First look at Firefox 3

The Firefox 3 was up for downloads around 1am Malaysian time but the site was down – possibly coz too many people were accessing it. Firefox phailed. LOL!

Anyway, here’s my quick review. It was really easy to switch to Firefox. Everything was automated, including importing bookmarks and such. The first obvious problem will be the compatibility of Add-Ons.

As you can see from my list above, the unsupported addons in my list are CoComment, FireFTP, Iget, Super DragAndGo and TabMixPlus (more on this later).

• CoComment is a plugin that tracks all your comments on websites (so that you don’t hv to subscribe and get lots of email) – but there’s a bookmarklet so I guess I can live with that
• FireFTP is a built in FTP program. Looks like I have to find a standalone one :/
• Super DragAndGo allows me to highlight any text that is a link and just click and drag to open it in a new tab. I have to do it manually now :(
• Iget lets me download a file eg if i want to download a swf from a website, i usually just check the code and copy the url of the swf and use Iget to download it. This one also have to do it manually now
• Tab Mix Plus has many more features for tabbed browsing. Two which I really like are opening new tabs next to the old one and scrolling the tabs using the mouse wheel. Fixed : Get the dev version that is compatible with Firefox 3 HERE.

I really like the look and feel of Firefox 3. Everything looks much cleaner and streamlined. The Back and Forward buttons are HUGE and easier to press now. You can make it smaller like what I did by right clicking on the bar and selecting Customize and checking the Box “Use Small Icons”

If you’re wondering where’s my File, Edit, Tools, etc buttons, I used this addon called Tiny Menu which compressed everything into a dropdown Menu which is only visible when I press the MENU. Then I moved all the Navigation buttons, and the address and search bar up. Then I disabled the Navigation Bar so that I’m only left with two rows – one with all the navigation & address/search bar and another with the bookmarks.

I also like the Smart Location bar which instantly looks for the nearest possible link to what you’re typing. Usually it shows the recent pages but this one shows your bookmarks (with a Star) as well. Convenient.

Firefox 3 also has a better built in downloader which allows you to continue your download after you’ve closed the browser or if your internet connection is down. That doesn’t really effect me coz I use IDM to download my stuff but its useful incase of a crash.

Here are some modifications/hacks I did:

• Resized that huge Back/Forward button
• Downloaded Tab Mix Plus dev version from this site
• Set Gmail as my default mail client. Meaning when i click any email address it will open Gmail and not Outlook. Tutorial [here].
• I also enabled Spellcheck into one-line input fields – open about:config, set layout.spellcheckDefault value to 2
• Enabled pasting multilines into input boxes. Tutorial [here]

Get the brand spanking new Firefox 3 today