FireFox Release Candidate 1: Enjoy

Scot Witt, Monday, May 19, 2008 @ 11:01 am

Colleagues here at PFD demanded I add this blog after sending it out as an e-mail.

I'm the fellow that translates what the developers say into English for the business people. I then translate the spreadsheets into quasi-code on the reverse communication flow. I'm a Business Analyst. I gather requirements for software projects, hold the developers to the requirements, assist (sometimes do) testing, training, pathway mapping and pretty much anything that anyone on the team tells me to do.

With the caveat that I did NOT do a scientific or even methodological test of the new browser, I present my results:

I installed FireFox 3 Release Candidate 1 on my Windows XP SP3 machine and have been running it through a few of its pace and thought you might be interested in my anecdotal testing:

1. I usually keep 7-10 tabs open when working, in addition to a
   Word/VISIO or Excel Session. I keep Thunderbird (e-mail client) open
   and usually stream audio on WinAmp from www.folkalley.com. With two monitors running, I'm usually down to 1100 Mb of free RAM on FireFox 2 (which usually pulls between 65 and 80Mb of system memory with all the stuff our project team pushes to my browserthe BB DevTeam puts on its pages. I'm running a typical workday session now and FireFox 3 is only using 45MB, reason enough for me to use it.
2. The Bookmark manager is sooooo much easier to use than FireFox 1 or 2.
3. <ctrl><+> and <ctrl><-> magnifiesdoes the entire page, not just the text. Trey kewl.
4. You don't have to go into about:config to monkey around with your MIME associations- there's a new Applications
   icon in Tools that not only allows you to select previously associated applications-file types, but to assign whatever you want to open files.
5. It IS faster- noticeably so on opening sites. Mozilla's DevTeam also integrated the security inside the browser so there are a few new
   twists- for example there's a robot icon to the immediate left of the address field, mouse over and it will tell you if there's any real
   identification for the site (the sites have to enbale the ID through Firefox, so it's TBD [to be determined], I guess, but a nice feature).
6. The release notes show a couple of extremely minor issues- easily handled. And like R2.0, the Add-Ons Manager makes certain your add-ons
   will work in the new browser.
7. Add-Ins- quite a few showed as incompatible with the new version. Colleagues here at PFD World Headquarters reminded me of an add-in called Nightly Tester Tools. I used it back in the FireFox 0.9 days but got so frustrated with it that I abandoned it within minutes. The latest version works like a dream. Install it, on FireFox reboot, override all the incompatible add-ins. Most seem to work. Like any other Add-In issue, you may need to return here and disable them one at a time if you have issues.

These add-ons were incompatible in my version:

• AVG Safe Search
• Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics
• Dummy Lipsum
• FEBE
• FireBug
• Forecastfix
• Google Browser Synch
• InFormEnter
• LinkedIn Companion
• MIME Edit
• PicLens
• Selenimum IDE
• ThinkVantage Password Manager

FireFox3 will continue hunting for your FF2 addons and letcha know when a compatible version is released.

tech development

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