BlogHer - Are you getting the most from Firefox 3? - Comments

Thanks for pointing that

Virginia DeBolt — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:46:46 -0500

remember your password after it works thing. I forgot to mention it and it is a big deal.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Firefox 3 rocks

Liz Henry — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:24:48 -0500

I've been using the beta for a while so the download wasn't a big change for me. Though like you, I downloaded it on the big day! I love the way that Firefox now asks if you want it to remember your password *after* the password has worked. It was a pain before to type my password wrong, tell Firefox to remember it, click okay, then realize it was wrong and go through all that again. What a tiny usability change, yet what a difference it makes!

The larger "back" button also made me really happy.

I've had some problems with Greasemonkey but other than that, everything in Firefox 3 is just better, faster, more sensible.

-----------------
Liz Henry
lizzard@bookmaniac.net
Contributing Editor, World and Latin America

New Firefox is pretty great

KatieBeez — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:16:11 -0500

I've been using it since beta and it's amazing how fast you can get to a page with the new autocomplete feature. I take this feature for granted now, but it really is convenient.

I also really like a Firefox add-on called Foxmarks, which is a bookmark synchronizer. With it, I can have the same set of bookmarks on the 3 or 4 different machines I work on regularly (a couple at home and a couple at work). My bookmarks are organized into folders which further simplifies things for me.

3.1 out now

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:05:51 -0500

Mozilla release Firefox 3.1 already. If you don't have it yet (it should be an automatic upgrade), go check for it. Maybe it will help.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

The Big Freeze

Doris — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:06:07 -0500

Overall, I have really liked the ease of V3. My only concern is that my screen will freeze randomly. After speaking to a few friends, I find that this is not happening just to me.

I use several of the Web Development tools, as well as a few other extensions. I can't find a pattern, it just seems to happen. I'm hoping this clears itself up, or it is a bug they fix soon.

Doris

The Leaky Cauldron

Up to Speed

Octamom — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:56:05 -0500

Thanks for the laundry list of things to notice on the new Firefox v3. I had been playing around a bit, particularly with some of the new features on bookmarks, and your post will help me get even more specific. So far, loving v.3 here!

Octamom

www.octamom.com

the musings of a mother to a multitude

Are you getting the most from Firefox 3?

Virginia DeBolt — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:51:05 -0500

Like millions of others who were willing to play along and help Make History with Firefox 3 and set a world record for downloads, I downloaded Firefox 3 on the appointed day.

Okay, so Firefox set a record and I had a new browser version. I started using it without really exploring what was new and different about it. I've noticed a few things, just from my normal use. There must be other new features that could be good to know about. After all, people were raving about Firefox 3 like it was going to be something really special. You can get a complete list of all the New Features from Mozilla.

I turned to Lifehacker, where they were listing the best new features while Firefox 3 was still in beta.

Lifehacker mentioned the new Add-ons interface. I took a look and found that it was easy to find add-ons, extensions, and themes.

The extra large Back button is a nice features. The best thing about the Back button is that it's greyed out if there's nothing to go back to. That sort of visual reminder can save you a lot of frustration.

Firefox can now be configured to launch an email link in Gmail or Yahoo mail right in your browser. Lifehacker tells how in Set Firefox 3 to launch Gmail for mailto Links. This is a big and welcome change for people who use online mail services rather than some installed software on the desktop like Outlook Express or Eudora.

You get an instant warning if you try to launch one of those phoney bank or PayPal sites that try to scam you out of your account information. Firefox checks sites against the list of Google's blacklisted phishing sites. This new feature could save you money and pain.

Ever had a crash or interruption of service during a big download? The new Firefox download manager can resume an interrupted download. Useful, that.

Now the default theme matches the look and feel of your OS. Since I'm running Mac OS X, I get the Firelight theme as the default. But it's very easy to get a different one using Tools > Add-ons > Browse all add-ons.

Firefox 3 remembers your passwords and learns your browsing habits. It can turn your browsing habits into bookmarks. There's a recently bookmarked item in the Bookmarks bar. You can now add Tags to bookmarks. I think this is a big help as far as organizing and finding bookmarks goes. You can tag a bookmark when you first create it, or do back later and add them.

Of course, once you've tagged something, you can find it and any other items tagged with the same tag in the Bookmarks menu.

A new item in the bookmarks bar called Most Visited may prove handy for you. A blogger with one or more blogs to track may visit the same sites daily, as I do. This item is a help because it gives you quick access to your most visited sites.

The location bar has improved as well. It's now called the Awesome bar. The autocomplete feature opens up with several choices related to what you're typing. Each autocomplete guess from Firefox contains a URL and page titles.

I think the location bar's an improvement. Pam from Nerd's Eye View says,

I hate that stupid Awesome bar. Oooo. I
hate it so much. Did I mention how much I hate that thing?

I think it's possible that she may be of the opinion that she does not view the Awesome bar with high regard. Or something like that.

Firefox claims major speed advantages for Firefox 3 over other browsers, and especially for Mac users because the memory usage has improved. Quite a few people mentioned the speed increase. Megan, from Megan's Minute said,

I think it's fun to use and as advertised, runs faster than
the previous version.

Laura from rare pattern agreed about the speed, and said Firefox 3 making online life much nicer.

I don't know about you, but on both Macs I use regularly, Firefox 2 was crashing all the time. Last night, while writing a blog post for BlogHer, my browser crashed at least a dozen times. On my Mac Pro, Firefox completely melted down -- twice -- requiring complete rebuild from the start, manually adding one plug-in at a time. But I had to stick it out because I need those developer tools. I cannot imagine working without Firebug.

The new UI is clean, and seems to take up a bit less space. And so far FF3 is fast. Me likes.

Sandy Berger, in Firefox 3.0 – Faster and Better, said,

After a few weeks of using Firefox 3.0 on various computers, I am ready to declare it a winner! The best thing about it is that even though it has more features, it is faster than the previous version. In my unofficial tests, I believe that it is the fastest popular browser on the market right now.

If you're a Flock user, Alana Taylor reports in Flock 2.0 Beta: Using Firefox 3 to Bring It All Together that the new versions of Flock, which is built on Firefox 3, works even better as well.