Firefox 3.5: In, out, shake it all about

Does it at least crash less?

I reluctantly upgraded from FF2 (you can fiddle with things to make the AwfulBar go away), only to discover a crash-prone, sluggish monster, full of other, equally irritating UI rubbish (an insane bookmarking scheme, for example). And of course, whenever one expresses dislike for certain things inflicted by the developers, drooling idiots immediately insist on yapping about how they, personally, like those things. As if your personal preferences are in some magical way relevant to mine.

Note to the fans: yes, we know perfectly well that you love the bar, you love tabs, you love all sorts of things. Well, think about all the other garbage so many people love, up to and including Marmite and/or haggis. Just because you like some UI widgetry is not a good reason for there to be no "off" button for those of us who don't. Your inability to think outside your own likes and dislikes is charming, but isn't that largely what everyone hates about certain governments?

Re Awful Bar

Or, alternatively, use oldbar addon.

Either way, it's no biggy

@ Eddie Johnson...

I have to agree with you. I always wonder what people are talking about when they call FF buggy or crash prone. Like you I often have many tabs open and have never had a problem with it. Of course, I run it on several BSD and Linux variant desktop distros which have no reason to include code that would make it crash. On the other hand I have IE on a Windows system at work and with a few, yes 6 or 8 tabs open, it is sluggish and prone to crashing.

I know I sound like a fanboi and I do promote alternative to MS OS, but the only reason for that is that MS, a huge and wealthy corporation, have failed to produce secure, functional, efficient software, when NO OTHER COMPANY has been better placed to do so.

Prefs

@Anonymous Coward:

"As if your personal preferences are in some magical way relevant to mine" I guess you just nulled out your own argument with that statement. Why should anyone be interested in your personal preferences then?

"crash less"?

I don't understand. On my work machine, which is always on (though don't panic, the nearfields, mixer, monitors and other crap aren't), firefox is only restarted after installing an update. It's good people, and gets the job done.

@ Brian

You're missing the point. Are you going to make an application that's intended to accomodate multiple ways in which different people want to use it, or are you going to say "this is how I like it, you should too?"

Furthermore, that was in response to the infuriating, knee-jerk responses that always crop up whenever someone expresses a dislike for the latest shiny fad: "yeah, I didn't like it at first either, but then I grew to love it!" Hey, good for you, but so what? Do you have anything to offer besides the obvious, which is that there are, indeed, people who like this feature?

Anyway, I always wonder what's up with people who think that FF3 is stable. I've got the same extensions (to the extent possible) I used with FF2, on the same linux box, and fairly tame browsing habits - like, for example, Reg Hardware, which worked fine with FF2 but scrolls like molasses now. Or a webmail portal I need to use on occasion that works fine with FF2, Opera, and IE, but crashes FF3. Oh, but I forgot, "it works for me, therefore the bug must not exist."

FF3 is more stable than FF2

For those complaing about FF3 crashing: Upgrading from FF2 to FF3 halved my memory usage and hugely increased stability. From conversations with other users, my experience seemed to be the norm. If you suffered instability, the most likely cause is extensions you were running or something else left over from your FF2 setup - I suggest you try installing with a clean profile.

@ AC 19:02 GMT

Naturally, your own experiences can be accurately extrapolated to be completely and totally representative of the experiences of every single other user on the planet? Not everybody's Ford Pinto exploded, either, you know.

@Frank McLaughlin

The Pinto analogy is both flawed and in poor taste - the Pinto had a design fault (a horrific and fatal one) which Ford knew about and deliberately covered up, to save money. FF3 *may* have problems, but they certainly won't result in you being burned alive.

I've yet to find an instance among colleagues and friends where the cause of FF3's instability was not their own fault, usually because they think that having AV software is guaranteed to keep their machine secure, no matter what bizarre/illicit/illegal web sites they visit.

This is more like the car owners who put petrol in their diesel, or vice-versa, then moan when it doesn't work, although the analogy would be better if the car was free.

If you don't like FF3 or simply can't be trusted near a computer, then don't use it.

crash-prone? not

I've run FF (now FF3) for a long time on windows and it never crashed on me. On the other hand, I upgraded to IE8 recently and it crashed when I visited a MS Office web site for some updates. Credit where credit is due...

@Buggy, with not intention of fixing it.

> and they expect the user to debug their software.

As opposed to Microsoft who take your bug report and do nothing with it at all?

@ AC 07:26 GMT

Well, I don't doubt your experiences, but over here, FF2 worked flawlessly, and FF3 does not. As with at least one other commenter, I have mostly the same extensions, and in my world, Adblock and Noscript are the real attractions to Firefox in the first place. I run linux, I have for years, and all of my other software works just fine. Also, this is a fresh and clean installation, and I visit exactly the same sites I visited under FF2.

I thank you for suggesting that I'm incompetent, but entertaining though a "whose credentials are bigger" contest might be, so what if I was? One product worked and the other doesn't. And back in the real world, I find that "stop using it" is usually not an option if someone hasn't already gone that route. As with so many things in the open-source world, if you want people to use your product, you need to fix problems; if you want to be a tiny niche player, you can do whatever amuses you. But effective advocacy does not in any way entail telling people that they're dunces if they encounter problems (or, for that matter, ignoring those problems entirely).

So, FF3 won't burn you alive, and indeed, comparing it to something that will is arguably tasteless. Fair enough, although the internet seems rather a post-taste medium. The point, though, was that a problem can exist in a product without every single user actually encountering it. So, it works fine for you? To quote AC@19:47GMT, does that necessarily mean the problem doesn't exist?

@ John Tserkezis

Is there any meaningful difference, as far as the end user is concerned? Your point is technically valid, but "yeah, but they suck, too!" is possibly not the best response to any given piece of criticism.