Firefox 3 RC2 (out of beta!)

[Quantum]

Firefox 3 RC2 has just come out, you will almost not notice any difference between RC1 and RC2 unless your running Firefox in conjunction with certain other applications on a Linux platform and you don't get your Firefox from your distributor.

Get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

RC2 will likely be renamed to Final Release and officially launched before the end of the month.

Firefox 3 is finally out of beta have just released their first (and maybe only) release candidate.

Download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

There's not been very major changes between beta5 and rc1, just lots of polish, general bug fixes, visual tweaks, security fixes, minor performance improvements, and crash fixes. The idea of a release candidate it to get the code tested across a very wide number of people as possible, then if the code still holds up to release it, if any major bugs appear when testing it across so many people then to fix any critical things like security holes and frequent crashes.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

This is the final Beta, the number of Priority 1 Blocking Bugs for Firefox hit 0 the other day, which gives them the clear to start working on the first Release Candidate (they need to get the number of priority 2 blocking bugs down to 0 until they can release that). This Beta the main work has been on:

• Further improving JavaScript Performance
• Improving XP / Vista / Mac / Linux integration based on user feedback
• Polishing off the AwesomeBar
• Expanding the number of languages it's ready for (now at 45, expects to be at 50 for final release)
• Implementing JSON Backup, to fully backup the whole of Places (history and bookmarks), so in event of error there will be full restores to backup from
• A lot of general polish, security features and reduction in the number of crashes

Known issues with Firefox can be found here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b5/releasenotes/#issues

Firefox 3 Beta 4 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Major improvements include:

• New Vista theme and polished Mac theme
• New improved memory allocator to reduce long term memory fragmentation (Firefox shouldn't increase in memory too much over a long period of time)
• PGO enables much faster JavaScript, currently beating all other browsers in benchmarks by a long way
• Improved support for HTML 5 features
• Awesome bar (the address bar) now includes full adaptive learning
• Better search of the download manager and of bookmarks

Also for fellow British users, now includes a British localisation.

Very interesting read about memory usage improvements: http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/


There will be one more beta, beta 5, just to polish things off and then they will be heading towards RC1. Code freeze for beta 5 is already scheduled for just 1 week, so hopefully will be out in about 3 weeks.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements for Beta 3 include:

• Refresh of visual theme with XP, Vista, Mac and Linux (or at least the GNOME variety) (more coming in beta 4 later this month)
• Improvements to download manager's easy of use (more coming in beta 4)
• Improved security against phishing
• Location bar and autocomplete improvements (much easier to find stuff
• 'Get Add-ons' integration
• Huge improvements in speed and memory management, including getting rid over about 100'000 allocators and jumps in the performance JPEGs are rendered

Beta 4 is still to come, it will provide polish to the visual theme and also introduce a new memory allocator called jemalloc which should speed things up significantly and keep total memory usage under tighter control.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 just got released: http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/12/18/firefox-3-beta-2-now-available-for-download/

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements given on the development centre pages are:

    * Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
    * Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
    * Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
    * Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
    * Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

Also the bug of opening JavaScript in a new tab use ctrl click or middle click has been fixed  , this one used to annoy me no end.

Various visual improvements all over the place, particularly 'awesome bar' (the codename for the replacement of start bar, where you type urls in at the top).

There also seems to be a lot of memory and performance improvements going on: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/12/18/bye-bye-allocations/



Anyway, all looks to be going well on track for a very improved version of Firefox.

It's been a very long road to Firefox 3 Beta 1, but it's finally here, you can download here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Remember this is not final release, bugs are expected, please go through the big finding process if you do catch one.

Some key improvements:

• Introduction of "Places" an SQLite based background manager which now controls your Bookmarks, History and Download History. The old system used an extremely bizarre system to store History, which was only secure in how difficult it was to learn. This unifies a large part of Firefox, so improvements made to Places affect a large part of the browser.
  
  
• Introduction of "Cairo" a new internal graphics library so Firefox doesn't need depend on OS dependent rendering, this should mean speed improvements made in rendering will uniformly affect all versions of Firefox
  
  
• Fix of the 'reflow' bug, a bug which affected Firefox's correct rendering of tables and CSS objects by +/- 1 pixel, Firefox 3 now conforms to Acid 2 test, try it here and see how well your browser performs: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2
  
  
• Huge focus on memory leaks, no longer plaguing the browser. Over 300 have been fixed and a new C++ implemented garbage collector has been introduces.
  
  
• New Offline Support Api, so online tools like Google Docs can actually integrate themselves on to your desktop using only Firefox
  
  
• Improved address searching
• Full Page Zooming, not just the increase of text size
• Easier Password manager (no pop-up anymore, instead a nice non-intrusive bar that comes up at the top)
• A more unified GUI ( e.g middle clicking works on more and "open in new tabs" on the books marks doesn't kill all your current tabs)
• Plug-in management (no messing about with about:plugins)
• Better integration in to Vista and Mac OS X
• You can now highlight text word-by-word by double clicking and dragging, clicking and dragging, will highlight letter by letter.
• Support for Animated PNG (APNG)
• Support for Web Apps 1.0, the predecessor to the up and coming HTML 5
• Improved Support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
• Loads of improvements for Extension Development including FUEL: http://wiki.mozilla.org/FUEL
• Over 11'000 Bugs fixed in Bugzilla, including some which have been around since before Firefox 1.0

What's upcoming:

As well as the usual 100s of fixes that go on during a regular Beta life cycle there should be a couple of things of particular note. There should be a visual refresh of the browser, the look of the password manager in particular has been a little controversial, so we may see improvements to the look, especially if a lot of people think the same who start Beta testing it. A new focus on memory fragmentation improvement before final release, read about it here: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/11/10/memory-fragmentation/


Firefox 3 in the news:

Firefox has made 2 big splashes in the news recently. 1 was digg saying Firefox 3 Beta 1 was released some time ago, this unfortunately was a RC of the Beta. Firefox has gone through extensive Quality Assurance to get to Beta 1, part of the reason for the huge delays.

It was reported in the New Your Times that they had a leaked 'meeting notes' that only 1/5 of current bugs would be fixed before final release. This is somewhat out of context as the reporter didn't really understood what a bug meant for Firefox 3, to add proper context to the situation you can read here: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/11/16/what-makes-firefox-3/

But simply but, it was bugs for Beta 1, and it was of the 700 remaining bugs, over 11'000 have already been fixed. And the meeting notes weren't 'leaked', Firefox is a completely open project, all meeting notes are freely available: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page



Well if you download, I hope you like, I'm off to do a clean install to Beta 1 (I'm currently on the nightly build). 

[Exous]

How is IE ever gonna keep up with this? Great updates, will try it out for sure

[TheHalf™]

When I installed Firefox 3 beta 1 all my url icons changed (that you see in your bookmarks) perhaps it's a bug that needs fixing. It's not that it bothers me but how do I restore those icons; I'm sure I can figure it out over time but perhaps someone already has. Images are posted below:

Before and after images:

[Quantum]

When I installed Firefox 3 beta 1 all my url icons changed (that you see in your bookmarks) perhaps it's a bug that needs fixing. It's not that it bothers me but how do I restore those icons; I'm sure I can figure it out over time but perhaps someone already has. Images are posted below:

Before and after images:

That's funny, because I've struggled with this on and off and it was all nicely fixed when I did a clean install of Firefox 3.

So I had a quick look as to how they're stored so you might be able to reset them. They are stored in the same file as the bookmarks, in ASCII format (that's right, the image is saved in text, pixel by pixel). So the only way I see you can reset them without just doing a clean install is to make a backup of your bookmarks, wipe your bookmarks, edit the favicons out of the backup in a text editor and then  import your backup.

That said they probably have a better solution on mozillazine forums.

[TheHalf™]

thankx Quantum...I'll look into that

TheHalf™

[Quantum]

Does anyone know how this topic got merged with the locked Firefox 2 Beta 2 topic?

[Quantum]

Updated to Firefox 3 Beta 2 

[luv]

Ok went and checked it out. I only use Firefox and love it but after reading up on 3, decided to stick with my 2 until it was officially ok to switch over. I'm not computer savvy enough and basically am too chicken. lol

Looks like it's going to be a good one though. I hate IE with a passion. My computer has never crashed so much! Switched to Firefox 2 yrs ago and have never gone back!

luv

[Quantum]

Ok went and checked it out. I only use Firefox and love it but after reading up on 3, decided to stick with my 2 until it was officially ok to switch over. I'm not computer savvy enough and basically am too chicken. lol

Looks like it's going to be a good one though. I hate IE with a passion. My computer has never crashed so much! Switched to Firefox 2 yrs ago and have never gone back!

luv

Yeah, Betas aren't for anyone, they're bug testing so the idea is to report any problems you've found. I don't know how many Betas are planned, but I would imagine about 4 or so. We'll probably get a final release or at least a release candidate for Firefox in February (a release candidate is essentially a final version, but just in case there's some big bug they've missed they might do 1 more just to get rid of it).

[GraffixPro]

Ill wait for it to come out of beta because it will be constantly updated and that to me can get pretty anoyying

[Quantum]

Ill wait for it to come out of beta because it will be constantly updated and that to me can get pretty anoyying

Yeah I guess, speaking of which Beta 3 should be out in less than 2 weeks 

[Quantum]

Updated to Firefox 3 Beta 3, still got Firefox 3 Beta 4 to come later this month and then we should be on the Release Candidates and final release 

[Quantum]

Beta 4 just released.

I and others pushed for a beta 5, which we've got now, but I think that should wrap things up nicely, so I don't think we'll need a beta 6.

The browser is now very stable and I'd recommend it over IE, older versions of Firefox or Opera at this point.

[Quantum]

Added the quite interest link about Firefox 3 memory imrpovements:  http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/

[Quantum]

Updated to the final beta, the first release candidate is now being worked on. Firefox 3 final release is expected to be released in June.