Firefox version 3 makes beta

Version 3 of Firefox, the alternative web browser of choice, is now available to download for its first beta test. After 27 months of hard work the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine has been integrated, and the development team is feeling ready to share its project with the world. Version 3 has improved security features to combat …

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope...

... that they can make it more stable than 2 has been of late, it's been absolute dross lately, I know no end of people who have the same problems - pauses, ignoring clicks on links, crashing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox v Opera

"More than two million lines of code have been changed and 11,000 issues fixed"

And how many thousand new features copied from Opera, I wonder...

[Nigel]

Looks like Firefox 2.5 to me...

Just installed this on a test rig (I happened to have one running... Im not THAT much of a fanboy ;-) ) and it got to say that apart from a star at the end of the address bar there is SOD ALL difference in the GUI.

So if there if no difference to the front end, and its all bug fixes / security updates then surely its just a point release? (note - not necessarily a bad thing)

Mozilla - Dont go down the IE route of throwing in the kitchen sink for the hell of it.

[Smell My Finger]

Hope the memory leaks are fixed

Although I really like Firefox the memory leaks are cripplingly bad and this needs urgent attention. Web browsers really don't need any more features so I hope they focus as much attention on its resource usage as possible.

[Richard Large]

Tabs

Generlaly, I've been quite happy with firefox... as long as I can switch off the tabs, I'll more than likely be happy with this one.

[Anonymous Coward]

300 memory leaks fixed?

Now I'm no expert, but isn't that a lot of leaks to have had in the first place?

Not slagging it off or anything, but are other browsers likely to have that many leaks?

[amanfromMars]

Sold ...... to the Quiet Fella Scanning the Bar

Crikey Crumbs .... Goodies from Google and Such Sweet Sublime Temptation. :-)

How could One possibly Resist.

[b166er]

@Well Endowed

Richard, how can you make a comment like that without explaining it?

Why the hell would you want to turn off tabs?

Do you still have a 2-button mouse without a scrollwheel?

Get a grip man ;p

[Jon Brindley]

Minefield

I've been using this for most of the year. It's had some ups and downs along the way, with some features being removed about an hour or two after being put in. Still seems to take up a lot of memory though.

Oh, and it's gone onto second beta.

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap

Firefox has been crap lately, crashing on all sorts of things for me. I started using Internet Explorer again recently for some websites but the main thing I miss is the instant search when you start typing although I managed to find a plugin for IE7 which kind of emulates the same functionality.

[Thorin]

Reg Authors Make Me Wonder

Do these guys really know anything about technology?

"The Beta 1 is clearly marked for testing purposes only, but when installed will overwrite any existing Firefox installation (unless you're doing something clever with virtualisation or similar)."

Ya because compared to virtualisation it is complete and utter rocket science for someone to do a custom install and place it in a different directory.....I know I'm break it out in sweat just thinking about it.

[Andy]

crashing???

if your PC is crashing using firefox get a decent OS.... works fine on my macbook pro :oP

[Peter Tynan]

and...

...it still supports gopher

[Dougal]

er..

well I do have a decent os - linux, and firefox crashes on there too... :-p

[Bartelby]

Firefox crashing

Don't go to the extreme measure of moving to IE - just stop using Yahoo! Mail

[KDogg]

@ Thorin

I'm not sure how the install works on linux but I can guarantee that on windows nt based o/s the data for your history, cookies, bookmarks, and passwords are stored in a specific spot in your user folder inside the doc and settings folder and a custom install does not give you the option to change that. Therefore, there is a pretty good chance that info would get written over even if you do a custom install.

[Anonymous Coward]

FF and TB ? No Problems here

Not had a problem other than the memory leaks since before 2.001 came out, and that was cured by doing a fresh install instead of an overwrite,so what are you all whinning about?

Its a first BETA FFS how can someone have been using if for a year without access to a time machine or been part of the development team??

Not had any site outside of microshits own give me any problems, trouble with a porn site perhaps??

I have had malicious code crash good old Naviscope, but nothing has affected anything beyond that; mind you I use NoScript and ABP all the time.

get a grip people!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I came, I saw, I could've cared less...

>More than two million lines of code have been changed and 11,000 issues fixed

Oooh, nice math. I guess that leaves the potential for there only being 1,989,000 lines that contain all new bugs. Lovely.

V3? Really? Why? Do we need another pointless browser version war like the old IE/Netscape V2 vs. V3 vs. V4 vs. V5? I remember not even paying attention to new browser versions for a couple years when that happened. Funny, I seem to be doing it again. Am I the only person that could care less?

[Graham Davis]

3 Beta just updated itself to 2.0.0.10

Can't see any difference though