Firefox 3 beta...anyone?

[ashort]

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Anyone else going to give Firefox beta 3 a spin?  I'm downloading it right now.

[fkeidjn]

Is it any good?

[xsphat]

It has to be better than the old Firefox, I've been using Safari for the love of crap!

Anyway, downloaded and installed, none of my add ons are compatible, so already it lost what I liked about it. But, it does seem to be as snappy as Safari, so that's a good thing.

[karlito]

you ever tried opera? it's the fastest browser imo.

[ashort]

you ever tried opera? it's the fastest browser imo.

Holy Cow, there is an Opera Mobile too!

Downloading that too.

So far, the best thing in FF3 is this:  Click the favicon of the website in the address bar and it tells you all about the certificate of the web site and if it is a "verified site" or not.  

Other than that...it's FF2 with no addons or themes (so far).

[iMav]

Other than that...it's FF2 with no addons or themes (so far).

Which is why I won't be trying the beta.  (I use FF for the addons)

[xsphat]

I'm starting to feel the same way.

[ashort]

you ever tried opera? it's the fastest browser imo.

Now I almost can't stand using Firefox on the Mac.  I use Opera then switch to the 'Fox and I'm like "HOW SLOW IS THIS???"

Opera has some quirks (so does Firefox) but it also has some nice features and it is no doubt quick.

[karlito]

yea opera is far from perfect... some sites don't work and there are definitely quirks and annoyances... CTRL+F (find) pops up the stupid dialog (have to remember to use / "quick find") instead. ALT+D doesnt focus the address bar etc... but man the speed... it's pretty addicting

[iMav]

Now I almost can't stand using Firefox on the Mac.  I use Opera then switch to the 'Fox and I'm like "HOW SLOW IS THIS???"

I can't stand using Opera after browsing with links2 and lynx.  Pages load so fast that it is practically instantaneous.  I go back to Opera and I'm like, "WHAT A SLOW PIECE OF CRAP!"




With the speed comparisons I have seen, Opera will load a page (depending on CSS, tables, multiple images, etc) a half a second or less faster than Firefox.  With the FasterFox plugin, that is improved in some cases.  I'd take a significant speed hit if it means continuing to use great plugins such as FireGPG, Better Gmail, FEBE, etc.

[IBI]

I never got on with firefox. I couldn't get it to look nice and it wouldn't do half the things I was used to, plus it had several annoyances (leave my favourites format alone!). The last time I tried it was back in version 1.5 so when 3.0 comes out I plan to give it another go.

My daily browser is Maxthon 1.5, it just feels like someone sat down and actually thought about how a browser should behave and what it should do, instead of making it skinnable, or putting in amusing hidden messages. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else currently though, some bits of javascript will cause the 1.5 version to choke and the 2.0 version rewrite isn't quite complete with many of the best features from 1.5 missing.

Opera is my secondary browser, for pages that Maxthon struggles with, secure stuff or just anything I need to be kept open betweem restarts (Maxthon does this too, but I don't like tab clutter in normal browsing).

I've never really noticed much difference in speed between web browsers, given the disparity of features between the options the speed difference certainly isn't enough to switch for.

[xsphat]

It was a good choice for you to skip FF 2 entirely, I wish I had.