Firefox 3

Soooo, in case you haven’t noticed - Firefox 3.0 has been released recently. I gave it a try and quickly came to the conclusion it’s another proof that any software package can reach certain level after which modification can do more harm than good. Sure, version 2 had some problems with memory (see Stuart Parmenter’s blog), it probably didnt conform to standards perfectly and had some other problems, but I really liked it. Version 3.0 has some crazy ass address bar and my favourite plugin ever - Google Browser Sync - doesnt work with it (and it never will, it seems). Back to v2 for me. It’s an interesting paradox. We were discussing this at lunch some day, and the conclusion is: software shouldnt be _too _good. First of all - if the version 1.0 is perfect – no one will be tempted to try 1.1 or 2.0, that’s obvious. What’s worse, say, after 20 revisions your program does what’s supposed to do, there are no bugs, it just works ™. The best you can do now is to stop twiddling with it. Of course it’s tempting to add a new cool feature, skin support or possibility to play movies in a goddam MP3 player (yes, Winamp, I’m looking at you)… Sadly, before you can realize, your tiny, fast and useful application turns into 100MB of crap taking 30 seconds to initialize. /this doesnt relate to FF3 BTW, it’s still a very nice application, I appreciate the speed optimizations, it’s just that disadvantages of switching outweigh benefits for me)… Just a general rant/

PS. Remember Matt? He’s just released his new video.

Old comments

mj0lnir 2008-06-21 20:00:44

You can switch back to the older bar using the oldbar addon or modifying some about:config parameters

bubu 2008-06-21 20:56:56

Google Browser Sync will be least of your problems with FF3. Because Google will drop support for its addon after of this year: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-browser-sync-to-be-discontinued.html

macabre13 2008-06-21 21:47:47

You could try foxmark it really works. And another this that sux in ff3 is that he crashes more often than the windows it self. Thats really bad thing ;)

tosiabunio 2008-06-21 22:04:02

The upgrade (today) went quite well for me and I’m very happy with the FF3. The only problem I had was that the installer didn’t elevate under Vista (I’m using a standard user account) and I couldn’t install the FF3 straight after downloading it. I had to rerun the installer as the administrator. That was a huge initial disappointment for me, but later everything went quite well and I’m working with the FF3 as with the previous one, which means it’s heavily customized.

ed 2008-06-22 00:26:31

Matt is insane. How the hell he finds a time to go to all of the places.

stuart parmenter 2010-03-28 20:09:38

[…] an overview of the tactics that were used to reduce Firefox's memory footprint and also reveals …Firefox 3 | .mischief.mayhem.soap.Soooo, in case you haven't noticed - Firefox 3.0 has been released recently. I gave it a try and […]