Firefox 3 Beta 3

Lately I've been having some issues with Firefox taking up all memory and increasing the swap file to almost full capacity as well as running a huge processor load. At first, I figured I might have to use Opera or something else. I tried Swiftfox, but it didn't support some of my extensions. So then what?

After some digging/research, I found out that Firefox 3 Beta 3 is in the local Ubuntu repository, and there are a lot of reviews online (blogs, reviews, articles, etc) that rate Firefox 3 Beta 3 as being super lean and super clean. Using up to almost 50% less memory in some cases. So I decided to give it a shot. Upon initial install, all but two of my extensions did not work. After some digging around on the Firefox extension page, and reading up on some of my more useful extensions, and about most of those had beta versions for Firefox 3.

Now as I write this, using Firefox 3 Beta 3, about 65% of my extensions are working in either full capacity or beta capacity (18 out of 28 extensions). But with some of the new features in Firefox 3, some of the extensions may no longer be needed.

Example 1: Adblock Plus and Filterset G.Updater. Why you ask? Well, Adblock-Plus has it's own subscription feed AND the Filterset G.Updater was built for regular Adblock, not Adblock Plus. Therefore, one old extension gone.

Example 2: Update notifier. It's nice knowing when an update is available, so you can install it. Firefox 3 has a built in updater that runs every time you start Firefox 3. This means that the Update Notifier extension is no longer needed, because every time there is an update you have to restart Firefox anyways.

As of this date (March 26, 2008), there are only a few extensions that I really miss don't have beta version yet, namely Google Browser Sync and the Image Toolbar. Now if anyone knows if they do have beta versions, or better replacements, please feel free to let me know.

As for the memory usage and resource usage, it is way way less than Firefox 2 was and I can hardly wait until Firefox 3 is officially released. Ubuntu Gutsy is released in late April, but I'm not sure of the time line for Firefox 3, so I hope it'll be around the same time as Gutsy is released.

I must encourage everyone to switch to Firefox 3 Beta x (where x is the latest version of the beta). I just wish the Ubuntu repositories would have a newer version :P