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vangogh
07-02-2009, 04:47 PM
Just letting everyone know that FF 3.5 is available. I upgraded earlier today and so far I'm impressed. It's funny, because a few days ago I was telling people how Firefox had become very slow for me and I'd switched to using Safari for most things. I did say I would see what FF 3.5 would bring.

So far it's been very fast. Granted it's only been a few hours. I'll see what it's like in a few days after it's been running consistently.

The only downside so far is that some plugins haven't been updated yet. Only so far that I use a lot, but that will vary based on what you have installed. I grabbed the update by going to Help > Check for Updates (That's where it is on my Mac. Might be under the Edit menu on Windows) There was a link in the popup to check which plugins I had installed wouldn't be compatible with 3.5.

A few listed as not updated actually were so you may also want to check https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ Do a search for your plugin and see what versions it works up to. Naturally I found a few new ones to try while there. :)

Anyone else take the plunge and upgrade? So far I'm liking it and if it stays fast I'll probably switch back to using it as my primary browser (I have come to like a few Safari features though).

dynocat
07-03-2009, 11:24 AM
Thanks for the tip, vangogh. I have mine set to automatically update, but it never does.

I LOVE the handy dandy "+" on the tab line to quickly open a new tab.

And for anyone working on a website, who doesn't yet use the Firebug extension, I highly recommend it. Another that's new (to me) is the View Source Chart extension. Right click any webpage and the source is nicely laid out.

vangogh
07-03-2009, 02:52 PM
The automatic update doesn't always update as soon as a new version is available. I've noticed that myself. It probably would have in a few days.

Firebug is nice and there are plenty of extensions for the Firebug extension. I still get the most use out of the web developer toolbar, but Firebug is gaining. One of the plugins that doesn't work yet with FF 3.5 is CSS Viewer, which is a really quick way to view the css applied to any element on the page.

How is 3.5 working for you. I have noticed it's slowed up a bit since I've had it running the last 24 hours or so, but it still seems faster than it had been. For the last month or two I've had both Safari and FF open, mostly using Safari for browsing and FF for when I need the functionality of a specific plugin. In the last day my FF use has increased though I still have Safari set as my primary browser and I'm still using it more. We'll see if that changes over the next few weeks.

dynocat
07-04-2009, 12:09 AM
I tried Safari for the first time today. I've had it on my compuer awhile but never checked it out. Is there an easy way to snyc Safari bookmarks with Firefox?

billbenson
07-04-2009, 02:52 AM
I often thought about writing a script for bookmarks. Might even be one out there. Then you never need to worry about it? that way you also have bookmarks if you are on someone else's computer.

vangogh
07-04-2009, 11:47 AM
I know you can import bookmarks from one to the other. In Firefox You can tell it where to look for the bookmarks files so you could for example place the file FF uses over a shared network resource and have all your computers share bookmarks.

Sadly there's no native way to share bookmarks across browsers. You'd think browser makers might agree on some standard so you could share across browsers, but no. You can however use something like Xmarks (http://www.xmarks.com/), (used to be Foxmarks). They have plugins for each of the major browsers and your bookmarks are synced through their online service

KristineS
07-04-2009, 01:27 PM
Haven't upgraded to 3.5 yet, but thanks for the update. I suppose I should do that, as I use Firefox almost exclusively. I do like to wait a bit and hear what they early adopters have to say, so this thread is a big help. I'm glad you started it.

vangogh
07-04-2009, 02:35 PM
So far so good. I've left FF open for a few days now and it has slowed up, but it's still much faster than it was before the update. A few extensions still not working, but none I really can't live without and I'm sure most will be updated in the next few weeks. Besides it will give me a chance to go through all the extensions I have installed and see which ones I really need and which I can uninstall.

Overall seems to be working well and I can't see any reason not to update.

billbenson
07-05-2009, 02:20 PM
Is the consensus still that FF is more standards compliant than MS? I know MS has made some changes to improve compliance, but I'm still seeing some sites designed around IE that are pretty poor in cross browser compatibility.

vangogh
07-05-2009, 03:00 PM
Feroo tabs have been in Firefox since the beginning. IE was the last browser to add them. I don't believe the in private browsing thing was an IE invention either. Mozilla didn't copy IE. In fact Opera was the first browser to have tabs, if I'm not mistaken. It took IE several years to get on board.

Bill everything is more standards compliant than IE. IE has always lagged in regards to standards.

dynocat
09-01-2009, 01:42 PM
Bumping up this thread to see if anyone else is having repeated problems with Firefox "Not Responding?" It seems to happen often, but inconsistently. Doing a search for "Firefox 3.5 not responding" brings up a lot of sites and forums discussing the problem but no sure fix.

billbenson
09-01-2009, 06:12 PM
I haven't had any "not responding" problems. I've had it do a few strange things, but so infrequently I don't recall what they are. I'm on the Linux version which seems to have a different interface than the windows one as well.

vangogh
09-01-2009, 06:58 PM
Do you mean web pages not responding in Firefox or Firefox itself not responding to some action?

If it's the web page then it's possibly your connection or some setting in FF or even in your Firewall if you have one. Now that I think of it the Zone Alarm firewall had an issue where you couldn't load pages in FF. That was an older version of FF, but maybe the issue is something similar.

If you mean Firefox not responding or responding slowly to an action then it's likely FF. It does have memory leaks so prolonged use really slows it down. Also one or too many plugins could cause problems. Have you installed any plugins recently and was the timing of the 'not responding' linked to the timing of your last plugin install?

nealrm
09-01-2009, 11:21 PM
I loved firefox 3.0 - but firefox 3.5 sucks. I have repeated problems with it "Not Responding" and also crashes. I checked with the Firefox site, it appears I'm not the only one. I applied each of the "Fixes" and upgraded to 3.5.2 nothing helped. In addition, there are alot of site that just don't work well under firefox, banking site appear to be the biggest group.

I strong suggest do NOT upgrade to version 3.5.

vangogh
09-02-2009, 02:19 AM
It might be that your profile has become corrupted. That happened to me about the time 3.0 was released. You could create a new profile and test if that's the problem.

You can read this post on managing profiles (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles) to learn how to create a new one.

Your new profile will be new. It won't have your bookmarks or your history or your extensions or anything else other than the default browser. The idea is simply to find out if it's the profile that's causing the problems. You should be able to tell after a little bit of browsing.

Assuming the problem was the profile you can then start pulling in your old profile a little at a time to see if you can identify what part of the profile was the problem. If I'm remembering right, the problem in my case was my bookmarks.

This post will show you how to transfer data to a new profile (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox).

It essentially involves moving or copying files and folders from the old profile to the new. Move one or two at a time until you can identify which was causing the problem. Hopefully it won't be something you can't rebuild from scratch. Again if I'm remembering correctly, I was able to figure out a way to import my bookmarks without using the corrupt file and was able to recreate a working version of my old profile.

Business Attorney
09-02-2009, 06:23 PM
I've had repeated "Not Responding" problems, too. Even when it is working, it is often using 50%+ of my CPU. It is particularly bad with sites like Yahoo mail that download banner ads from a a number of different ad servers. It takes forever to load pages. On some sites, I have reverted to IE.

dynocat
09-02-2009, 07:18 PM
It is the Firefox that's not responding similar to what others have posted.

I did read yesterday about some extensions that can cause problems. One is IE Tab, which has or causes a memory leak, so I uninstalled it and now use IE Tab Lite. FF has been better today, except for the occasional times it lags when I'm trying to type, like in this reply.

billbenson
09-02-2009, 10:00 PM
David, if you have tabs with things like yahoo or anything that is running flash or movies, those use system resources even when your doing something else. I used to keep a lot of tabs that I didn't really need open all the time. News sites are frequently another offender. Those things will slow all web browsers.

I haven't had any of the problems described here. Haven't heard of people complaining on other webmaster forums I am on either. I only have a few web design plugins installed.

vangogh
09-02-2009, 11:18 PM
FF can definitely slow down if you have a lot of extensions installed or have something corrupt in your profile. Bill's right about Flash too. It sometimes brings FF to a crawl. Every new version I hear how the memory leaks are going to be be fixed, but they never seem to be.

I actually switched to Safari for most of my surfing and fall back on Firefox when I need one extension or another. Chrome looks like it's going to be a very good browser. Still not out for Mac yet, though I have a development version installed that I can play around with and test. It's not quite ready for everyday use yet.

For some reason I've never taken to Opera, though it's also a good browser and probably was the first to have most any feature the other browsers come out with.