[PCWorld]

Post your comments for 5 Things You'll Love about Firefox 3 here

[dstechgeek]

you forgot to mention how the Awesome Bar actually learns & personalizes the bar based on how you search and what results you click on etc.
Also, there's a nice lil easter egg that the Firefox team have kindly thrown in...
All you Firefox 3 Beta users out there, type - about:robots
in the Awesome Bar...

[indrid]

Gotta love that Firefox winning formula. See what Opera does...then do exactly that. For a moment I thought Firefox was inovating with its "awesome bar." But upon inspection, I found that typing "awesome bar" in opera displays...this page. So it apears that everything on this article (including better performance) has been in Opera for some time already. Don't get me wrong though. I still use Firefox 3 whenever Opera has trouble with Myspace. Sometimes it even works better.

[gosseyn]

TO INDRID:

Advances in applications, like anything else, are incremental. So tell me, is Mozilla supposed to ignore a useful function because they didn't "invent" it? Firefox is the direct descendant of Netscape, written by Marc Andreessen. So, by your reckoning, the guys who wrote Opera just stole their stuff from Netscape.

[sureshnsnguys]

you forgot to mention Session Storage

[mikelu51]

You come to thinks of it the current opera version has almost all of those features already and the new version to be released in summer will have the awesome bar. Firefox has been a copycat of opera since the beginning, i'm sad opera doesnt get the attension it deserves for coming up with these things in the first place

[NoSmokingBandit]

Who cares if the Firefox team "stole" ideas from Opera? Until Opera allows 3rd party addons it will always be inferior.

[Tedster]

too many problems with websites. Does not work with MSN money online in particular.
I had to go back to FF 2.0

[Knifeblade]

For what it's worth, returned to 2.x. I found one bug within my Google email, it didn't display beyond the usual start screen. The patches didn't help any for me, so I returned back, and all is well there since. Actually, I, myself am very comfortable with my 2.x version, but then, I am only a recent convert of around 4 months as my main browser. B-)

[GreenFoxOne]

I tried it for a few days and was disappointed none of my firefox extensions would work with it. Also, I noticed it would NOT remember user IDs for many websites (really annoying) and finally, now that I have switched back to 2.0, IT too wont remember the log ins. Arrrgh!

JJ

[Pepps]

If you mean like a roboform autofiller. I just installed the extension called sxipper. Sxipper works great and even imports information from roboform not compatible with Firefox three. I can't wait until they get some more appearance extensions set up. Overall, I love Firefox three. I run vista home premium on a gateway and Opera was really cool but I had to many problems and had to dump it. Firefox three is great for me.

[Paros]

I hope Mozilla will give clear instructions for how to do the upgrade from version 2 to 3.
Most probably they won't because 99% of the time when a new version of a program is available the developer thinks upgrade instructions are some kind of a secret that has to be hidden in readme files and support forum posts and manuals and pdf files and force upgraders to spend a lot of time to find out how to best upgrade their program.
It would be a good idea for PCWorld to take the lead on this respect and publish a how-to article with step by step instructions for how to backup existing profiles, whether to uninstall version 2 before installing version 3, if version 2 can be uninstalled after 3 is installed, how to import bookmarks, passwords, form field values, etc.
Thank you.

[dstechgeek]

Mozilla will probably push the actual release as an update that will load itself when they push it into the Mozilla Update engine that loads whenever they code minor updates to current versions.

Also, bookmarks and history are automatically imported. If you'd like to jump the boat & test-drive Release Candidate 1, just install an addon called "Nightly Tester Tools" which has a button in the addons list which says "override all compatibility". That allows all currently installed addons to work with Firefox 3.

Please note that some addons will need to be specifically coded to work with Firefox , so that may cause some addons to crash Firefox.

[Paros]

dstechgeek, thanks for the response.

The problem is version 3 will be available for download some time in June and the pushed upgrades may start happening much later, maybe even months later although I have no verified information about this.

So when it becomes available there will be millions of people that would want to download and istall it but they won't know how to do the upgrade if the installation process won't take care of basic things, like creating backups of profiles, maybe allowing to create a version 3 profile in a different directory so version 2 can be used again if something goes wrong, etc.

When even the Application Data folder is hidden by default in Windows XP and it's difficult for a lot of casual non techno-geek people to do a manual backup of their Firefox profiles, I hope the version 3 installation will take care of this or upgrade instructions will be easily accessible and not hidden away in readme files or manuals.

[intellectual]

I'm one of the Firefox's user and it satisfied me very well.if you are one of it's user too, please participate in it's download record day in the Firefox's website.

[Pepps]

I have to amend what I said about sxipper. Sxipper did not work after I closed down the browser and reopened. However, to my joy, I found a Roboform extension that does work with Firefox three. I have just downloaded the Firefox three RC2. All my settings were still present, post download, and overall I am genuinely pleased with the performance of this second release candidate. I am eagerly awaiting download day to get my newest - version of firefox three.

[Adama]

Some of my friends here at PCW have been trying for quite a while to get me to move, from IE7 to Firefox.

I just read the article, but I still don't know. I guess my reluctance to download it is because I read a while back, that many places/websites you can only get to if you have IE7.

And (...please don't shut me...) I happen to like IE7.

[AuroraDizon]

Firefox has an IE tab extension so you can use IE whenever you want in its own tab when you run across a site you trust/need it for.

[Alphawave]

Ummm . . . isn't the 'Awesome Bar' already in Opera.

While I really like Fx and use it a lot, Opera still is my favorite browser. It is so much more customizable than any of the others: I can arrange everything exactly the way I like it . . . and easily!

I don't care to have to hunt for Fx extensions, only to have them not work when Fx is updated. Opera has all the 'extensions' I need, built in.

Btw, I never use IE. If a site tells me that I have to use IE, I just use Avant or Maxthon.

[ousooner54]

I don't appreciate the fact that, to install Firefox 3, it automatically sets itself as the default browser. Of course I reset my choice, but that bugged me. I also have no questions that "under the hood" there are a lot of changes, but the interface looks pretty much the same. It would have been nice to have made it a bit more "exciting" to go with all the hoopla about it's release.