Firefox 3.0 first impressions, part 1: the great, the good
By TJ Kirchner
Download Day came and went, boasting an impressive 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours. Today, they’ve almost doubled that number in a little over a half a week later. Now that users have field tested the new product, I’d like to take a look at some of great and not-so-great features and capabilities of the new Firefox.
The Great
- The “AwesomeBar”
The “AwesomeBar” combines the power of an address bar and search bar with lightening speed. From the address bar, you can enter in the website’s address or its title to access the page. The bar also handles some URL-encoding for you, so you no longer have to worry about addresses with no spaces or with certain special characters.
Plus, as you type out either query, Firefox will present a list of six possible results based on your search history. Then, depending on which page you choose, the browser will remember that choice and associate your statement with that website.
This is a HUGE feature in the new Firefox. There have been several occasions that I couldn’t remember a webpage’s exact address and I’d either be forced to use Google to track it down, retrace my steps, or sift through my web history.
Now I just have to enter in some keywords and I’ll get a list of some possible websites. I know domain names were an improvement over IP addresses, but this is almost a step up from that. Man I love this thing! Where have you been all my life?
- Smart Bookmarks
Much like iTunes’ Smart Playlists, Firefox 3.0 has “Smart Bookmarks” that can gather information based on a user’s browsing habits and create a list of links using search criteria. You can use these bookmarks to show a list of new articles from your favorite blog or find pages from a particular domain that feature certain keywords.
By default, the browser comes with “Most Visited,” “Recently Bookmarked,” and “Recent Tags” smart bookmarks. However, you can create your own Smart Bookmarks too. CyberNetNews has a great tutorial on how to create Smart Bookmarks.
At first, I thought this new feature was a little annoying. I’m very particular about how I organize my bookmarks and my bookmark toolbar. But now that I’ve begun to use it, I’ve been finding it pretty useful. I like to use StumbleUpon to find new sites, videos, and gadgets on the web and this is a similar tool.
- Better Performance
According to LifeHacker, the new installment of Firefox is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2.0 in Javascript Performance. Plus, it’s taken care of several of its memory usage problems and made 15,000 improvements to make it less crash-prone.
Some of these tweaks include the way Firefox handles drawing to the screen and how the page layout works. Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) also helps increase the browser’s performance by optimizing Firefox load times.
- Stronger phishing and malware protection
Firefox now has much stronger security features that make Internet Explorer look like a screaming-coded-death trap. Warning pop-up boxes appear when users visit sites that are suspected of harboring malware. Plus, based on Google’s ever-growing blacklist of phishing sites, Firefox doesn’t even display these places.
The browser even keeps your add-ons up-to-date by displaying notification boxes when these updates are available or by disabling extensions that are out-of-date.
Most users don’t understand anything about security. Therefore, anything that helps protect them from malicious content is a definite plus. Internet Explorer already had phising and malware protection, and now Firefox has met and even exceeded this expectation.
I also like the update notification bar. Back when I was using Firefox 2.0, I thought it was very annoying when the browser presented me with an update window and forced me to make a decision to update my add-ons or not, when all I wanted to do was go to Google Maps and print out some directions. This design feature is a lot less abrasive and annoying.
The Good
- Streamlined “Remember password” handling
Firefox eliminates the hassle of “Remember Password” pop-ups by placing it at the top of the browser. Furthermore, it doesn’t stop the page from loading, thus interrupting the user and forcing them to make the decision on the spot.
I thought this feature was pretty nice. Internet Explorer always annoyed me with its “remember password” pop-ups. For the record, I never save any of my passwords. So, this new feature suited my tastes just fine.
- Improved Download Manager
The Download Manager now has two new features that are pretty handy. If you need to leave or devote more bandwidth to something else, then you can pause and resume downloads. Also, it gives you an option to locate the file in the directory structure.
Ever since I’ve been using Firefox, I used the Download Statusbar add-on to get rid of that annoying popup window. However, this new feature has made me consider going back to this feature. There have been some occasions where I downloaded a file and didn’t know where Firefox saved it to. Maybe if they made an add-on that had a dockable download window, then I’d get the best of both worlds.
- Better User Interface
Several small design tweaks were made to the Firefox UI. The most notable is the bigger back button, which has also been grouped together with the smaller forward button. From my perspective, this makes sense, since the most used button in a web browser is probably the back button.
The browser also boasts better CSS support. Plus, sites that use smaller style fonts are in luck, since it can now resize images and text.
Furthermore, Firefox has some better native skins depending on the OS its running on. Using the Cover Flow-type styling from OS X, transparencies in certain places for Vista/OS X, and other tweaks in color and shading, the browser now looks like a natural part of your system.
I can’t say this was a selling point for me for the new Firefox, but for some people, having a more native looking browser might appeal to them. I’ll probably upload a new theme when they start becoming available anyway. Sorry guys.
- Offline Resources
Firefox now supports resources that can be cached, allowing developers to create applications that can run when they’re not connected to the internet.
This is a huge development for people that have been calling for online apps (like Google applications) that can be used outside the internet. I’m very much looking forward to what the developers of Mozilla will do with this.
- Drag-and-Drop… Everything
It seems that Firefox took a page from the Scriptaculous library when they gave users the ability to drag images and chucks of text from the browser to their desktop to be saved or to a word processor for further editing.
I think this feature is pretty useful. There have been several occasions where I needed to save an image that I liked or found an excerpt from a blog or forum that I thought was interesting or useful. This feature provides a quick and easy way to accomplish this.
Check out part two of this article series, "Firefox 3.0 first impressions, part 2: the ok, the bad, the ugly." There, I’ll cover facts and features about Firefox 3.0 that are alright, not-so-good, and some that are down-right ugly.
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