Nate Lanxon
Nate is CNET.co.uk's expert on digital music and portable media. He was born just long enough before the beginning of the digital age to grow up with it, become one with it and then be utterly consumed by it. 'Geek by profession' has been his career goal for two decades.
Thursday 14 February 2008, 10:15am
Firefox 3 beta 3 is a browser nirvana
As something of Firefox obsessive, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Firefox version 3.0. After trialing the early builds, I was pleased to see the launch of the third beta this week. Firefox 3 beta 3 is a stable release with an updated UI and most importantly -- to me at least -- significant improvements in system resource management.
One of the most complained about issues with previous Firefox releases is that its determination to consume every last megabyte of RAM was beyond problematic. The so-called "memory leaks" were capable of forcing a PC to slow to a crawl as it desperately tried to utilise what little memory it had left, meaning systems of only average spec were left in a state of perpetual uselessness.
True, a well-equipped computer would absorb the 'Fox's demands without complaining. But at the office, where highly capable machines are something of a Holy Grail, Firefox can make even the most devoted fan irate as it needlessly consumed a full half-gigabyte of memory.
Today marks 24 hours of version 3.0 beta 3 having been continually open and running on my office machine. Version 2.x would be highly bloated by this point, using on average about 450MB of my 500MB of usable memory. Beta 3.0 is using 110MB and running like a dream. The whole machine's running like a dream, in fact -- something I haven't been able to say in, well, ever.
Safe to say this release only makes me more excited about Firefox version 3.0. Bring it on, Mozilla.
Comments on this post
Tres bien! J'aime le Firefox. Vive le version 3!
Posted by Nicolas on Sat 16 February, 2008 9:59 PM
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I'm tempted to try it although when it comes to something I use everyday, I'm loathed to get into trying a beta version. For the sake of stress if nothing else. My laptop has 2GB of RAM so it has always "absorbed" FF, although I've never seen it take more than 150MB of memory.
Posted by David R Gilson on Sun 17 February, 2008 1:34 PM
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