Firefox 3 Beta 5

[engine]

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is a developer preview release of Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only.

[mozilla.com...]

Please read the release notes before choosing to install beta 5

[SEOMike]

I have really enjoyed 3 Beta 4. It's really quite fast. I'm looking forward to trying 5.

[ergophobe]

What's the deal with extensions when trying 3.0b5 - most work? most don't?

In other words, can you use it as your primary browser yet (I need my extensions!)

Release notes say only:

Extensions installed under previous versions of Firefox may be incompatible and/or require updates to work with Firefox 3 Beta 5. Please report any issues to the maintainer of the extension.

[MatthewHSE]

Most of my extensions break whenever I install a new Firefox beta. However, if you download the XPI files for the extensions, you can open them in WinZip (or similar) and edit the MaxVersion of the install.rdf file, after which the extensions will at least install.

Whether or not they'll actually work is another story, but I've had very few problems with that for the past several Firefox versions.

There's an about:config setting that turns off the compatibility check (thus eliminating the repacking procedure outlined above), but I'm not sure what it is right now.

[MatthewHSE]

I found the about:config setting. It doesn't exist by default so you'll have to create it yourself. Go to about:config, right-click and choose New -> Boolean. Name it 'extensions.checkCompatibility' and set the value to FALSE. Then upgrade away and your extensions should be fine, provided you're coming from a 3.x version.

[ergophobe]

Matthew - a source of FF wisdom!

Honestly, lately, I have enough trouble just keeping stable versions of the Mozilla apps running. I had to abandon Thunderbird about a year ago and though I give it whirl with each new release, it just never runs more than a few minutes without crashing. And this has been across three machines and three OSs (Win2K, XP and Vista). Now I find with each release FF becomes less rather than more stable, so I'll probably wait until 3.01 at least.

Sort of a bummer, because in terms of interface, I really like the Mozilla apps and, of course, would hate to have to surf the web without my essential extensions.

[sgietz]

Why is it that, the more prevalent and prolific a piece of software gets, the more buggy and less secure it becomes?

I think I already know the answer, but please chime in.

[Rodney]

Can you run FF2 and FF3 at the same time with no problems on winXP?

[mcneely]

3.0b5 is absolutely the icing on the cake so far.

I've been looking at IEX-8 and it's a sad sad day for Microsoft. Especially when you stack it up to the 3.0b5 Fox.

Put IEX-8 on a Vista and you've got 56k all over again, when you compare the FF Beta running on XP-PRO.

The only trouble I had with the beta so far has been having to deal with that insidious Location Bar Auto Complete. A true pain in the arse I'll say.

No need for it when you've got "bookmarks" right? ... Right.

Other than that, I think this is the best FF browser yet.

[dreamcatcher]

I`ve had a few issues with 3.0. Mainly that when I close it down and re-open it, it sometimes tells me Firefox crashed the last time and asks to restore or start a new session. I also find graphics don`t load as fast in 3.0

dc

[dreamcatcher]

RSS feed links don`t appear to work in FF3. I click the RSS icon, nothing happens. I thought it might have been an add-on, but I disabled them all and still nothing. No biggie, I just copy and paste from the source code.

dc