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| Do you use Firefox 3.5? |
| yes |
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30% |
[ 3 ] |
| no |
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10% |
[ 1 ] |
| I use the current release of Firefox instead |
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40% |
[ 4 ] |
| I use another browser and rarely or never use any version of Firefox |
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20% |
[ 2 ] |
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| Total Votes : 10 |
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| Author |
Message |
masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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 Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 4:47 am Post subject: First look: Firefox 3.5 |
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PC Pro takes a first look at Firefox 3.5 RC and finds that Firefox comes within a tick of Google Chrome and Safari in average Javascript response, which is pretty much what I've been finding as I have been running the Nightly Builds of Firefox Shiretoko, the 3.5 release, the Minefield future 4.0 release, and the Seamonkey 2.0B1pre.
About a month or two ago, Chrome and Safari definitely had a noticeable edge, now their edge, if any, is quite small, and when you take into account that you can block ad images with Firefox and Seamonkey, I find that Seamonkey, in particular, edges the other browsers out in overall performance, and definitely in familiarity.
Google Chrome just got a new Debian build today; have not had a chance to put it through its paces yet, and Chrome is looking better and better with each build, but I definitely continue to prefer Seamonkey as my every day browser, and Firefox, in the rare cases where some page can't be rendered for some odd reason - I can usually convince Firefox to get it to work.
Firefox 3.5 will, without question, be worth the download when it comes out, and frankly, the Shiretoko browser already beats 3.0.11 in every day use, with the possible exception for those of you who use a lot of plug ins that are not yet available with 3.5. That should be changing real soon though too. |
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jada
Linux Guru
Joined: 13 May 2025
Posts: 3064
Location: Sun City, CA 92585
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 5:22 am Post subject: |
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I concern about Opera 10 will turn out. I think I will start using Firefox 3.5! It's hard, because I am a Opera fan for years.
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/ |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 5:27 am Post subject: |
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| I am going to check out the test 10.0 download. I run Opera 9.6x frequently; it runs OK, best for tabbed browsing, haven't really exercised it in Javascript testing like the guy did in the review. Will have to see how well 10 does. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 5:34 am Post subject: |
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| I got Opera 10 Beta. Looks nice. Will have to see how well it holds up. If it does not hold up well, I will revert to the version in Debian Sid, otherwise I'll keep the Beta until it is released, then I will upgrade from there. Looks fine on initial impression for my purposes. |
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mmmna
. . . .
Joined: 21 Apr 2025
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 6:49 am Post subject: |
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I've recently installed Opera 9.x on the desktop, but it seems so foreign to me today. I paid to register one version of Opera... years ago, years before Firefox reached 1.5... back when Netscape was still running? Wow. I think it was Opera 6 that I registered, back when it allowed free upgrade to a registered copy of Opera 7.0. Opera has changed so much since then.
I will be an early adopter of Firefox 3.5. Well, as early as it gets into the PCLOS repositories.
Mostly so I can use Mozilla Weave to replace Xmarks which is really annoying lately... start Firefox and it demands my password and then Xmarks demands a full download of my stored bookmarks... but I just started the system! How many bookmarks can I edit in 3 seconds?? A simple MD5 checksum performed on both the server and the client would be faster. Then, when I shut down, as expected, Xmarks does a full backup. Another backup every hour or so, even though I have not modified any bookmarks!! Xmarks devs can't figure out how to make it run any better, I think because we can't explain the whole experience is the issue. A problem for another post, I see.
_________________
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 7:15 am Post subject: |
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I think that Firefox 3.5 will work out well for you mmmna. I've not had a single crash with either the nightly builds of Firefox or Seamonkey; both have been very stable throughout the testing cycle.
They are primarily improving the browser rendering speed and getting rid of many of the defects that have been outstanding, so the quality and performance are much improved. |
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Germ
Keeper of the BIG STICK
Joined: 30 Apr 2025
Posts: 12452
Location: Planet Earth
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 11:00 am Post subject: |
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| I rarely use firefox. I much prefer SeaMonkey.
_________________
Laptop: Mandriva 2025 PowerPack - 2.6.33.5-0.2mnb
Desktop: Mandriva 2025 Free - kernel 2.6.33.2-1mib
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Germ wrote: | | I rarely use firefox. I much prefer SeaMonkey. |
I went back to Seamonkey for every day use, and I am using today's nightly build right now. When Firefox first came out, I tried it, and it did seem a bit lighter than Mozilla at the time, but I did not go to it completely until Thunderbird had a working version out and distro vendors were shipping them, then I made the cutover. Nearly two years ago though, I got tired of them and preferred the classic interface, and found that the Seamonkey project had cleaned up Mozilla, and it was actually tighter in code than either Firefox or Thunderbird, and I've kept to Seamonkey since.
I do regularly test Firefox though; I have a nightly build that I check out most days. |
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Germ
Keeper of the BIG STICK
Joined: 30 Apr 2025
Posts: 12452
Location: Planet Earth
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 2:32 pm Post subject: |
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| I always check out new versions of firefox and keep the latest installed. I just never seem to use it.
_________________
Laptop: Mandriva 2025 PowerPack - 2.6.33.5-0.2mnb
Desktop: Mandriva 2025 Free - kernel 2.6.33.2-1mib
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jada
Linux Guru
Joined: 13 May 2025
Posts: 3064
Location: Sun City, CA 92585
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2025 10:50 pm Post subject: |
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| masinick wrote: | | I got Opera 10 Beta. Looks nice. |
It doesn't look nice. Unite let your browser turn in to a webserver. Welcome to the new Opera botnet 
Opera proxy, there is no way to find out how many information Opera get from the Users, and what are they doing with it!
Fact is, Opera make me to many home calls. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2025 5:35 am Post subject: It all depends what you are looking for in a browser |
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| jada wrote: | | masinick wrote: | | I got Opera 10 Beta. Looks nice. |
It doesn't look nice. Unite let your browser turn in to a webserver. Welcome to the new Opera botnet
Opera proxy, there is no way to find out how many information Opera get from the Users, and what are they doing with it!
Fact is, Opera make me to many home calls. |
I don't let that stuff worry me because I keep the type of Opera usage confined to particular activities,
Looks good as in the new appearance of the buttons and control mechanisms is nice. As far as the features go, each of us has to decide if we want more convenience, more control, more privacy, more speed, etc. Each of the browsers seems to do well in one or two of these areas, but not all. Firefox seems to be a pretty good compromise that the majority of free browser users seem to prefer. Germ and I prefer Seamonkey, but we both still look at Firefox too. |
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jada
Linux Guru
Joined: 13 May 2025
Posts: 3064
Location: Sun City, CA 92585
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| Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2025 4:55 pm Post subject: Re: It all depends what you are looking for in a browser |
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| masinick wrote: | | Germ and I prefer Seamonkey, but we both still look at Firefox too. |
Old Netscape guys 
I like seamonkey too. The only thing what I don't like, install add-on's only us "Root" what will be finally changed with "seamonkey2". 
Firefox 3.5, I just used the RC3 and it looks good for me. I think we will soon see the final. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2025 6:02 pm Post subject: Re: It all depends what you are looking for in a browser |
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| jada wrote: | | masinick wrote: | | Germ and I prefer Seamonkey, but we both still look at Firefox too. |
Old Netscape guys
I like seamonkey too. The only thing what I don't like, install add-on's only us "Root" what will be finally changed with "seamonkey2".
Firefox 3.5, I just used the RC3 and it looks good for me. I think we will soon see the final. |
How did you know, Jada, how did you know? Yup, I go all the way back to the very first Netscape, and in fact, I even briefly used the original Mosaic browser that Marc Andreessen worked on at the University of Illinois, where he had been the leader of a certain software project known as "Mosaic".
In the summer of 1995, I was just returning to Digital Equipment Corporation after a two year medical leave of absence. In those two years an awful lot of things were happening.
Just prior to leaving, a lot of people in SDT - Software Development Technologies, the main application software group at Digital, where I worked in the early nineties, were looking at all kinds of Hypertext related applications. In the early nineties, I did not realize the potential at first, because I did not realize that you could connect Hypertext with all kinds of things - documentation - I knew and saw that early application, but also searching, networked content, such as the news groups that I was interested in, and the World Wide Web, which I did not appreciate until I read about it during my absence.
Naturally, when I returned, the first thing I looked for, other than some UNIX systems to use as I got back into the work force, was the World Wide Web and browsing. We had such great internal tools at Digital that I hadn't realized what additional power and flexibility these would offer.
Mosaic was not all that hot, but I had a test version, and I had to jury rig proxy management, since I was behind a Firewall at Digital. But when Digital implemented their own version of Netscape 1.0 on Digital UNIX, wow, the world became wide open.
Before very long, all of those news groups that we used with VAX Notes and VMSmail were also accessible with this powerful Netscape browser. It was way ahead of anything else at the time.
Alas, Marc got too cocky and talked about taking over the operating system and the Internet with his Netscape. Microsoft took him seriously, bought out a commercial version of Spyglass Mosaic, which came from the same roots as the Mosaic that Andreessen worked on, and they created Internet Explorer. It was a mess for a long time, but by the time they came out with Internet Explorer 5, they met or exceeded the capabilities of Netscape 4, which had gone into a stall as the project open sourced their work and rewrote it.
When Internet Explorer 6 came out, it really clobbered Netscape and virtually took it off the map, especially on Windows. Fortunately, as you know, the Mozilla project was well underway.
Version 6 of Netscape was a mess, but by Version 7, it got better, and around this time, Mozilla 1.0 was officially released. I stuck with Netscape 7 until Mozilla 1.0 became solid, then moved over to Mozilla.
With that background, you can understand why I always track what is going on with the Mozilla project. I try to assess the different projects at least periodically. Right now, for overall use, I find Seamonkey, the continuation of the original Mozilla suite, to be well designed, stable, and quite usable, and arguably the fastest overall, and the most likely to work and render most pages without issue.
Firefox wins in some cases, especially when you want those extra add ins and plug ins, but for the most part, Seamonkey, with a Web Browser, Mail and Newsgroup client, a Web page Composer, an Email and contacts address book, and an integrated IRC Chat client, just does more, yet its footprint is not any larger in the average memory that it consumes, and those are some of the many reasons that I continue to use and prefer it.
See this for an interesting historical account of Netscape. |
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mmmna
. . . .
Joined: 21 Apr 2025
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2025 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| Is it just me ... or does technology divide users more as the technology gets more complex?
_________________
-Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta2 on Celeron D desktop
-PCLinuxOS 2025 LXDE on EeePC 900A with Atom n270 (modded with 32G SATA drive and 2G ram).
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JP
Linux Guru
Joined: 07 Jul 2025
Posts: 6670
Location: Central Montana
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