Mozilla has released the latest beta of Firefox 3 today, and the Linux efforts behind it are starting to show even more. This release, being a beta, is surprisingly stable. Here’s the killer that makes this beta release amazing: more GTK support.
Look at those tabs. They match perfectly with the default Clearlooks theme. It isn’t true GTK like Epiphany, but it sure looks like it now. Instead of using custom icons by default, Firefox will now obey your theme settings. For those icons that don’t have an appropriate GTK equivalent, Tango icons will be used. Check out the popup menu at the right. Notice all of the visual cues for the menu items now? It’s GTK heaven.
Thought the Location bar was smart in the previous beta? Well, guess what, it’s even smarter now; so much that it is beginning to get creepy. Think of a page title but not the URL itself? No problem, Firefox 3 has you covered.
Other additions to this release include a refined bookmarks manager, a ton of bugfixes (the usual) and UI enhancements in several areas. Overall, it seems like the Mozilla team is really looking to get rid of the ugly fat image of Firefox on most systems, and streamline the animal into something much faster, especially in the area of Linux. Much of the newfound Linux support is all thanks to you users out there who tested the nightly builds and commented (and complained) on them. See, you can make a difference!
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My Linux Box » Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 Is A Win For Linux wrote:
[…] surprisingly stable. Here ’s the killer that makes this beta release amazing: true GTK support. read more | digg […]
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 8:35 am
beeman wrote:
That looks good… I’ll download it straight away!
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 11:36 am
tractor wrote:
Opera is way better…and much faster.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 11:52 am
Firefox 3 Beta Shows Some Linux Love at SuperVoodoo wrote:
[…] like the Firefox 3 beta 2 will add some GTK love for Linux users in addition to all the cool new features and enhancements. Version 3 of the popular open-source […]
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 12:12 pm
andy wrote:
RIP epiphany.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 12:25 pm
Çağlar Gülçehre wrote:
Hmm I haven’t used Firefox under Linux. But as an GNU supporter under Windows XP Firefox 3 Beta 3 was a very bad experience for me. I couldn’t even enter many web pages(like Yahoo Mail). The program crashed many times.(for instance when I tried to import my old bookmarks from a file). And I couldn’t see much improvements in the GUI(Oh yes they did some but I don’t think that they are enough and those are limited to the usability and accessibility terms. I mean there is no visual improvements). I hope that final release will fix those issues and a challenge waits for Firefox. Because IE 8 is coming for Windows too.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 12:26 pm
Hans wrote:
I don’t see why it is a win for Linux. Gnome and other GTK desktop environments maybe, but not Linux.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 12:46 pm
tenthousanddollarman wrote:
I hope this new release will solve the problem of frequent Firefox crash under Linux.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 1:15 pm
Jacob wrote:
tenthousanddollarman:
I’ve been using it for a while now, and as far as I can see, I haven’t had any problems with it at all other than some font size bugs. It seems more stable than Firefox 2 even. Makes you wonder how amazing the final release will be!
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 1:18 pm
D-bob wrote:
I’ve tried it last night on my home machine and it’s incredible. I managed to max out the RAM usage to around 30MB by making it show ridiculously big animated SVG files. Everything is a lot faster believe me.
Scrolling on complex pages feels like sliding down butter hills! And the page zoom is responsive finally.
To put it quite bluntly, I will not be using Opera on low-end systems any more because firefox really can cut the mustard now.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 1:39 pm
josh wrote:
I thought the titles were in BETA1 too? And yeah, it’s pretty stable. I really like the way this is going as well!
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 1:55 pm
bsergean wrote:
I found the beta 1 mac version very stable, and it does not screw gmail every once in a while like Safari. I downgraded to version 2 because vimperator is not supported yet on firefox 3.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 2:15 pm
Hank wrote:
Opera doesn’t have Firebug. So it’s not better. QED.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 4:50 pm
Tanja Short wrote:
More GTK support is great, because it will mean that it starts even faster than the current stable version. I like the new intelligent URL finder that you mentioned.
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 6:42 pm
Jay Gaulard Blog » Blog Archive » Monetizing, Apple, Firefox and Open Formats wrote:
[…] Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 Is A Win For Linux […]
# Posted on 21-Dec-07 at 6:42 pm
PinoyTux Linux Blog wrote:
[…]and fosswire.com writes that recent release is a killer browser for Linux Desktops[…]
# Posted on 22-Dec-07 at 12:17 am
Michael V. wrote:
“Much of the newfound Linux support is all thanks to you users out there who tested the nightly builds and commented (and complained) on them.”
No, much of the “newfound” Linux support is all thanks to contributors who got off their asses and made patches rather than armchair whining. I know because I’m one of them and the GTK theme is even better in the latest nightlies after Beta 2. The consistent complaining had nothing to do with it and in fact a lot of it was slowing the Linux support.
# Posted on 22-Dec-07 at 3:45 am
blimmer wrote:
I am using it. I like the speed and in particular the zoom functionality is astoundingly good, It even seems to remember different zoom levels for different sites.
Just one serious annoyance: I don’t understand the new bookmark system.
I like to keep my bookmarks in folders and subfolders with meaningful names etc. To follow that habit is a pain in the FF3.
In FF2 I use the “flat bookmark editing” and a few other plugins that allow for very easy handling of bookmarks. in FF3 it seems they are promoting a new approach which I don’t understand. So I wouldn’t know if it eventually will prove superior or not.
# Posted on 22-Dec-07 at 4:47 am
Jacob wrote:
Michael V:
Yes, and I’m grateful for that. Had to start somewhere though. Looking forward to the next beta!
# Posted on 22-Dec-07 at 6:28 am
Firefox 3 Beta 2 on Mac OS X :: Blog :: Peter Upfold wrote:
[…] to start changing that, and making Firefox feel like a first class citizen on OS X. Having heard Jacob’s singing praise for the beta’s integration with GTK on Linux, I thought I’d download the Mac build and […]
# Posted on 23-Dec-07 at 3:26 am
Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 | ...::: Guatewireless.org ::::.. wrote:
[…] Via | Fosswire […]
# Posted on 26-Dec-07 at 9:51 pm
The Linux Action Show! Podcast » Post Topic » The Linux Action Show! Episode 69 - OGG wrote:
[…] Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 Is A Win For Linux […]
# Posted on 29-Dec-07 at 11:03 pm
diego wrote:
Linux + Firefox FTW!!!!!!!!
# Posted on 03-Jan-08 at 9:52 pm
Eddie wrote:
Looks great but I really dislike gtk, what about Qt support???
# Posted on 15-Jan-08 at 1:22 pm
FOSSwire » Ubuntu 8.04: Hardy Heron Review wrote:
[…] Firefox 3 is included in the package, even in its beta form. It has apparently been proven to be stable enough to be included, though updates to the final release are likely to follow in June. […]
# Posted on 24-Apr-08 at 4:14 am