Topic: Firefox 3 beta 3

Firefox 3 beta 3 is now available for download.

Here are my first impressions from the Windows build:

• kudos for managing to make a default skin more ugly than Opera
• nice full page zoom, alas there is no indication of the current zoom level in the UI nor is it accessible from the main UI.
• love the tagging of bookmarks + that the address bar's auto completion use them
• sucks that the address bar's auto completion is limited to page titles and tags : no full content search
• the star bookmark thing is neat but confusing, esp. when trying to double click it to remove a bookmark : the Remove "Bookmark menu" disapear but the bookmark is not removed
• cool to have a search/filter in the download manager and bookmarks manager. Unfortunately the Places feature is pretty much useless without search in the full content of the bookmarks / newsfeeds
• dunno when they removed it but I miss the ability to block external images, and I'd love a general external resource blocker
• nice to see a blocking mechanism in the Page Infos, alas it only shows the "medias" and can't block specific location. Only entire domains are blockable
• cool to have an undo close tab, but no way to know what tabs were closed and to reopen a specific one
• the memory consumption still seem weird : 58 mb for 3 tabs open now
• the menu View > SideBar > Bookmarks is FUBAR and missing the string saying "Bookmarks"

Overall, lots of interesting features but it feels very rough round the edges. Let's hope they iron things out for the final release.

ChangeLog: http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/releases/trunk-for-firefox-3.html

poi: O/T a bit.

I installed Opera 9.25 a few weeks ago and it has taken control of the Flash plugin.

When I'm using FF and go to Youtube I cannot view the video and I'm prompted to install the latest version of flash. If I do install, make that re-install, Flash I still cannot view the video in FF. I can now only view Youtube via Opera.

I've looked at Opera settings but I don't see anything obvious. Any ideas??

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?It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.? Voltaire

NoJive: Never had that happened to me, and I've got ~1.5 GiB of different Opera installs around. If I were you, I'd fish out those install directories, and remove the flash plug-in DLLs from all of them. Then after that, try the Flash installer again.

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Well my patience is being tested here. Objective to re-install flash in order to view youtube.

OS is XP

Via Add/remove programs removed Opera.

Manually removed any Opera related folders/files I could find, without going into the registry.

The Flash installation by default wants to install to non-existent folders.

Here's what happens. Any help greatly appreciated.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Output folder: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash
Delete file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32.dll
Delete file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe
Delete file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\flashplayer.xpt
Extract: NPSWF32.dll... 100%
Extract: NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe... 100%
Extract: flashplayer.xpt... 100%
Copy to C:\Program Files\Opera\Program\Plugins\
Copy failed
Copy to C:\Program Files\Opera\Program\Plugins\
Copy failed
Copy to C:\Program Files\Opera\Program\Plugins\
Copy failed
Created uninstaller: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\uninstall_plugin.exe
Registering: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32.dll
Completed

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You can see where it fails...but the installer doesn't give me a choice of where to install.

Opera... the Fat lady is singing! =)

___________________________________________________________________________
?It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.? Voltaire

I'd ask the question in http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=2 or http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=26 if I were you.
Possibly search through Opera's and Adobe's knowledge bases first .



Anyway, here's some ideas that might work:
1. Try to manually copy the DLLs from the Opera plug-in directory to the Firefox plug-in directory.

2.

• Uninstall Flash Player using a newly downloaded http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player.exe
• Check the aboutlugins of both browsers for locations of the various plugins
• Try removing the DLLs from the plug-in directories of ALL browsers that use the Netscape plug-in API. Then reinstall it.

3. Remove the Flash related registry entries and files manually, then reinstall.




I just noted that on my computer, Opera locates the Flash Player plugin in the install directory for win build 3808 (Which is a pre-XHR Opera, around version 7.50 something... not my oldest Opera install, just pretty old one!). Recent Opera Kestrel versions have build numbers approaching 9800. I found different sized Flash player DLLs in quite a few of those Opera builds in the middle... But then I remembered that Opera bundled the Flash Player plugin for quite a while. Not that this should have any importance to you, since I probably have a few hundred times more Opera builds installed than you.



[edit]I hate when your UBB codes don't match the ingrained vBB codes from CF... and I hate slimies![/edit]
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(Edited by liorean on 02-16-2008 22:56)

ThangQ. Will try the forums you mentioned.

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?It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.? Voltaire

So did any one try FF3b3 ?
The roadmaps I've seen earlier mentioned there will be a short lived beta 4 before the final release.

NoJive: Sorry, never had such problem.

yeah, i tried it for a while. nothing special IMO. good thing is, it uses way less memory and is a little bit faster because of that.

I second that - it seems faster, just from an observational point of view.

Added Ff3b3 to my results tables from running the Sunspider 0.9 benchmark:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pkgbkzGHozOI2iju-p-g4Ew&pli=1

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Yeah, I've been using it as my main browser, but pretty uninspired. I'm not really a 'power' user, but the bookmarking seems a little clumsy - the start looks odd, and I often click it by accident heading for the drop down menus (tracks FTL). Also, it seems very slow for many things.

Much, much more enticing, however, has been 'webkit' - I've spent quite some time fiddling with this, and it's *fast*, a real pleasure to use. In fact, it's almost tempted me to go back to dillo - firefox seems incredibly laborious by comparison.

I've just been using it for the past couple of days and apart from getting used to a few GUI changes it runs smooth as a fledgling humans posterior. Seems to use a lot less memory too.


Those who look for monsters should look to it that
they do not become monsters. For when you gaze
long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.