Firefox 3

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Silence
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Firefox 3

Post by Silence » Thu Jun 19, 2008 2:17 am

Wow...Firefox 3 has a bunch of slick features that nobody seems to discuss. Here are a few good ones, at least for me:
  • better fullscreen mode (press F11 to get there). Now, nearly all the screen is the page window, and all the toolbars disappear unless you hover your mouse at the top.
  • zooming in and out (press Ctrl + + and Ctrl + -) now keeps you in the same place on the page. In Firefox 2, your position would jump up or down as you zoomed in and out.
There's a lot that I don't like, like the weird tab bar scrolling animation (you need a lot of tabs open to get it to scroll). And the response for the AwesomeBar, which is the new address bar menu, is rather slow. But everything else, especially actual content on web pages, is much snappier. All the JavaScript rendering optimization really shows.

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DX
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by DX » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:49 pm

I actually like the tab scrolling in 3 better than in 2. I'm one of those people who constantly has too many tabs active...I can switch between the ends faster now. On a Mac, the address bar kinda feels like Safari the way it highlights and loads. The history menu is actually quite useful. Zooming in didn't work well before? I'm used to 2-finger zoom/scroll so I wouldn't have noticed :p
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SSCBen
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by SSCBen » Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:52 pm

Sadly Firefox 3 isn't in Gentoo's portage yet. I downloaded it anyway but I didn't plan on installing it then. I always wait for something to show up in portage. Wine 1.0 isn't there yet either, but I don't really care because 0.94x or whatever I have works fine.

Firefox 2 can really be a resource hog for me. I usually have 50+ tabs open over many windows and many virtual workspaces. So I eagerly await any improvements in resource use, and Firefox 3 looks like a champ there.

I still need to check if all my plugins would work but I imagine the majority do already and it won't be long for the remainder to update.

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DX
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by DX » Thu Jun 19, 2008 4:42 pm

All of the extensions broke. Many of my favorites [like adblock] have not yet been updated for Firefox 3. That;s my only complaint so far.
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SSCBen
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by SSCBen » Thu Jun 19, 2008 4:53 pm

That's a shame. I guess I'll wait until all the ones I use regularly are working. I'll have to check them all out first...

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Specter
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Specter » Thu Jun 19, 2008 6:11 pm

Actually Adblock still works on Firefox 3, you just have to re-download/install it from the Addons site. I had Adblock Plus on FF2 and when i got 3 it said it wasn't compatible. But I have it.
The one extension that I loved (Tab Mix Plus) wasn't working with 3 when I first got it, but when I went to the addons page for the extension, there was a link to the authors site posted in the comments saying that it still works for Firefox 3 and that the addons page wasn't updated or something. So now I got all my original extensions and a couple new ones back on FF3. The only thing I hate is that there aren't any good themes yet. (I want my Redshift back :mad: )
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Silence
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Silence » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:59 pm

Funnily enough, I think I may have been wrong about the revision of zooming in and out. Or maybe not...it's working on this page now, but it wasn't on another page I was reading today (on another site). Another neat thing is it changes image sizes now, too...but that's not always a good thing.

I generally have 50+ tabs open too. I'm still on a different computer now, with no extensions, so I "only" have 15 or so open. Funny, when I started using this computer, I could have sworn I'd have died without my extensions.

Specter, did you download one of the alphas, betas, or release candidates? I know Mozilla waited for TMP and a few other extensions to get compatible before the original release, since those extensions have so much clout.

Themes...I'm not really into those. I'd take an all-black theme, but all the ones I've tried leave the tab bar and some context menus with the default colors. And if anything, it's worse to see a strip of white on a dark screen.

Edit: @DX...now I see why I don't like the tab scrolling. If you use the scroll wheel on a mouse, which you can't do, the scroll starts starts slowly, jumps to a blinding, blurring speed, and then slows down. It ends up scrolling everything by half the width of your window.

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C-A_99
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by C-A_99 » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:12 pm

The tab scrolling was a horrid agonizing nightmare which I got over by installing the Tab Mix Plus plugin, which uses muilti-row instead of being stupid and cramming all tabs onto 1 row. It also has its own session manager that saves whether the session is closed normally or by crash/taskmanager. Basically, its one of those plugins that FX itself should've came with.

Right now, I'm still using one of the RC's, need to install the real thing.

Edit: Just installed and the plugin is still working and restored the session.

Now, other than closing tabs down, is there another way to reduce CPU usage?

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Silence
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Silence » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:30 pm

I tend to reshuffle tabs by hand as I browse so related ones are all in a row. In fact, I usually forget about all the tabs except the ten or so that are shown at any one time. TMP also has another very helpful option: opening new tabs right after the current one instead of at the end of the row of tabs.

You could trim your list of extensions. For a while I had over 50 extensions, most of which did nothing, added complexity, had potential for bugs and had potential for memory leaks. On my other computer there are only about 15-20 extensions now, and maybe a couple that I'd actually recommend to everybody in the world. Namely Adblock Plus and the All-in-One Sidebar.

NoScript and TMP are alright, but maybe a little excessive in security and features respectively. Mouse Gestures is good too, but though I only use about 2 of the 16 gestures that I meticulously planned. The third-party Googlebar has a lot of good features, but it's a little out of date and takes up screen real estate. Gmail Manager works well, but in the end all my email goes to my main account so it's useless (except for checking for mislabeled spam). The Stop-or-Reload Button does its job, but it's incompatible with 3.0. Hide Tab Bar was fine for increasing the size of the old fullscreen to only show the address bar, but now that disappears automatically. Session Manager was good, but TMP did the same thing (but in a way I didn't like). Now that I think about it, Firefox+ABP+AIOS is all I need and the rest is just icing on the cake. I can't even remember any other add-ons.

Edit: Ooh, and Stylish! It automatically defaults Wikipedia, Google and a few other sites to CSS with dark backgrounds. Much easier on the eyes and great for productivity, especially for me. But very few others would use it, and there aren't good backgrounds for everything.
Last edited by Silence on Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Specter
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Specter » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:37 pm

i dont know what I'm using, it was a direct link that installed the extension to Firefox, so I'm assuming it's the latest release because its from the authors website.
I'd take an all-black theme, but all the ones I've tried leave the tab bar and some context menus with the default colors. And if anything, it's worse to see a strip of white on a dark screen.
Thats what I'm talking about. Redshift was an all black theme with red accents. The theme I have now (Aero Fox) is all black except for the bar on the bottom of the screen by the task bar which is white and I hate it. I hope the author of Redshift makes a FF3 compatible "Shift" theme. On Firefox 1.5 or whatever it was before 2 there were all different colors. Red, Blue, Pink, Orange, Earth (brown), and a bunch others. When i had that Firefox version i had Blueshift. Then when 2.0 came out the author only made Redshift which I liked because it matched the skin I had on Playstation.com forums.
I like the black themes because it makes the program look cool. I got the vista transformation pack for my Windows XP Professional because I hated the blue/green start bar, and wasn't liking the silver windows theme anymore. I really like the black start bar. haha
My "arsenal": Customizable APH, Storm 600 pistol (still haven't finished fixing this), launcher- Model:AB1.0(Decommissioned), AB1.5, soon AB 1.1(2"rebuild) maybe ill get something else in the future
My site Image My website/forum is back up and running, for the most part after it having been deleted in october

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Drenchenator
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Drenchenator » Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:30 pm

I downloaded Firefox 3 but haven't installed it yet. I use a lot of tabs (only about 12 right now), so I'd appreciate any advances that they did. Should help me out a lot.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

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cantab
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by cantab » Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:45 pm

Been using Fx3 on my desktop since alpha 8. Definitely like the new address bar.
Still version 2 on my laptop, I should upgrade it.

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Silence
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Silence » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:37 am

Ooh, one more thing: Zooming in and out changes your browser's zoom for all pages from that website (based on the domain name). That's really helpful at websites that use infuriatingly small fonts that always needed to be blown up. And it's more flexible than just setting the global default to be zoomed in or out more.

Images zoom with the text too.

I think the first feature was offered in a Firefox 2 extension, but I was too lazy to install it. In retrospect, I really should have done that. :)

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Silence
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Re: Firefox 3

Post by Silence » Wed Jul 02, 2008 2:40 am

I've finally gotten my computer up, with a new motherboard/CPU/heatsink. And while getting add-ons in place, I find this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... es&cat=all

When did that happen? Last I checked there was Mouse Gestures and easyGestures, or should I say easy"Gestures", and that was it. I don't even know where to begin now. Which one to choose? Mouse Gestures, FireGestures, and All-in-One Gestures all have five stars and nearly a hundred reviews. I may go with FireGestures since it has the most weekly downloads by a large margin and it's appeared out of nowhere. I'm still confused though.

Edit: Okay, so Mouse Gestures doesn't work with Firefox 3. FireGestures doesn't support diagonal patterns, and neither does All-in-One Gestures. Great. I might as well not use anything...and I've been getting along fine so far.

Edit again: Mouse Gestures is being rewritten for Firefox 3. I'll wait until then, provided Konqueror doesn't suck me in, which it shouldn't.
Last edited by Silence on Wed Jul 02, 2008 2:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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