The AM Forum

Firefox 3 was released June 17, 2008. Anybody using it yet?  Good - Bad - Who Cares  ???

dunno - I use Safari.  8)

Hey Pete

So far I like it. Seems fast. The 3D photo add is stunning

Carl / KPD

I like it

G

Just installed it here Pete, it's werken, we'll see watt happens OM...

Thanks!

My main concern was the list of "active bugs" that they noted on their web site, that they still needed to address.

Works very good here. Installed it a couple weeks ago. It uses less memory resources than earlier versions.

mike

I just received the upgrade yesterday for my existing Firefox - not sure if that brings it to v3 level or not. But my experiences with Firefox have been entirely positive, a refreshing change from the days of Explorer.

I got that upgrade on my other computer that has V2 on it. You have to go download V3 from their main page.

The more I work with V3 the more impressed I become. It flys

I've been holding off on 3 because I wasn't sure my extensions would be compatible. Sounds like you guys like it, maybe I'll jump...

Rob W1AEX

I'll probably give it another couple of weeks before installing it, just to give any major bugs a chance to show themselves.

I read somewhere that it is highly recommended that you uninstall V2 before installing V3, because installing the new version over the old one may cause unexpected problems.  Your profile settings and bookmarks are in a separate folder, so they should still be there when you install V3, but just to be sure, I plan to back those up on a thumb drive or my backup hard drive first.

Downloaded it the first day. Haven't used it extensively, but so far no  problems and it seems pretty fast. The biggest problem was updating all my Add-Ons. Many weren't available, but now start showing up every time I fire it up.

I've had it for a few weeks also with no problems, beats internet explorer, that's for sure, seems faster than Firefox 2.

I've been running it since installed, I've updated nothing, my bookmarks are all in tact, No conflicts with virus scaning, Nothing,,It Werks FB on my end.

So far No issues OM's...

Well, I took the plunge and installed Firefox 3 on my gaming machine. It went in fine, but my favorite extension was not compatible. Fortunately, someone has made an even simpler extension that does the same thing (loads your home page in a new tab instead of a blank page), so in the end, it worked out great! I haven't played with it much, but my first impression is that it's nice and seems to load faster than version 2.

Rob W1AEX

Did you uninstall FF2 first, before installing V3?  I have been told that the installation is prone screw up if you try to install V3 over V2.

Nope, just installed it right over the top of version 2. It picked up my bookmarks and other settings and tested the compatibility of all my extensions before enabling them. The mozilla forum I lurk in recommended installing right over older versions as the new install puts everything it needs right in the folder and does a good housekeeping job with anything else in there.

Rob W1AEX

I still haven't installed Firefox 3.  A few days ago I started getting pop-ups from FF urging me to download the new version.  But there was a warning that certain plug-ins may not work with the new version until these are updated, and had a link to click for details.  I clicked on it and it said that the record function in Realplayer that allows downloading and saving of videos was incompatible, and that if I download the new version the video recording function will be disabled. 

Since I have been downloading and saving a  lot of stuff off YouTube since Realplayer added that function, I don't plan to upgrade FF until the problem is fixed.

I hope they do fix the problem soon, because FF3 is supposed to be less of a memory hog than FF2.  I have 512 megs of memory, but sometimes I have to close out programs running in the background because FF2 has gobbled up all my available free memory.

I'll be watching this thread for reports.  Just checked Google's new browser, Chrome and got a Casablanca popup.  That browser is on my forever crap list.  You'ld think Google would know better.  What a turnoff.

I'm not even going to put in a link for Chrome.  The critics say that Google has the option of pop up ads in their browser - this sort of shows Google's colors.

I'm a happy Firefox user for now

Al

I upgraded to FF3 over the top of the earlier version several weeks ago with no problems.  I use the adblock plus and flashblock plug-ins and all seems well.  The only thing that Firefox seems to have problems with is that it "chokes" when exposed to too many flash items but the blocker takes care of it.

The first reviews on Chrome are not too promising and I expect I will continue to use FireFox.

Rodger WQ9E

 I have been on Firefox 3 for a couple of weeks now. There don't seem to be any problems with it so far except one.
 I cleared my browsing data and history, as I do now and then - except for cookies - and now I can't seem to stay logged in on AMfone. Every time I come to this site I need to log in again where before I was logged in "forever". When I log in I choose "forever" but it won't stay that way. My computer at work is always logged in and so is my laptop so I do not think it is the site, just something in the Firefox browser. The browser is not set to clear anything when I shut down. I prefer to do it myself every couple of months.
  So, I will keep playing around until I figure it out. It is probably something simple, I just haven't found it yet. It is annoying!

Bill KA8WTK

Bill,

Mine behaves sort of like yours except as soon as I click on any of the sections of the forum then it logs in properly.  The only time I see the "not logged in" info is when I first open up the site.  Have you tried clicking on any of the sections of the board before logging in?

I am still playing with the flash blocker a bit.  It does make the little news box blank on this site but on the other hand it gets rid of the annoying bouncing that occurs as the news box went from 1 line to 2 lines in its scrolling.  I had noticed before that for some reason Firefox seems to have issues with multiple flash embeds and the review of Chrome I read today confirmed the problem.

Rodger WQ9E

I got the same prompt to upgrade with the same warning.  When I clicked for details it warned that some parts of my Think Advantage utilities might not work.  That's a BAD so I wont be upgrading to FF3 any time soon.  That's a shame.

Al

All,
  Found my way around the log in problem I was having. IF you happen to end up logged out of the BBS and the log in at the top of the page won't let you log in "forever", use the log in box about 1/3 down the page on the left hand side. Worked for me.

Bill KA8WTK

I finally upgraded to FF3 yesterday, after learning that the problem with RealPlayer has been resolved.  It downloaded in less than a minute, and took less than 5 minutes to install.  It may be a little faster than FF2, but no astounding difference.  It still uses a lot of memory, although one of FF3's features is supposed to be less memory leakage. 

I tried recording a YouTube video to test it.  First time, the video downloaded, but when I tried to play it all I got was a blank screen, even though the thing at the bottom of the screen indicated that it was playing.  Later on, I restarted the computer and tried again; this time the video downloaded and saved normally.  Occasionally I had that problem with FF2, and had to switch to IE to save a video.  Hopefully it will work OK from now on.

Windows XP SP3 automatically downloaded  recently, but I want to back up all my stuff before installing it.  One of those round tuits I'll take care of in the near future.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

3.0.1 and completely satisfied. It gives me the control i require for my own security without sacrificing functions. I've even tweeked it to never open PDF or MPE or videos inside, but either in the proper external application, or, ahem, download them against the will of the server that insists to embed them. I use the noscript plugin with it to choose which scripts to allow, e.g.

allow amfone.net
forbid googleanalytics.com
forbid googlesyndication.com

yada yada

so quite pleased indeed.

It says on the Firefox site that they will be dropping support (upgrades) for Firefox 2 around mid-December. That's a real bummer for those using Win98se.  FF3 is only designed to be installed on XP or better operating system.

Has anyone tried "Kexver"?  It's a workaround that claims to allow FF3 to be installed on Win98 machines.

No offense, but I wouldn't recommend use of any Windows product earlier than Windows 2000. If you need Windows 98 because the computer it's on doesn't have enough CPU/RAM for W2K or XP, then I recommend you install a "lightweight" version of GNU/Linux and use that instead.

Spyware authors know every trick there is, and that includes the list of software vulnerabilities that were never corrected in Windows 98. As far as those guys are concerned, if you put any W98 machine on the Internet, you're inviting them to take it over and make it another robot in their "bot net", and your machine will be spewing spam and malware instead of helping you to surf the net.

If you're running applications that aren't (yet) available for GNU/Linux, then I'd recommend that you visit your local recycling center and get a free hardware upgrade. You'll be amazed at the machines that are tossed on the pile just because their owners bought something newer: it is, of course, a good idea to "flatten" such machines and install W2K or XP from scratch. Here's the icing on the cake: many recycled machines still have the "Certificate of Authenticity" glued to them, and that COA is the license for the operating system!

FWIW. YMMV. Feel free to write me offlist if you need more info.

Bill, W1AC

I just updated mine to 3.0.4.  They claim there were security issues with the earlier versions.  First time the update wouldn't install.  I  restarted the computer and tried again to download and install it, and the upgrade took less than a minute.

Almost every day I get notice of an update to some of my software - the OS, the browser, media players, or something.  I don't use the automatic update installers.  I prefer to know exactly what is being updated, and take the option to install it manually at my convenience.

I tried Firefox 3 and had issues. This was not a clean install however since I already had FF2. My issues were:

The download box stays blank, so to run a downloaded file I had to go fetch it with explorer

My Yahoo account would always have to be logged back in whenever FF3 was restarted, even if I checked to box to stay logged in for 2 weeks.  There is a work around for this where you have to follow a procedure to preset yahoo such that you stay logged in. This was a pain to do. I did not have to do this with FF2.

FF3 seems bloated and slower than FF2. In fact I read that some of the files are now linked to IE6 or IE7, a major change for FF.


 so I tried safari with XP.  Pretty neat but SLOW. I'm sure it would be better on a MAC.

I am currently running CHROME from Google. This is a work in progress, but is blazing fast and pretty neat. Not too many problems, and boots almost instantly. I have it set to boot with 6 pre defined tabs (AM FONE is one of them!). This is very nice.

Regards,
Jim
WD5JKO