Firefox 3 Beta 1

[Bewildebeast]

Out now if you're feeling adventurous.

http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/11/19/firefox-3-beta-1-now-available-for-download/

Meant for testing only, so don't go ape if it breaks/deletes your profile/kills your family

[dinnerbone]

Ooh *downloads*

[ynnekkenny]

hmm think i'll wait unless anyone wants to tell me how i can ensure all my bookmarks wont delete if it all goes tits up!!

[Aladdin Sane]

hmm think i'll wait unless anyone wants to tell me how i can ensure all my bookmarks wont delete if it all goes tits up!!

Just make a copy of your Firefox profile folder. http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile tells you where you can find it. In the profile folder should be a file called bookmarks.html, which does pretty much what it says on the tin. Just copy that to somewhere else on your computer. If all goes wrong, then just copy the bookmarks.html file back into the profile folder and it should restore your bookmarks.

Alternatively, you could always use MozBackup (http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/) if you don't fancy digging around in profile folders.

[GorillaBearBear]

Have they fixed the horrible memory leak issues yet?

[Lancer]

Downloaded, tried, started to climb to 256MB RAM usage or so before I killed it. No fixy, methinky.

[GorillaBearBear]

so what exactly have they done, for christs sake? As far as I'm concerned, firefox doesn't need any new features. It needs to not eat up my memory usage like Galactus.

[Aladdin Sane]

Downloaded, tried, started to climb to 256MB RAM usage or so before I killed it. No fixy, methinky.

Remember that this is still in beta so it offers no accurate indication of what the finished product is going to be like. As such I wouldn't take the overall RAM usage in beta 1 as indicative of what memory consumption will be like at the end.

And on the subject of Firefox using a lot of RAM; this is not a fault, it is just how the browser works. In order to speed navigation up (such as when you clikc the back button) for instance, it needs to store a lot of data about websites you have visited. This is further increased when tabs are thrown into the equation, especially the ability to re-open closed tabs. The memory usage shoots up at the call for convenience. At least, that's what I've been led to believe.

[Lancer]

Nah, I think it's a fault when they don't clear the memory used for a closed tab when it hasn't been re-opened for hours, it just continues to climb. And as for what they've done to it, I remember reading it's using the next version of the Gecko engine that Firefox uses, but.. All I noticed so far was slightly faster rendering.

I should probably mention the 250+MB of memory usage with the beta was with one tab open. Hasn't happened since though, I think it was a fluke.

[GorillaBearBear]

I think sometimes you just get spikes like that with firefox. Mine occasionally just rockets up to about 150mb for no apparent reason.

[Lancer]

That exact thing happened just now with the beta again. Just over 150MB, too. I'm done with the beta for now then, methinks. I'll try the next release, though.

[GorillaBearBear]

When they've actually got a proper release, I'll probably get it. Just because I like shiny things.

But my computer will most likely hate me.

[Bail]

Yeah... basically you can use it till it fills your RAM. I started with basically nothing running, use firefox 3 for an hour and my computer suddenly has no ram.. ah.. firefox has it all.