Mozilla's servers wobble as Firefox 3.5 hits interwebs
Firefox 3.5 can now be downloaded from Mozilla’s website, but some of the open source outfit’s servers appear to be having a little lie down at time of writing. Mozilla’s Get FireFox download page is currently displaying an “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” message for some users keen to grab the latest version. Elsewhere, users …
Tracemonkey seems to be doing the business! Shame about add-on support- but then there's always a bit of a delay when a new version hits.
As I read this article, I tried to download and it came in at about 450KB/s, not bad for a little lie down
I found that it did NOT import all my Bookmarks and so if you did NOT take a backup then you are in Deep S*** . All other updates left bookmarks as they were ,this one does NOT.
BE WARNED
It imported all my bookmarks - like every single Firefox release before it.
Must be your system.
Sam from the Google Mozilla page 3.5 was available. Asked to check for new version, no problems, downloaded at full speed, Firefox restarted and everything seems OK.
A couple of plugins are missing.
Seem to have all my bookmarks.
It does seem to be lots faster.
WTF are you smoking? It installed fine without a problem for me. Hell even all the addons worked fine.
I just tried the sunspider test and it completed in just over 2000ms on firefox 3.5 but google chrome did it in 1200ms.
No problems here with bookmarks.
As a normal user, i can't say that I've spotted any obvious differences (ok, the new + tab), but then again, some of my normal sites seem to be rendered slightly differently. I'm buggered if i could tell you how though.
I'm not sure what the big deal is to be honest, if this came out as a standard auto update i probably wouldn't even have noticed it.
*checks bookmarks*
*updates*
*checks bookmarks*
Still there. You must have dodgy third party plugins or a knackered PC or summat.
Good general advice though, it must be said.
HTH
Steven R
No trouble with the bookmarks, or the download speed, however, AVG 8.5.339 safe surfing app is now gone. I was getting used to the green check marks next to my search results, alas.
Of course, this gives me something to do for the next few days, that being looking for the add on support updates.
All my bookmarks are fine. An easy download and install, shame about the add on support.
I use the 3.6a1 nightly (rightly called Minefield :) & to save mucking about I've disabled compatibility checking - this ( http://lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions-work-with-the-firefox-3-beta ) was helpful.
If a compatible version of Tab Mix Plus or FEBE isn't available go to their website forums where you can get the latest build.
I installed it on my second computer and no problems so far.
Nice quick install, no reboot required, all my bookmarks are still there too.
Reg hardware reviews now scroll smoothly even with the funky background that slows down 3.0.
Didn't back up anything, no bookmarks or history issues but haven't noticed the slightest difference in terms of performance. Not tried it on anything else yet.
Only plugin not working was CacheClear.or summat.
Meh. Big deal ...
upgrade from 3.0 was more than smooth ... so far no issues
all my plug-ins work (I might be a bit lucky, I dont use that many plugins)
XMARKS works
WOT works
IETab works
AdBlock works
NoScript works
1-Click Weather works
Hmmm. Seemed to handle all my bookmarks just fine, and I have rather a lot of them, mostly in a group of 20 folders.
It downloaded at amazing speed, no hitches in set-up, appears to be much faster
NICE
Just done it here from the link under "help" and it seemed to keep everything so might depend on previous version (think mine was whatever the last non-beta). Xmarks plugin however could be useful here to make sure there's a constant backup.
Not sure if it's any quicker generally, but at least the install was done in about 2 mins which is better than IE's half hour with 3 reboots. Nicely it also tells you what plugins won't work afterwards, although in my case 2 / 3 were updateable.
I think a Nelson quote is in order: "Ha-ha!" Must've been something you did. (Or maybe the Windows version is a little screwy, I wouldn't know.)
How much faster is it than 3.0 with JavaScript disabled and Adblock engaged, the typical settings of people who really care about performance?
What's that you say, 0%?
Ah, thought so.
Gotta admit though, I'm intrigued by the thought of video without any extensions required. I just hope they know better than to allow *any embedded control whatsoever*.
No problem, but I can't get on the Acid3 test page
http://acid3.acidtests.org/
Its fast , it starts fast .. oh.. and its fast
Lost interest in firefox some time ago when it took longer than Vista to start, tested Chrome and BAM!! converted.....
If they have fixed it 3.5 I'll give it a go ?
Anyone downloaded and tested this yet ? or is it still a dog
I've been using it for a hour or so this morning and it seems quite nice. I don't know what kind of crack the AC with his/her/it's warning about book marks is blathering on about as I've yet to hear anyone making that same claim. Then again there is one nutter (often more) in every crowd. A couple non essential plug ins don't work at the moment but that's not a huge deal since they'll be up to working with 3.5 soon enough. My only real beef with 3.5 is where Mozilla hid the detailed options for cookie and history handling. It's there in the privacy tab but the details are hidden unless you select "Use custom settings for history" from a drop down box. Note to the people at Mozilla, this kind of hiding key privacy options behind options for something totally different makes you look shady. There was probably no malice behind this design decision but it doesn't do anything to help the ease of use.
Meh.
Looks like still no way to use a real bookmarks format (still an insane database kludge instead of a proper text file) and still no easy GUI toggleswitch for disabling the AwesomeBar (which not all of us find awesome). Countdown to some twit spouting out the usual insulting nonsense about how he/she/it didn't like it at first blah blah blah. I wonder if the "add bookmark" weirdo-box can at least be natively resized without resorting to an add-on yet...
Backing up your bookmarks is wise before an upgrade though.
.....the early adopters take the pain whilst add-on developers catch up and debug. I'm happy enough with my existing with exception of its thirst for RAM.
Came in at a quick 966kb/s. All bookmarks OK... but still export them first, I did. The AC with problems might not be the only one ;-)
A trio of addons... html Validator, Leetkey and ProxySel are incompatible, but AdBlock, NoScript, CS Lite and ReminderFox are all working fine.
Looks and performs fine so far.
Been running the RCs for months, works perfectly, no missing bookmarks, and with Add-on Compatibility Checking off it runs all my extras just fine. Only TabMixPlus keeps ignoring the Multirow tab bar setting at startup (but snaps back if you change it), but that's for Gary Reyes to fix.
No backup taken. None needed. Everything hunky-dory.
Woooo - just updated from 3.5 b4 - man there is a bunch of stuff that is very cool - and a few things that really caught my eye:
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Applying_SVG_effects_to_HTML_content
This one is very cool - try typing in the left/right iframes:
https://developer.mozilla.org/@api/deki/files/3217/=filterdemo.xhtml
Also the now checked in support for the ":nth-child/type" CSS selectors which is definately useful
Also an XPCOM interface for WiFi: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsIWifiMonitor
Just love it!!!
Go Mozilla - still setting the benchmarks for other to follow.
Seamless upgrade here, certainly no problem with bookmarks. Works well too.
It did require a reboot though, which on Vista took several times longer than the actual install <sigh>
(And why am I now Stephen 1, when I used to be just Stephen? Who is this new Stephen that has usurped me?)
FF 3.5 seems to have imported all bookmarks here, on OS X and Vista and XP. Could it possibly be that there's a problem at your end?
...all seem to be ok. 3.5 seems to be a little faster as well.
Upgraded three macs at home to FF 3.5 and didn't have any issues with bookmarks on any of them. In fact, I can still run FF 2.0 and 3.0 on those machines and see all my bookmarks.
I upgraded with no loss of data at all, unlike at least one AC above. If you haven't discovered Mozbackup then find it and use it first. You can never have too many backups :-)
Is it faster? On my old P4 it seems to have a definite spring in its step. Adaware, Noscript & Flashblock all seem happy. I see no reason to hold back (assuming you can get hold of the download!)
Like one commenter said, it feels crisp.
Real quick as well. On Fedora 10
@Paul Brain
A completely non scientific test to start up and browse to El Reg seems to show that FF is marginally quicker than Chrome. Only had FF3.5 for 10 minutes though.
@Iam Me & others
It wiped my bookmarks too, so thanks to AC for the warning as I'd backed them up beforehand.
My addons seem to work too, all in all looking good for me on XP at work, now just got to stick it on Linux at home.
I mentioned the clean install and no bookmark issues earlier, but have since discovered that if you try to view BBC iPlayer full-screen it will precipitate a crash. Knew it was too good to be true.
There's bound to be other issues.
5193.6ms +/- 10.1% -- OK the Linux version appears slower than other implementations (as usual). I wonder if this is still true on OSX?
FF crashes when you try to view flash videos on fullscreen (linux+ nvidia graphics).
It works ok with the 3.1 but not with the 3.5! Searching the net, I found a (temp. I hope) solution:
On the flash videos untick the 'use hardware acceleration' preference/
1474.8ms +/- 1.1% approximately 500ms slower than Safari 4.0, but considerably better than Opera 10 beta at 6034.8ms +/- 5.2%
FF3 got 94/100 & v. similar page to reference
IE7 got 5/100 thats FIVE out of 100 & the page looked like shite
That is all.
No problems here, no bookmarks lost, upgrade quick and easy with no reboot required. Only extension that's not working is CustomizeGoogle.
Still using AVG 8.5.339? I'm on 8.5.375 & that is still hunky-dory after installing Firefox 3.5.
"On the flash videos untick the 'use hardware acceleration' preference/"
Thanks for the tip. Will try that later.
It is odd that ff 3.1 worked fine and Epiphany still works fine with Flash video.
