FF3 not ready for the primetime

[Indigo]

I finally downloaded it on Friday, and thankfully installed it in a separate
directory like someone here recommended, keeping FF2 as-is. Today I fired up
the PC rip-roaring to see what wonderful things FF3 had to offer, and was
severely disappointed, pissed even. Two plug-ins/add-ons that I use (one
everyday) have not been updated for FF3, one that flabbergasts me.

Kodak Companion, a tool I use to easily share photos with family and
friends, doesn't work, that I'm not too surprised about.

The one I'm pissed about is the XM Online Listening service won't work, and
cannot be updated to work even though there is an option to manually
download and install WMP V11. I have XM in my car, and you can listen to
about 30-40 channels for free online, including my favorite comic talk show
(Ron and Fez). I loaded FF2, and discovered that the XM streaming
audio/video service used by it is apparently WMP V9, not sure whether that
should matter or not.

Oh, and somehow installing FF3 removed multiple websites that I had marked
as secure in AdBlock+ in FF2, so I have to re-enter them to the "ignore
list" as I come upon them. What a PITA.....how the heck that happened, I
dunno...unless both versions of FF are sharing the same Adblock database and
installing FF3 over-wrote the old list.

And luckily I finished using the favicon plug-in to manipulate my favorite's
icons before installing FF3, since that doesn't now work either.

[Mike Easter]

Today I fired up the PC rip-roaring to see what wonderful things FF3
had to offer, and was severely disappointed, pissed even. Two
plug-ins/add-ons that I use (one everyday) have not been updated for
FF3, one that flabbergasts me.

The goodnews about ff3 is supposed to be numerous features of its
fundamentals. The numerous plugin deficiencies are well known. If the
main reason you like ff is because of various plugins, you shouldn't
bother with ff3 yet, but stick with ff2.

If the main usage one has for ff is for the native browser itself, not its
plugin widgets, then ff3 is the better choice.

I recently discovered that I can (supposedly) use FF3 with Win98se if I
'adapt' W98 with a gizmo which enables it to handle a number of 2K & XP
apps. I haven't tried that out yet.

As it is, I use FF3 generally without plugins in my linux distros & Opera
9.51+ various builds in W98.


--
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin

[Indigo]

Post by Mike Easter
The goodnews about ff3 is supposed to be numerous features of its
fundamentals. The numerous plugin deficiencies are well known. If the
main reason you like ff is because of various plugins, you shouldn't
bother with ff3 yet, but stick with ff2.

Well, I guess if I hadn't discovered the free XM online free streaming
audio, I never would have cared. But now that I've used it nearly everyday
for a few months, I can't live without it!

I was trying to upgrade mainly to get rid of memory hogging and leaks --
after running FF2 all day long with some java windows open (real time stock
stuff), I've found that FF2 will gobble up nearly half of my 2 GB of RAM! I
can free some of that up with a tool, usually about 100-200 KB worth, but
FF2 still hangs onto a whole bunch. Kind of disgusting to see, IMO, for a
damn browser.

Question: does having multiple plug-ins and add-ons enabled make FF consume
a lot more memory? Any tricks to what I should disable to save some RAM?

[Mike Easter]

"Mike Easter"
Question: does having multiple plug-ins and add-ons enabled make FF
consume a lot more memory? Any tricks to what I should disable to save
some RAM?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox) For most users,
Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others,
however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article
discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption.


--
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin

[Indigo]

Post by Mike Easter
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox) For most users,
Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others,
however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article
discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

One other "snafu" I found related to Adblock that I'm not quite sure what
the problem is: I previously stated that certain web pages had "disappeared"
from my "ignore" list, and I just found another one that I'm almost sure
wasn't a Java Runtime page, but when I loaded it I got a strictly text view
of the page until I added it to the ignore list --- the exact same thing I
ran into with the other pages that wouldn't funtion. What specific kind of
script is causing this problem?

[Indigo]

Post by Mike Easter
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox) For most users,
Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others,
however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem. This article
discusses how to lower Firefox's memory consumption.

Thanks for the link Mike (although that exact URL didn't work). I read a
bunch of stuff on Mozillazine and some links contained in articles therein,
and turned off a few Add-ins like the All-in-One Sidebar (which was more
annoying than useful), the Freecorder Toolbar (I discovered that this add-in
was the cause of my IE7 crashes at the same time), and ScreenGrab (other
tools do the same thing). I think the most important one I found was
disabling the AVG V8 "Safe Search" app, that one was pointed out
specifically as being a memory hog.

So now, my FF2 RAM usage has dropped from an avg. of about 800 KB to around
500 KB with my usual FF windows open.

I must say that my AdBlock Plus problems continue to pop up from time to
time, I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason to which pages are affected
(i.e. no trend that I can see).

[User]

On 21.07.2008 11:57, Indigo wrote:

--- Original Message ---

Post by Indigo
I finally downloaded it on Friday, and thankfully installed it in a separate
directory like someone here recommended, keeping FF2 as-is. Today I fired up
the PC rip-roaring to see what wonderful things FF3 had to offer, and was
severely disappointed, pissed even. Two plug-ins/add-ons that I use (one
everyday) have not been updated for FF3, one that flabbergasts me.
Kodak Companion, a tool I use to easily share photos with family and
friends, doesn't work, that I'm not too surprised about.
The one I'm pissed about is the XM Online Listening service won't work, and
cannot be updated to work even though there is an option to manually
download and install WMP V11. I have XM in my car, and you can listen to
about 30-40 channels for free online, including my favorite comic talk show
(Ron and Fez). I loaded FF2, and discovered that the XM streaming
audio/video service used by it is apparently WMP V9, not sure whether that
should matter or not.
Oh, and somehow installing FF3 removed multiple websites that I had marked
as secure in AdBlock+ in FF2, so I have to re-enter them to the "ignore
list" as I come upon them. What a PITA.....how the heck that happened, I
dunno...unless both versions of FF are sharing the same Adblock database and
installing FF3 over-wrote the old list.
And luckily I finished using the favicon plug-in to manipulate my favorite's
icons before installing FF3, since that doesn't now work either.

As Mike says ....

Also, it's not the fault of FF that an addon or plugin ceases to
function but the onus is passed to the addon/plugin author to update
*their* respective application to be compatible.

Most addons that no longer work can be modified simply by increasing the
MaxVersion in the install.rdf file in the extension.

[Jim]

I tried it for a week and went back to FF2.

What I did not like was FormHistory. When displaying previous entries for a form in FF3 they
are displayed in creation date order. In FF2 they are sorted by value. I have asked in the FF
forum if this was a bug or if there will be an extension to address this change. All request
for info have been ignored.

[Mike Easter]

I have asked in the FF forum if this was a
bug or if there will be an extension to address this change. All
request for info have been ignored.

If 'forum' means webforum, try the newsgroup mozilla.support.firefox. It
is active and there are some knowledgeable FF gurus there. It is on the
newsserver news.mozilla.org and elsewhere.



--
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin