Jun 18
Today’s the 17th of June, 2008. It’s Firefox Download Day. Rejoice, geeks of the world. In fact, everyday people should download this as well, because this browser has enough for everyone. If you registered for Download Day, you should have already got the reminder.
I experienced a bit of traffic while trying to access the mail. But that’s a good sign…people are downloading!
Jun 13
for a grand opening. I’m talking about Firefox 3, which is to be released on the upcoming Tuesday, unless some unforseen delays pop-up (Bad pun).
It’s simple. If you read my post – For A Cause – you’ll find out how to schedule a reminder so that you can be part of the attempt to make a Guiness World Record for most downloads for a software in one day – possible the most geeky record ever…
Actually, there are several reasons to switch. Better memory management, plus a nice address bar, which is a bit more human than most. If you can’t remember the exact address of a previously visited page, no need to Google it, try typing the keywords, and in case they were in the page title, it’ll show up in the list. Plus, the old kind of history also exists, where the web address is remembered. Plus, the download mananger is better than Internet Explorer’s non-existent one. And, in Firefox 3, it’s searchable!
Enough reasons. Plus, IE 8 plans to revolutionise web browsing by completely destroying how web pages are currently interpreted. This just means a headache for innumerable web developers. Poor guys.
May 31
..and a good one at that.
Mozilla is trying to get into the record books. And no, it’s not for maximum memory consumption by a web browser, nor is it most crashes during development. They want to set a record for most downloads for a software on its first day of release. We’re talking about Firefox 3.
I’m not gonna call is the much-awaited successor to Firefox 2, because if you’ve bothered to download the Betas, you wouldn’t have been missing out on much. Plus, it’s pretty clichéd! Well, to participate, you need to go over to the Spread Firefox page on the Mozilla site, and pledge yourself. Include your e-mail address if you want a reminder the day Firefox launches. Hey, it’s fun and it’s for a cause.
Dec 17
I know, I know, Firefox is great, it’s perfect…well…almost…
You see, there’s one thing about the browser that irks/bugs/whateva… It’s cache. I think I should explain what a cache is first. It’s a place where browser’s can store temporary data. Period. It can be on your memory, your hard disk or both!
Anyway, Firefox may have a good cache, but if you want pages to always be loaded from the cache, you’ll have to tweak your way around.
This will ensure that Firefox will get the pages from the disk cache. You need to make sure that browser.cache.disk.enable is set to ‘True’ and that browser.cache.disk.capacity has a nice big value of 50000 (default).
Setting it to 3, which is the default value, checks each time the page becomes outdated…which is pretty often for major websites. 0 checks each time you start Firefox. 1 checks each time the page is loaded.
Tell me if that doesn’t work. Even I’m experimenting…
Nov 23
It’s here. Yes, it’s finally here. It was long overdue, and I’m thankful its out. So what if it’s still in Beta, sp what if a Google Search doesn’t give you a proper download link.
It’s finally here – Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1
You might be wondering what makes it so significant a release for me. Well, you’ll find out soon enough. Let me get down to details.
The Look
Firstly, let me tell you that none of my add-ons are working. Suits me just fine…the browser’s looking pretty clean. 
Other than that, it’s just the same. There are a few changes that add to the functionality and accessibility of certain tasks. There’s a ‘star’ button on the right end of the address bad used for instant bookmarking. And clicking on the logo/favicon of the website, gives you information about the website, if the connection is secured.
Looks like we’re going Places
The new version of the Bookmarks system in Firefox now includes a feature known as ‘Places’, which is used to navigate through frequently visited websites. You can also tag websites, so that you can easily navigate through long lists of ‘Starred’ websites.
You may not experience an instant advantage of using ‘Places’, but if you do not empty your History, this can be a great tool in the future, when you’ll go like … “Damn it! What was the name of that website about <insert topic of choice>.”
Downloads
The download window has been changed as well. An icon is now used for pause and resume, and going by what Mozilla says, there is increased compatibility with resumable downloads, which sometimes got corrupted upon downloading. There is also a search bar for downloads, assuming you don’t clear them either. This is especially useful for people who litter their downloads all over their hard drives (I prefer My Documents –> Setups, with subcategories, depending on download type).
Performance
This is what has pleased me the most. I “fired” up Firefox, loaded a dozen pages, and then monitored its memory usage. It just touched 100MB, and most importantly, stayed stable. The earlier versions of Firefox were known to cause memory leaks, and just keep gobbling more and more RAM. This version remains stable after I leave it alone for some time, and thus, passes the test.
The Backend
It’s Gecko 1.9, the revamped version of the Gecko page layout rendering library set. This also makes Firefox the first Windows/Linux browser to pass the Acid Test.
UPDATE – Compliments to my friend Arjun, for correcting me that Opera was the first Windows/Linux browser to pass the Acid Test.
Previously, Safari for Max OS had passed this HTML and CSS rendering test. Earlier, a graphics subsystem known as Cairo was used for SVG (read Scalable Vector Graphics) rendering. In Gecko 1.9, Cairo has taken over page rendering as well. Although it was originally designed for the X Server, it is now OS and API independent, and is used across multiple platforms.
To conclude, the focus of the Mozilla Development Team has shifted from add-ons, themes and so on, and has come back to the basics – speed and security, which was what Firefox originally stood for. I’m sure that Firefox 3 will be carry along the legacy of IE killers. Amen.
You can download Firefox 3 Beta 1 at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html. However, I can’t finish this article without a disclaimer. Please use this software at your own risk. It’s still going through ‘Beta’ Testing. This means that if you DO NOT know how to handle stuff going haywire, and are not prepared to bear the consequences in the highly unlikely event of your security being compromised…please DO NOT USE the ‘Beta Version’. Instead, you can use Firefox 2.
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