Reviews of Mozilla Firefox (v3.5) for Windows

1. 
   Ozon

   Reviewing 3.5 Final (Jul 4, 2009)

   Sure is fanboy in here. I have to laugh at the benchmarks vs. real usage. Sure, the benchmarks makes it look fast but that's on vanilla Firefox and we all know damn well nobody uses vanilla Firefox. How about they add the top 5 or 10 addons to see the real world difference? Firefox hogs memory, hogs CPU, the tear away tabs idea were taken from Chrome and Opera and implimented in a clucky way and worse of all, you can't turn it off, Flash makes the browser crawl to a standstill, auto detect unicode encoding sucks and throws up blocks even when you have the necessary fonts installed, the Find As You Type feature on the Firefox site has a screen shot of the Next and Previous buttons and when you actually use it, it's some crappy bar with no features except the text field, etc.
   
   Look, this browser is good but don't just ignore some of its shortcomings just because you happen to use it. That's just plain dumb.
2. 
   Virtual_ManPL

   Reviewing 3.5 Final (Jul 3, 2009)

   Hmm, no changes compared to RC3...
   but still for me the best browser...
   
   customizable with addons is AWESOME !!! xD
   
   P.S. Why ppl still taking about memory problems...
   Firefox have the BEST memory optimization (finally...), based on tests and my experience...
   
   2GB is STANDARD in todays PC, tomorrow will be 4-8GB...
   who cares when other browser can eat 50MB memory lower...
3. 
   Sativarg

   Reviewing 3.5 Final (Jul 2, 2009)

   I hate to do this but so far I have lost all my Gmail passwords and two other passwords for forums I visit as a result of updating to 3.5. I strongly suggest that any one updating from a 3.0x version use the Password Exporter 1.1 or copy down all of your important passwords before updating. In fact I wish I had backed up my profile. I know better and yet I did not simply copy the profile to a safe place. My fault.
   
   I am voting 3/5 because I believe caution is needed with this update and perhaps a lower rating will help make that point.
4. 
   Blaxima

   Reviewing 3.5 Final (Jul 1, 2009)

   Well I don't see any change in this "final" from the last RC which means yet again in my testing this uses far more memory and more importantly higher cpu load (as the image in my last post shows). Honestly, it has always and still does feel pretty sluggish to use.
   
   @ Aegis69-
   It's funny you should quote half of my sentence and exclaim that I shouldn't add useless posts because a simple click on your name shows nothing but your spamming of the other browsers with (once again) assertions they use massive amounts of memory (neglecting cpu load) through no tests of your own. I don't know about you but I use my computer and not one in some test lab so the results I get matter to me most (hence my "useless post earlier).
   
   It's easy to see when school is out for the summer but Aegis69 my friend, you've still got a lot to learn.
   
   @Virtual_manPL-
   You were tasteful in your response but just to let you know, a portable version is not a modified version. All that is done is an exe is created basically by copying some regestry keys and that exe runs along side the unmodified program and creates a profile folder locally (ie a usb stick). Therefor the problems that are expressed are issues with the core not the portable exe. Since I use Opera Portable it was only fair to compare it to Portable Firefox.
5. 
   Prospero424

   Reviewing 3.5 Final (Jul 1, 2009)

   The memory usage issue is kinda silly, because by any measure out there Firefox no longer uses EXCESSIVE amounts of memory unless there's a serious problem.
   
   But I may as well report my own results. I compared memory usage on my Windows 7 x64 install with a fresh install of Opera 9.64, Safari 4.530.17.0, and Chrome 3.0.189.0. I opened up 12 tabs from the most common sites I visit (I usually have about 8-15 tabs open, so I settled on an even dozen). These sites include a couple of heavy flash sites (YouTube and Last.fm), a couple of text-heavy sites (long threads on forums like Fark and technical forums), a couple of commerce sites (like Newegg and Amazon), a couple of news sites (like Ars Technica and CNN) and a couple of software download sites (BetaNews and Download.com)
   
   Firefox 3.5 Final - 139,444KB
   Opera 9.64 Final - 160,732KB
   Google Chrome 3.0.189.0 - 258,556KB
   Safari 4.530.17.0 - 154,252KB
   
   But here's the kicker: this was with SEVENTEEN extensions and TWELVE plugins installed in Firefox 3.5: Personas, Weave Sync, and a bunch of some of the most popular extensions and plugins.
   
   And Firefox still runs faster than Opera, though a bit slower than Safari and Chrome, though Opera, Safari and Chrome do start up MUCH faster (this is still Firefox's Achilles' heel, and probably always will be)
   
   Your mileage, of course, will vary. Everybody uses a different set of websites and a varying quantity of open tabs on a regular basis, but I did try to get a good spectrum of classes of sites and I think 12 open tabs isn't unusual by any reasonable measure.
   
   Side observation: Opera was the only browser that didn't let me simply drag my open links from a Firefox address bar to its own address bar. I had to manually copy and paste.
   
   Anyway, these are all excellent browsers, and I rate all of them highly, here. Firefox is simply my favorite, and it just happens to use less memory. Honestly, memory usage isn't something I think about anymore unless it's ridiculous (I remember Firefox version 2 using over half a gig of memory with just a few tabs open after a few hours!). I'm much more concerned with features, responsiveness, and ease-of-use.
   
   The minor problem I described below is still present, unfortunately, but I can live with that for now.
   
   Otherwise, version 3.5 has given me everything I hoped it would. And the new version of Mozilla Weave with ID support is incredible.
   
   The best got better.

Discuss Mozilla Firefox (v3.5) for Windows

1. Jun 17, 2009 - 5:24 PM
   URDRWHO

   If you are having a problem with extensions in an update, you need the nightly tester tools. It will allow you to force an older extension to work.
   
   You can find it here:
   
   https://addons.mozilla.o...n-US/firefox/addon/6543
2. Mar 13, 2009 - 1:09 AM
   And|

   I hope they make it better. Lately I am having huge problems with this running just okay. Been using firefox 2 since that seems to be way better.
3. Mar 12, 2009 - 11:02 PM
   methuselah

   Big speedup over currently released Firefox, on the XP machine I tried this on. While the ACID 3 test isn't perfect yet, it's much closer.
4. Mar 12, 2009 - 7:25 PM
   Sativarg

   Just think it would be nice to link to the Beta information
   http://www.mozilla.com/e...efox/3.1b3/releasenotes/
   Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Release Notes
   
   This is the fifth development milestone and third beta release of Firefox 3.1, the upcoming version of the Firefox web browser. Please read below for more information.
   
   About this Beta
   
   Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is the fifth development milestone and third beta release of Firefox 3.1, the next version of the Firefox web browser. While this release is considered to be stable, it is intended for developers and members of our testing community to use for early evaluation and feedback. Users of the latest released version of Firefox should not expect all of their add-ons to work properly with this beta.
   
   What’s New in Firefox 3.1 Beta 3
   
   Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 9 months. Firefox 3.1 is an incremental release on the previous version with significant changes to improve web compatibility, performance, and ease of use:
   
   * This beta is now available in 64 languages - get your local version.
   * Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.
   * Improvements to web worker thread support.
   * Improved performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
   * New native JSON support.
   * Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
   * Support for new web technologies such as the and elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.
   
   Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.