Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 - Benchmarked

zdnet ^ | 3/12/08 | Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

And it’s out! Mozilla release Beta 4 of Firefox 3.0.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

This latest beta refresh includes includes over 900 additional improvements related to the previous Beta 3 release. At this stage most of the improvements concentrate on areas such as security, plugging memory leaks, improving performance and tidying up the UI.

[null and void]

Thanks.

[liberallarry]

Any fix for the “col” and “colgroup” bugs?

[TomGuy]

A few weeks ago I upgraded from 2.0.0.12 to 2.0.0.15 and it crapped my PC. I had to do a re-install of the partition image.

I do hope that fix the memory leak problems. They have existed since around version 1.0.

[KoRn]

Woohoo!

[tlb]

fwiw I’d not rush to install this. On another forum I look at the many of the people who tried it were having problems.
Uninstalling, having to use Windows System Restore go get their machines working properly again. Also many addons don’t necessarily work with the new version.

I’ll wait for the final release.

[jdm]

A few weeks ago I upgraded from 2.0.0.12 to 2.0.0.15 and it crapped my PC. I had to do a re-install of the partition image.

How did you get .15? I'm running .12 and when I go to Help > Check for Updates - it says none are available.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

“This latest beta refresh includes includes over 900 additional improvements related to the previous Beta 3 release.”

Or, if you're a glass-half-empty sort of guy: Firefox 2 has well over 900 flaws.

[ShadowAce]

[Abathar]

I am using it right now on my work machine running Win 2000, seems just a tad slower but has a nice feel to it. I will play with it a while and see how it goes.

[Allen In Texas Hill Country]

Lately I’ve been having a lot of small problems with .12. Just now, before jumping on FR, I tried to get on Fidelity. Page would not complete and FF froze. Brought up IE and no problem. I listen to Rush over the net and half the time FF would lock while bringing up Windows Media Player. I’d have to roll over to my XP machine and bring up WLSAM there.

Wonder if using W98SE has anything to do with it??

[rabscuttle385]

fwiw I’d not rush to install this. On another forum I look at the many of the people who tried it were having problems.

I'm gonna second that motion.

I ran earlier betas of Firefox 3.0 for a few weeks. They were noticeably faster but very buggy. I ended up running back to 2.0.0.12.

Wait for the final releases of 3.0: they should be great.

[CedarDave]

How did you get .15? I'm running .12 and when I go to Help > Check for Updates - it says none are available.

Same here.

[pepsi_junkie]

The memory leaks are a major problem; I use Firefox on my work computer without problems but on my computer at home it drives the system to its knees. CPU spikes to 100% periodically and just makes the computer unusable. I’ve looked high and low for fixes and this situation is apparently not unique, and though there are a couple of things you can do to try to fix it if they don’t work you are S-O-L.

[Tree of Liberty]

I've been using the portable apps version of beta 3 for the past week or so (beta 4 was made available yesterday), and the renderer is demonstrably faster than on firefox 2.x.

[Digital Sniper]

A few weeks ago I upgraded from 2.0.0.12 to 2.0.0.15

Considering there is no 2.0.0.15, I must confess surprise at this claim.

[JoJo Gunn]

Thanks for the heads up, but I think I’ll wait a long while before checking it out, if ever. Am sticking with 1.5.0.6 because I’m tired of having to chase extensions and themes whenever the redhead with the ugly ‘do breaks wind.

[TomGuy]

I was thinking .15 had been released, but maybe it was .12 that messed up. Anyway, I had to backtrack and am running .11. I tried to backtrack to .04, but several of the extensions wouldn’t work.

.11 causes problems. If I don’t run it first, before IE, I get the blue screen. That started around .07 or so. It has something to do with flash files.

I cringe every time I hear UPDATE or UPGRADE. That means old problems are replaced with new problems.

[jdm]

TomGuy, are you from the future?

"Damn, that Firefox!"

[jdm]

I cringe every time I hear UPDATE or UPGRADE. That means old problems are replaced with new problems.

Not necessarily. I'm running .12 (and have run all previous versions) with no problems.