I downloaded Firefox 3 yesterday, along with some 8 million others. Now, not having used any of the previous Beta versions, or really having followed the development and new features, I only figured there would be a smaller memory footprint and a tweaked interface, but I did not really know what to expect.
So, my first thoughts after 24 hours with the new browser:
Memory usage is noticeably lower, even though the browser has only been open for a few hours, meaning that I haven't had time to test the "as time increases, FF memory usage exponentially increases" theory that fit quite well with the memory usage of FF2. Man, Firefox 2 was a whore for memory.I remember that one time, when I left it open for a few weeks, and it was taking up like 600MB of RAM, on my iMac, which had like 768MB total...That was uncool. Anyways, those days are over now, and Firefox will no longer guzzle memory like a Hummer H2 on a tank of premium unleaded.
New interface - wow. Waaay different, yes. I mean, the jump from FF1/1.5 to FF2 was pretty subtle and evolutionary (almost like what a Porsche designer would do) - just a few rounded off corners, a bit slicker, but overall, pretty much the same. FF3 is a pretty big step from FF2. The friendly gray theme was replaced by an ice blue that bears a striking similarity to IE7. The Forward/Back buttons also look like IE7 bits, but on close examination (I had to open IE to check), they are not quite the same. The rest of the browser remains similar to how it was in previous versions, but adopt the same blue colour scheme.
The "awesome bar" is actually pretty cool. It works in a similar way to how the previous URL bars used to work, except now, it searches through the whole URL and the page titles as well. So, for example, if I typed wikipedia into the awesome bar, it would show everything in your history with wikipedia in the URL or the page title, whereas before, it would only show the links with URLs starting with the word "wikipedia". Next idea for the awesome bar to be more awesome: if the term isn't found in history, show the top Google results for it as well.
And now, a word about Firefox 3 stability, or the seeming lack thereof. I think in the last 24 hours, Firefox 3 has crashed more times than Firefox 2 crashed on me in the entire duration I used it for. I don't even think thats much of an exaggeration - I've had to restart FF3 at least a dozen times since downloading. There doesn't even seem to be a specific reason for the crashes, I rarely have more than 4 or 5 tabs open, and I'm not leaving the browser open for days at a stretch. For what its worth, however, FF3 does seem to have particular trouble with the Questionable Content (webcomic) site - its crashed more there than anywhere else. I figure this is just the early version bugs, and will be fixed later on. Or, maybe Firefox 3 just hates me - a friend of mine says that its been stable for him since early Beta stages.
Overall, I like it. The new theme takes a slight bit of getting used to, but other than the instability (I'll take that as early adopter penalty) there is nothing to complain about in the update, and plenty to be very pleased with.
On a semi-related note, this is quite possibly the coolest image ever made: http://www.maybethisisthebiggestlogooffirefoxintheworld.cn/MaybeThisIsTheBiggestLogoOfFirefoxInthisWorld.png (warning - huuuuuuge image file)
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