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June 17, 2008

software

Today is Firefox 3 download day

Posted Jun. 17, ’08, 5:08 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Software

Firefox In case you hadn’t heard, Firefox 3 is being released today. As part of this event, Mozilla wants to set a record for the greatest number of downloads in a day. It’s your duty to grab a copy of the free browser at some point today. And by some point, I mean not right now because at the moment of this being written, the main Mozilla page is still offering Firefox 2.

Version 3 includes an improved Mac interface, though Camino still holds the crown for Gecko browsers as far as I’m concerned. Performance has been improved, the history search built into the location bar is a nice new addition, and for the more security conscious, Firefox includes several new security features that both keep users safer as well as improve visibility of what risk factors might exist.

Firefox fans sound off about your favorite new features.


11 Comments

Dave-O said:

My duty? I guarantee that I won't download it today.

June 17, 2008 6:16 AM
Kelmon said:

"Version 3 includes an improved Mac interface, though Camino still holds the crown for Gecko browsers as far as I’m concerned."

*Deep breath*

Repeat after me, Firefox is not a Mac application.

Here's the thing. I am not downloading Firefox today because I don't want to give the impression that I like it. Firefox is almost a necessity in much the same way that Internet Explorer is - some pages just won't play nicely with Safari or Camino and Firefox will do a better job. My issue with Firefox is that its not a proper Mac application and doesn't support the standard OS X services like, for example, the Services menu, or Network Locations, or Keychain, etc. It's a great application for what it does, and I know loads of people go loopy about its extensions (I still don't "get it"), but it's almost like a separate island on my Mac. Camino is what Firefox should be on the Mac - all the power of the Gecko rendering engine wrapped in a proper Cocoa application that works just like all your other applications do.

So, yes, I will download Firefox 3 but I won't do so this week.

June 17, 2008 6:32 AM
Goobi said:

I love the improved Web Inspector! oh wait, that's in the Safari 4 DP. And oh yes, its better than Firefox. :D

June 17, 2008 7:35 AM
Yoho said:

I want to download it, but I can't get to the link for Firefox 3. As of 9:24am, it's still showing Firefox 2.


June 17, 2008 9:24 AM
Edden said:

I've actually had the beta for a while now and I really like it. Its a lot better then version 2. Safari is still my browser of choice but as I am a web designer I need to make sure my sites display well on ALL browsers!

June 17, 2008 11:40 AM
Edden Amber said:

Its up now at there website =p

June 17, 2008 12:33 PM
kdo Author Profile Page said:

i like firefox. it looks like they've finally fixed the messed up text issues they had with FF2. its got a much improved interface now though.

the big problem is that Mozilla STILL has not fixed one major problem IMO. Neither Firefox 3 nor the current version of Camino are profile aware programs. this is a BIG problem, but Mozilla obviously couldn't care less. they've had forever to fix this problem and haven't bothered.

Safari continues to be the single major browser that IS profile aware and thus will display images correctly, regardless of what profile they are in. its a simple matter of one company caring about color accuracy in viewing web images and one company does not. its sad really as image content is such a major part of the web experience that FF3 so obviously glosses over this major flaw.

its sad really.... i've always wanted to make camino or FF my main browser, but they always seem to give me a good reason not to do it. Safari still owns all on the mac.

does anyone know if Opera or Omniweb are profile aware programs?

June 17, 2008 12:46 PM
Marcus said:

I've downloaded it here at work and I can't get it working when using it from my network account. However, it works when I'm logged into my local account.

June 17, 2008 1:34 PM
kdo Author Profile Page said:

sorry. my bad. i was wrong. FF3 does indeed have color profile support and can be profile aware, it is simply disabled by default. why they disabled it by default is a major bonehead move IMO. but you can go into "about:config" and change it and it does indeed become profile aware and works well. sorry for the rant.

now can someone get on updating firebug to work with FF3 please?

June 17, 2008 3:04 PM
Goobi said:

Downloaded it (cause I have to, for testing). Looks like an improvement over FF2 but nothing compared to Safari.

June 17, 2008 4:01 PM
Kelmon said:

@kdo

The decision to disable Color Profile support, by default, is not an unusual decision by Mozilla. For a long time now I have been tracking an issue in Firefox to implement support for OS X Network Preferences. This support is due to be delivered in the first support release to Firefox 3 and adds a new option to the Network settings in the browser. However, this feature, too, will be disabled by default and I simply can't understand why. This is a standard feature in a Mac application (one that you don't even usually have access to control) but yet Mozilla turns it off and requires the user the hunt through application Preferences to enable it. The only thing that I can think of is that they're trying to keep things standard "out of the box" and since Windows doesn't have this concept, so it's turned off by default. And that's just dumb.

June 17, 2008 11:42 PM

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