Been using Firefox 2 until 5 minutes ago...

all I can say is sweet jesus this is fast!

This news reaches me just as I test drive Opera Mini 4.1 beta.

And with Ubuntu 8.04 and OpenOffice.org 3 beta but mere days away, beta testers have never been busier.

I'm not usually such an early adopter, but FF3 seems pretty sweet - the page scaling function is great, especially now that the bugs affecting the Reg comments pages have been fixed (HOW did those make it as far as Beta 4 - surely this website has a larger proportion of nerdy beta tester hits than most?!).

...but the hard work is about to start: Getting all those fantastic plugins compatible and up to date. The existing plugins, for myself at least, are the most attractive feature.

but yeah... very ... very ... fast

Why cant MS take a long hard look at firefox and realise IE in any form falls so far short of the standards firefox gives us?

Cant wait for the final release but I agree with the anonymous bugger...

the plugins are key... maybe some backwards compatability (always a fave) until they can get new releases for ff3?

I like it. :-)

Only do this if you're willing to deal with possible bleeding edge extension bugs and security risks!

* Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.

* Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.

* Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.

* Restart Firefox.

AC as I don't won't to be blamed if it all goes wrong!!!

You do have my sympathy

it's installed on mine with 10 or so forward/back buttons across the top...

another Vista Bashing session here, there'll be another one along shortly, no doubt.

It's off topic I know, but is it me, or does the FF2 page really resemble the MSN butterfly shape and colours? Is that irony, or some sort of hidden subliminal remark that has been put there intentionaly.

In regards to FF3, I'll wait patiently. The software and the clients I have won't allow me to fiddle with Beta software. Maybe, I'll install Virtual Windows... is the experience worth it? Talk to me, convince me people, show me the way of the l.. err red fox!

I'm still too much in love with Opera to use anything else, despite most pages looking nicer in the other browsers.

It was Opera's mouse gestures that first did it. I know there are gesture plugins available for FF, but none of them seem as good.

Someone mentioned page scaling - would this not be a particularly useful feature to improve use on the Eee with its 800 pixel horizontal resolution?

Yes it was a running joke that that the only reason to upgrade to Vista is to get the flashy new icons and transparency.

The last boss is really hard and I used lots of Phoenix Downs...

And there was me wondering LOL even sadder I'm mac-ing it

...yes! I've been using beta4 for a few weeks now, and it does seem to use a lot less memory.

Speed is great and all but how do I get to my homepage? Where has the home button gone?

right click on toolbar/address bar, select customise find the home button & drag it to the tool bar et voila.

dunno why they dropped it as defult, but it is there!

And its only crashed 3 or 4 times. Using IE6 that IT requires for intranet is like pulling teeth.

I reverted to FF3 Beta 4 almost immediately after installing Beta 5 !

Why ?

Simple really - Beta 5 refused to work with the add-ons that I have successfully had working in Beta 4 and earlier.

i.e. I'd rather be behind than go without Adblock Plus !!

FF3 leaps ahead again

it's fast, asked me if when closing 6 tabs that I might want to not only be aware I am closing 6 but also save all 6 so I didn't need to remember them.

Nice when windows bug hunting on the net and having multiple forums open.

Only problem I find is the Reg itself. Open red hardware in a tab, the main reg page in another reg tab and then watch firefox jump to 99 % CPU just keeping those two tabs open. :(

I'm with you on this one, Opera may not be perfect but I'm going to stick with it for now

Everyone must switch to firefox right now! Great job mozilla, keep it up

All the love is very nice.

But I have to say, I installed it on a machine with FF2 on - purely for testing.

FF2 no longer worked (not a big issue.)

All my extensions were buggered, and not one of them worked. Looks as though extensions will need to be done from scratch for this version..

In the end, I un-installed. FF2 was left in a shaky state, but worse was to follow. It seems in their wisdom, that FF screws round with the registry, and for example, Outlook would no longer open HTTP links (some might say that's a good idea..)

I had to mess around with the registry, and reset IE settings and a host of other meddling to put things right.

Basically, to cut to the chase, it all looks fine, I'm not that keen on the changes made to the registry, or the things those changes left broken on un-install. My fault, I accept, Beta, but I do hope they get fixed before release, or its going to cause problems.

Don't know how they managed it, but the new default GTK+ theme is even uglier than new default Windows theme (that is at least usable with the small icons). Thank God for 3rd party themes. And if you are not running Gnome the menu and tab text appears to ignores your font settings in ~/.gtk-2.0 and defaults to a ridiculously small size. And the new address bar and new bookmark system still suck.

That's a good idea, expanding the concept of ad blockers to filter out flash movies hosted on external sites.

--

I have to say this looks quite nice on the Mac side, and the Home button showed up by default for me. Much faster page loads, giving Safari a run for it's money.

Their zoom feature works better than Opera's. Opera's +/- keystrokes do a 100% plus/minus, which seems awfully dumb to me. That behavior might be customizable, but I honestly don't use Opera enough to bother checking. I primarily use Opera to test websites, since it's one of my commonly supported browsers, along with Firefox, Safari and IE 6/7.

The fact that all of the latest browsers other than IE display pages with 99% consistently, is enough reason to disregard any IE apologist rhetoric.

"750 changes since the previous beta"

Think Paris. That doesn't sound at all stable to me.

a. If 750 bugs were fixed in beta 5, that means there were at least 750 bugs in beta 4, and that there were at least 750 bugs that were undiscovered or unreported in beta 3. (If not bugs, then they introduced new features in the beta just before creating a release candidate, which I can't believe, but which would equally point to instability.)

b. How many other bugs remain unreported or undiscovered in beta 5?

c. How many new bugs did those 750 changes in beta 5 create?

At this rate, if this really is the last beta, we can expect at least 5 release candidates and official releases before Firefox 3 becomes stable enough for use on computers that people rely upon for work or school.

@Alan Parsons

If you install the NIghtly Tester Tools addon, you can make Adblock Plus compatible with Fx 3. It actually works just fine on Fx3, but the version check in the ABP addon just says it won't.

I just installed Fx 3 Beta 5 and will try it out after I restart Fx. Wish me luck!