Mozilla Firefox 3, beta 4
What's new?
Firefox 2 suffers massive problems with memory usage, so much so that it's not unheard of for the browser to use half a gigabyte of RAM on a well-specced machine. On slower machines this kind of overhead can cripple the browsing experience. This has been largely remedied in version 3.0, with a daily average RAM consumption in our experience of around 120MB -- still quite high, but far, far more acceptable and in line with other browsers.
New bookmarking features have been integrated, making it easier to add and organise favourite sites. A little star sits in the address bar now, allowing one-click bookmarking. Bookmarks Manager has also been upgraded for easier management of links and tagging, and to reduce browser load times and boost performance.
Report to your manager
Firefox is famous for its wealth of add-ons and these can now be discovered and managed within the 'fox's add-on manager, negating the need to visit Mozilla's site to find extensions. A searchable download manager makes add-ons easier to locate and manage, and downloads can now be resumed between browser sessions.
While Internet Explorer has attempted to innovate, it's simply evolution, not revolution (though Automated Crash Recovery fans may argue this if ACR works like it should). The same can be said for Firefox 3 -- one of FF 3's key improvements is its better management of PC resources, something that should've been fixed in a previous version.
How it compares
Firefox remains the best browser on the whole, with great features, impressive improvements all-round, a revised bookmarking system and thousands of add-ons to make it easy to perfectly customise.
The improvements in performance are stellar, it's got some well-integrated features than everyone will use (resumable download manager, tag-ready bookmarking) and it offers, overall, a better, richer Web experience. We're behind Firefox and we hope that when the final release is out it'll be just that little bit better to boot.
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Penguin30
30/03/2008 08:49 PM
IE is still the best dont care what you say
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firefox is better
31/03/2008 07:09 PM
This article is very true 99% of people who have tried firefox and ie say that firefox is better
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presario
01/05/2008 03:59 AM
I have tried Netscape, IE, Firefox and Safari, and I rate them as follows, Netscape 8.1 Because it is built on firefox code, but you can display pages as though you were in internet explorer, or firefox without restarting. Firefox Because of its stability and code, the browser is inpenetrable Safari because there are features in safari that i have yet to find in other browsers IE because even though this browser is fairly good, it is not because of its code. IE has the most leaks out of all the browsers, and till IE 7 came along, you were better off with Netscape 4.0 litterally.
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Opera Wiki
05/05/2008 07:08 AM
i go for Opera, its all in the package. no need to install addon made by who :) and FF always has core problems, too many crash, memory eatting too much... speed hack needed, addon to do the job right... another words it doesnt come standard!
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Fox
17/05/2008 09:23 PM
Opera 9.5 finally has the large improvement of focusing on the tab to the right when you close one rather than the last viewed. They didn't include the ability to focus on the one to the left, though. And if you want to move to a new version, it doesn't even try to take settings from your last install. The article specifically said memory magagement in FF3 was much improved. Either some of you guys are talking about the current release versions or didn't read the article.
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Fox
17/05/2008 10:25 PM
Nevermind, Opera does import settings.
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Patrick
17/06/2008 09:20 AM
I have always hated IE, so that is the lowest for me. Above that I like safari. Then I like opera and Firefox about the same. I use firefox, because, 1 it is open source, and 2, It comes preinstalled with ubuntu. Yes, I am a linux fan
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remy215
05/07/2008 08:02 PM
opera 9.5 rocks
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anonomous
07/07/2008 09:18 AM
i have IE 7 and i think it is great... i dont think that i will be changing to any of the other becuase IE is works for me...
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viper
08/07/2008 03:10 PM
"IE is still the best"? Have you ever used any other browser? It's both ugly, and full of problems
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get2oops
29/08/2008 02:44 AM
Guys/Girls..Firefox is strict browser .whatever tags of styling ie.in css and in javascript also are fix & they r following that..so they follow standard convension which good..IE is papulu browser watever present it accept..even px is not present,tag is outside style it take into considersation which is not good..caz its take more afford with time..now they realse IE8 which is strict support like firefox but they still work on it..so firefox is baap of IE8.
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