Chris Moran