FireFox 3

Anybody other than myself upgrade to FF3?

I got a prompt asking if I wanted to upgrade, thought "Why not? It's just a single mouse click."

Now my browser crashes about twice an hour, and their trick of changing my default download location without telling me where the files were going proved to be endlessly entertaining.

Is it just me and my computer? Should I downgrade to FF2?

tanstaafl.

FF3 works fine for me. It was a bit buggy in the beta versions but I've not had any issues when it went live and my addons were redone.

I've been using FF3 for a couple of weeks too now. I like it a lot, and have yet to experience my first problem with it...

FF3 for me is waaaay better than the older versions. All my addons were complete by about week3 and the memory leak issue the previous version had is gone.

FF3 is rock solid for me, and lightning fast. There's still a few extensions that aren't compatible, but I'll live with it.

You should probably uninstall and start fresh. I wasn't even aware there was a one-click update from FF2 to FF3.

I keep waiting, in hope that more than half of the extensions I currently use with FF2 will get ported to FF3.

Until then, no.

The extension authors better get a move on because Mozilla are totally dropping support for 2.x at the end of the year :|

Mmm.. Okay, I'm taking advantage of the "roll back" capability of my travel notebook to try out FF3 again right now.

Things seem to have improved a bit since last time -- most extensions found updates, and there's a dev version of tabmix+ that works with it now, too. Hurray!

Now if only FF3 would render more pages correctly..

Cheers

Mmm.. perhaps somebody here might have already hacked the version info to permit ClearURL to install .. ?

EDIT: nevermind.. one of my other recently updated extensions has an "override max version check" flag for installing stuff like this. Works fine!

Cheers

Hm. I hadn't heard of ClearURL before. Thought I'd find out what it was. From their web site:


Um, no. Ctrl-L, Backspace is pretty easy.

Yeah, but a single mouse click is even quicker.

I use it primarily when cutting/pasting a new URL into the URL bar -- frustrating when one has to first clear away the existing thing, being careful not to wipe out the clipboard holding the new URL.

But yeah, reaching for the keyboard is another option. I'm just too used to the ClearURL button from Konqueror, and want it in FF as well.

I've now edited the .xpi contents to fix the maxversion string, and also to change the icon to match that from Konqueror. All is well.

ClearURL is probably targeted more at Linux users - gui cut'n'paste using highlighting is different.

As soon as you highlight something under the gui it is selected. Middle clicking then pastes the selection. So if you highlight it to delete it (ctrl-L) then click middle mouse, the thing you just highlighted to delete comes back - suboptimal that one...
Of course ctrl-c/v/x also works but that uses the paste buffer, not the selection.
Of course some applications (oh, emacs, how could you screw this up *so* badly) mix up paste+selection which can be a tad confusing. Understand? No? Not surprised

I use ClearFields 3.01 FWIW

That's funny, I've found that Firefox 3 is *more* stable than any other browser I've used, including IE and previous versions of Firefox. At this point, I'd be suspicious that there's either (a) something else going wrong with the system, or (b) it's a specific web site or a specific third-party extension that's making it crash. What extensions (if any) are you running?




I never ran into this problem. It's always downloaded to exactly where I tell it to download. Very strange!

Yeah, good point.

Under Unix, though, I just middle-click in the browser window with the new URL in my primary selection and bypass the URL bar altogether.

I've upgraded two PC's just last night to FF3 with one click.
I don't notice any changes to my personal settings (ie: download path) nor do I have any problems with stability. Seems fine.
I've also just done a fresh install (not an upgrade) on my new work laptop yesterday. Also good.

I hope you can resolve the problem easily, Doug! Perhaps install again?

Please excuse my threadjacking here, but I was wondering if anyone is aware of anything I can use to fix one of the last remaining annoyances I have with Firefox 3. AFAIK this problem is specific to Mac OS X.

In FF2, and in some of the FF3 betas, if you had a single tab open, then closed it, the tab would close, but the window would remain open, with an empty tab taking the place of the tab you closed.

In FF3 final, however, if you close the last tab, the whole window disappears. This is the more Mac-like way to do things (the application is still running, but has no open windows) but is a bit annoying if you've gotten used to the way the app used to work, and expect the window to still be present.

Furthermore, opening a new window is a more expensive operation than opening a new tab in an existing window, which leads to quite a noticeable delay when I open a link if there are no open windows. The way things used to work, I always had an empty window with a blank tab open, so clicking a link would just open into that first empty tab. Now it has to create a new window (and presumably some extensions have to initialize themselves in that window) which takes a bit longer.

This changed a couple of times in the 3.0 betas, so it seems to me there was some argument about which is the correct behavior. They've obviously settled on "the Mac way", but I was wondering if anyone was aware of any mechanism (config change, extension, whatever) to make it work the way it did before.

See if the extensive options found in Tab Mix Plus will allow you to do what you want. I swear by Tab Mix Plus, it's awesome.

Right now, the main "extensions" page for tab mix plus says that it's incompatible with FF3, but if you look at the detailed description, it gives a link to a forum where you can download a developer build that *is* compatible with FF3.

Turn on "Always show the tab bar".

I already have that set. Having the tab bar always shown doesn't keep the window open when the last tab goes away.

I see a "prevent last tab from closing" checkbox in the Tab Mix Plus options, but I'm not sure if that will do what you want or not.

I see a "Do not close window when closing last tab by hotkey" setting in TabMix+ --> Events --> TabClosing.

It does under Windows. Sorry.

Thanks, guys. Tab Mix Plus does the trick, with the option suggested by Mark. I jettisoned it a while back when I was running Firefox 2, but I forget why.

I can't seem to drag and move tabs on the tab bar now that Tab Mix Plus is installed. Bummer.

Hm. On my Windows system, dragging and moving tabs on the tab bar still works with Tab Mix Plus.

I don't know if this is a settings thing (TMP has a *lot* of settings), or if it's a Bug-in-tabmix-on-MacOSX thing.

I may have to give Firefox 3 a serious look. I gave up on FF at version 1.5 and then looked at 2.x to confirm it was still a really bug, ugly, slow and bloated pile of junk.

At that time I switched over to the much more usable Camino for Mac OS. I finally gave up on that when they suffered some growing pains during the migration to 1.5.

At that time I started using Safari for the first time with the beta of version 3. I'd never really liked it before that time. It seemed quick and with a couple of tweaks did almost everything I wanted. Still no ad or pop-up blocking (the built in pop-up blocker is not usable). As it went from beta to release Apple seems to have introduced a lot more bugs and stability problems. I have a feeling they're more common or perhaps only present on the PPC architecture. I'd hate to think they're leaving the performance on PPC at this low level, but I wouldn't be surprised.

In general Leopard has been the worst version of Mac OS X I've ever used full time. Again, I suspect PPC performance and stability may be worse than Intel but I have no concrete proof. There isn't a single mainstay application shipped as part of the OS from Apple that is without problems. Mail and Safari crash or freeze weekly. Mail sometimes when just open but not even being used. Safari has been the worst however.

The current version seems to suck up more ram as you open pages but never frees any of it up. This is quickly and easily seen in Activity Monitor where opening Adobe.com will eat a huge chunk of memory. Open a few more tabs and then start closing them and none of the emory gets freed up. After a little while it's using over 500MB of real memory and over 2GB of virtual memory. All while showing only an empty google page.

Firefox in contrast frees up most of the page's memory as soon as you switch tabs. Closing the tabs seems to get you back pretty much to where you were when yhou started the application. I have yet to do testing over a long period of time, since FF was notorious for memory leaks in the past (1.0 all the way through 2)

Does anyone know of a Firefox plugin to provide history in the search field? I like being able to select different search providers, but I really need a history. Even if searching were locked to Google only.

How about something to allow find-on-page as soon as I start to type text? In other words, omitting the need to press CMD-F (CTRL-F) first. I'd also love it if the screen would dim slightly when showing the search matches on the page and if the default highlighted all the matches right away with the first highlighted more prominently. This works quite well in Safari. The plugin/tweaker Stand enables the find as you type behavior.

Apart from that I can't think of too much else. I suppose a more Mac-like UI would be great, but I think I can live with the basic look. Maybe the only UI related thing I can mention off the top of my head would be pop-up lists more similar to how they're done in Safari and every other Mac application. No scroll bar, they can be scrolled by typing text to match, using the cursor keys or moving the highlight with the mouse pointer up or down.

Oh... Then there's also the lack for some basic Mac OS services in Firefox and other Gecko-based software, such as dictionary and spell-check. I understand FF has its own spell check, but I really dig Mac OS' dictionary support and being able to pop up little definition bubbles.

That's built into Firefox 2 and Firefox 3. Just find the option and check it.

Tools, options, advanced, general, "Search for text when I start typing".

I like it, use it constantly, but wish it worked slightly differently: When you press ctrl-F, a fully featured searchbar appears. When you Just Start Typing, a similar searchbar appears but without the full features and without a FIND NEXT button. You have to guess what the keyboard shortcut is for FIND NEXT in order to use the Just Start Typing feature. I wish it simply made the full searchbar appear when you Just Start Typing.

That works fine for me here (Linux). Must be another setting somewhere.

Oh, how about a combination (toggle) reload/stop button? I'm finding the buttons on the FF toolbar take up too much space by default.

I use the Dictionary Tooltip extension for that.

Cheers

That should be any easy extension to create. Anyone?

There's also a "small icons" option when you right-click and customize the toolbar, though small may already be the default.

Cheers

Here's a sample/simple extension I created on request from SWMBO: Open a new tab with Google in it (yeah, I know, just middle click a google icon would also work, but SWMBO..).

You could use this as a template to perform similar simple actions. I originally adopted it from something else, way back when.

I'm readying for the switch.

The find as you type in Firefox isn't as nice as Safari's - the highlighting sucks.

I did find out that the search field does have history. Except you can only accedd it from the keyboard by Up or Down cursor keys in the search field. And here's the most dumb-ass part... The most recent searches are at the bottom of the list that pops down. Doh! Even if only for consistency with the "Back" page history it should be in reverse order.

I tried a few Mac OS X "themes" and found they generally suck. They don't quite get there and apart from making the toolbar buttons more like Safari's, some of them are no more Mac-like than the default theme in FF.

I'd love an extension to get rid of the throbber and instead provide a progress bar within the URL field. I've gotten so used to that in Safari, though I disliked it when I first saw it years ago.

To remedy the lack of a toggling stop/reload, I've just removed both buttons from the toolbar. I can type Cmd-R to reload and stop is Cmd-.

I don't think I am running any.

The crashes always seemed to come after downloading a file.



I had my default location in FF2 set to Desktop. When I did the FF3 update, the default went back to the ordinary default location -- C:\users\[username]\downloads, or something like that. A perfectly logical location, but not easily found if you don't know that's the default. Easy with 20/20 hindsight, I guess.

tanstaafl.

Another threadjack.

Is there an extension to log or record the messages in the status bar? ie: Waiting for google.com, Connecting to spyware.net.

I want to see what servers are sending data to me so I can block them at the host file if I don't like them. All I can find online is a reference to "Capture Me", which looks like a screen shot program.

Thanks!

I haven't looked into that specifically, but Firebug has all sorts of debugging and profiling functionality that lets you see what requests are being made, how long they take, etc. It might be a bit of a roundabout way to do what you want, but it should get the job done.

Fission


Stop-or-Reload Button


FAYT

Happy Birthday, Bitt!

Oo. Race condition with your AV software?

Excellent.

How about something to get favicons next to bookmarks? I find it an odd design choice that they appear for History but not the bookmarks menu.

Does anyone know how to create Smart Folders in the Bookmarks menu? FF3 starts with a few already (such as "Recent") but if I delete them, I can't see a way to put them back nor make new ones.

In general I don't really like the Bookmarks editing window and find it somewhat unresponsive compared to native windows. Safari has done this better in my opinion, but then again, FF bookmarks can have more metadata associated with them (like descriptions and tags).

I notice that FF lacks polish in a number of areas and that's where many add-ons really shine. One thing I noticed after a few minutes yesterday was that there still exists problems bringing the Firefox window into focus. It might launch behind other applications, won't come to the foreground when certain parts of the UI are clicked, window can only be dragged by clicking at the very top of the title bar (Other Mac apps can be dragged by any part of the unified title/tool bar).

I have seen Firefox3 saying "Scanning for viruses" when I download a file on Vista 64, even though my Wintendo has no antivirus software on it. So you might be on to something with Firefox trying to feed the file to the scanner at the same time the scanner is doing something on its own.

Simply asinine: Restoring Firefox's default Smart Bookmarks and Creating your own arbitrary Smart Bookmarks

You can also "Save" searches for a simple text string as a smart bookmark.

Lots of holes in the software that need to be filled by the core team, not add-on makers...

On a brighter note, I did find some other add-ons that address some of the other things I was looking for. Will post in another message next week once I've installed them.

Works for me out of the box.

Thanks!

Happy Birthday Bitt.

On a semi related note to Firefox 3. I've been having an issue with it and the Cisco SDM Java web app. When I close SDM, it will just instantly kill all of my Firefox windows. If I use SDM in IE then it just closes like you'd expect it to.

Check out Smart Bookmarks Bar, Favicon Picker 3, IdentFavIcon and FaviconizeTab.

Thanks Tony, I'll check it out. Those sneaky websites won't be able to hide for long.

Great (not!).

FF3 no longer stores "bookmarks" in a nice, easy to use/edit html file. Now it's some kind of queer format thing with no line breaks.

Ugh.

sqlite, supposedly.

Okay. No HTML file bookmarks but SQLite is a major improvement for all the other data files that are used in Mozilla projects. Mork is dead and I'm sorry that it didn't get thrown out earlier. It is one of the most bizarre and badly designed file formats I've seen.