Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 5

There are ton of good review on the Internet regarding to Firefox 3 performance and stability. Version 2 was a bit disappointing, specially when it is use on Laptop where RAM is always a precious resource. I have try Beta 3 and 4 before, but there is always the issue of lacking plugin compatibility, making me putting it off from upgrading from version 2. I do a lot of web development, therefore Firebug and Web Developer plugin is a must. Public release is not due until June, 2008, 2 months away. I have been waiting since December last year. A long long wait.

Today, I try my luck again. After download and install Firefox 3, I try to find Firebug plugin. The Firebug on the Mozilla Plugin Site is not compatible with Firefox 3, but there is a link to the plugin homepage. I follow the link and landed on here. To my surprise, there is a working version of the plugin that is compatible with Firefox 3. Even though it is a beta version, I straight away download and install it. I am very happy and excited that it work. Now I can move to Firefox 3. I also find Web Developer plugin and it is compatible with version 3. Double strike today, not too bad for a day. Other plugin like adblock and del.icio.us bookmark does not work, those are not as essential for me. I can wait on those plugin. I found an excellent plugin, ScribeFire. It is a plugin that allow you write your blog and publish it to your blog. All blogger should try the plugin, I believe you will enjoy it too.

So far, I have let Firefox 3 run for 4 hours plus. The first thing I notice, memory use by Firefox actually goes up and down. Not just up and up like in Firefox 2. Currently, it is using 76MB. If I was running Firefox 2, the memory usage after 4 hours will be 100++MB. The performance of the browser is fast. Changing between tab is very responsive and swift. The only downside that I experience, is when I click on a link sometime the Firefox freeze and not responsive. That could be my machine acting up, I will need to monitor that. Other than that, I recommend Firefox 3 to anyone who use a browser. For less IT illiterate, maybe wait till Public Release, if you are IT know-how, I recommend that you give it a try.