Techmartini.com

Firefox 3 is the fastest and most secure version of Firefox yet.But  why does it crash so often? I am tired of these constant crashes and have switched back to the previous version of firefox.

I constantly bookmark webpages I find in the net, I think this overloads the firefox browser, and so many add ons are pulling firefox 3 down. I tried removing the bookmarks, it worked to some extent. I removed the add ons also, now it works somewhat better. Although the looks are good, usability has come down considerably.

The earlier merits I had found out with Firefox 3, have just disappeared due to this serious flaw. But some of my friends who are using Firefox 3 doesn’t have the same problem,maybe they don’t use the bookmark option or the  add ons why Which increase the usability and increases the functionality of firefox. Without add ons firefox is virtually useless.

Since i myself am not a developer, I urge my developer friends around the world to look into this matter and fix this promptly.

See some of the improvements people claim for firefox 3, BUT THOSE WHICH HAVE BECOME USELESS DUE TO CONSTANT CRASHES

Significant improvements have been made to the way it uses your computer’s resources, so the memory leaks and other performance problems found in Firefox 2 have been stamped  out. Text and image rendering have also been improved.

History, bookmarks and discovery

The location bar, the text field at the top of the window where you enter the web address of your desired destination.

Start typing a URL and the window leaps to your aid, searching the page titles and URLs in your browsing history and offering suggestions for the page you’re most likely looking for. Searches are instantaneous and happen as you type. Continue typing and your searches get narrower. Pick a URL from the list and Firefox will remember your choice. The next time you type that same term, your previous choice will appear near the top of the list, if not at the very top.

I use Google suggest because it behaves in a similar way and I like this feature very much, it helps me and guides me through the process of browsing.

Early testers of Firefox 3 loved this new feature so much, they nicknamed it the “Awesome Bar.”

With Firefox 3’s new bookmark manager, you can mark your favorite sites by “starring” them — click on the blue star in the URL bar and the page is automatically branded a favorite. Again in the gmail way!

Once favorited, bookmarks can be tagged and sorted into folders.

Speed and performance

The previous versions of firefox were slow and dreadful, but now they have improved in every field.The speed is comparable to latest versions of favorite browsers like Internet explorer 7, opera etc.

Security

As the user base of firefox has grown considerably, from software engineers,programmers, geeks to common public, who are not so aware of security and risks, firefox too has come up with some new security enhancements.

Firefox 3 introduces a new visual language to the browser security game. The subtle tinting and the tiny padlock icon in the location bar denoting a site’s safety are being phased out in favor of stark iconography and clearly defined, color-coded cues.

Security warnings come in the form of the passport officer symbol used in international airport terminals worldwide. He shows up as a different color based on the level of security of the site you’re dealing with, and that color is matched by the large button on the left end of the location bar.

Verified, secure sites make the button glow green. Sites with very basic identity information show up as blue, and unverified sites show up as the default gray. Click on the color-coded button and you can see how often you’ve visited the website (if at all), information about the company that owns it and the link to its identity certificate.

Sites with invalid identity certificates show a yellow passport officer and an on-screen warning. Visit a known phishing or malware website and the page is blocked from loading, with a red passport officer and an explanation being shown instead. The list of known attack sites is maintained by the community and updated regularly.

New look and freshness

Older versions of Firefox had the same grey color irrespective of the operating system on which it ran.In Firefox 3, each OS gets its own skin for the browser.

Mac users will see buttons, scrollbars and tabs that finally look not just “Macish” but entirely Mac-native. The same goes for a Windows XP version with green buttons and a Vista version with that OS’s glowing blue appointments. Ubuntu users even get a version that’s, appropriately, boxy and orange.

Back button has been made larger.Mozilla ran its own user tests and found that most people miss the back button with their mice. So, the team made it about 50% bigger.

Better integration with your needs

Application-specific links on web pages can be set to trigger webapps.

For example, you can set up the browser so that clicking on a mailto link opens up in Yahoo Mail rather than in Outlook, or that a calendar event gets added to Google Calendar instead of iCal. This is an extension of what we saw when Firefox 2 asked you how you like to read your RSS feeds — in a desktop app, with Live Bookmarks or in an online tool like Bloglines or Google Reader.

There’s also support for running your webapps off-line. If you go through a quick set up procedure, you can answer messages in Gmail and work on a document in an online word processor, then sync up later when your net access is restored.

Search

Finally, search is everywhere in Firefox 3.Bookmarks are accessible directly from the location bar, but recent downloads and Firefox’s add-on library now have a search box. Most web-based tools use search as an essential component, and it’s because of this emphasis on dynamic search capability that Firefox 3 feels much more in tune with the way we expect our applications to behave on today’s web.

Looks doesn’t matter but, performance does matter.