Firefox 3 Beta 5 is HERE!

My sources in Mozilla QA tell me that Firefox 3 Beta 5 should be out this afternoon. There’s no download link available yet (duh) but I did want to take a minute to write what could end up being my final post on Firefox 3’s development.

Updated 2:30 PM EDT 2 April: Firefox 5 Beta 5 is now out! And the firstrun page does in fact continue the robotic theme of previous betas.

This should be the final beta for Firefox 3, and while a lot of improvements have been made in Firefox 3’s performance, I’m not sure the price is worth paying. Firefox 3 Beta 5 is definitely faster than Firefox 2 (although it’s interesting that some Mozilla-related, though not owned, sites seem a lot slower lately), and the Awesome Bar does bring some nice new features to browsing, but there are some things that still feel borked. Using the star in the Awesome Bar to bookmark sites still requires too many clicks, and it still isn’t clear what the hell’s happening when you click the star. I suspect that’s as fixed as it’s going to be until after Firefox 3 ships.

There’s also several theming and rendering issues that will need to be solved after Firefox3 ships, including the fact that they’ve changed the default themes to make them more native to the OS you’re using but what that’s also done is made it a pain in the arse for themers to create platform-agnostic themes. OSX has always seemed to do things a little differently and that’s cool. Now themers have to jump through extra hoops just to try to make one theme that will work on all operating systems from a single JAR file, as KLB found out the hard way. He pointed out an issue that arose in just the last few weeks that increased a themer’s workload, only to be told that it’s a WONTFIX for Firefox 3 (I’m not clear as to whether it will even get looked at after the launch).

Spell checking is now a hit-or-miss feature and I’m finding that I have to preview posts and emails a few times before my entire content is checked for typos. I’ve pointed this out to the devs, but basically got a non-answer response. I’m not sure where it stands but it’s to the point that I don’t really care anymore. If I have to I can pull my content into a text editor that has spell checking abilities built in and then simply bring the corrected text back into Firefox 3. What the hell, you have to do the same thing in SecondLife so why not here. Oh yeah, it’s because SL doesn’t have spell checking abilities and Firefox 3 does.

There’s also the issue of the keyhole, which even I have to admit has a couple of nice features, but it has also made a rather major change in how Firefox 3 works with little apparent reasoning in why exactly the change had to be made. There’s also the nagging little detail in that no matter how much people point out that the keyhole isn’t an IE7-specific feature it sure feels like one to a lot of us. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …

Which brings me to the new zoom methodology, which I’ve blogged about in the past. It still feels to me like they’ve made a fundamental change in how Firefox zooms when part of what they’ve added already existed in a bloody extension. Now someone’s had to write a new extension to give us back the old behavior, and the latest version of Zoomer even abdicates the task of actually zooming the text to Firefox 3. This means that text zoom is now handled on a site-by-site basis rather than the original tab-by-tab basis. Yes, there are people who love it. There are also people who hate it. No offense CatThief, but Zoomer essentially broke when 1.0 came out and is now about as truly useful to those of us who loved Zoomer in the first place as Internet Explorer is to non-Windows users who have no need to check web pages they don’t design.

Of course there’s also the new AMO (or as I call it Abominations.Mozilla.org), although it’s actually not a change in Firefox 3. One of the best things in Firefox 3 is the fact that you can search for addons from within the Addons Manager, but if you want more than the most basic information or want to add a search engine you’re sent to AMO, which is so fraked up that the mere sight of it spikes my blood pressure. As Uncle Spellbinder points out in his Mozillazine Forums signature, there is an alternative you should try: The Addons Mirror (formerly the Extensions Mirror). It’s not owned by Mozilla and it’s not integrated with Firefox 3, but you can get more information there, as well as bumped versions for many extensions that haven’t been updated by the extension developer to work with newer versions of Firefox. It is, however, quite trustworthy and I’ve never found a single bit of malware tucked into an addon there in about 4 years of using that site.

All in all, Firefox 3 is a little closer to prime time than it was a week ago. But it’s still testing software and Mozilla still says it isn’t recommended for use in daily web browsing, but it’s almost a Release Candidate so if you’re feeling adventurous feel free to give it a spin. Either back up your Firefox 2 profile before using it with Firefox 3 or make a new profile because if you decide you’d rather use Firefox 2 for now your profile will probably be useless once Firefox 3 uses it. And remember, many extensions and themes still need to be updated to work with Firefox 3 Beta 5, so don’t come crying that such-and-such an extension doesn’t work with Firefox 3 Beta 5. It’s a known issue and the one thing that’s required is your patience until the developer gets to it. They may not release an update until Firefox 3 hits Release Candidate stage so if you can’t live without an extension that hasn’t been updated please use Firefox 2 for a while longer.

As for me, I’ve decided that regardless of what they’ve made better in Firefox 3, it’s all outweighed by changes that I hate with the heat of a thousand nuns that I simply can’t work around. I’ve rolled back to Firefox 2 and that’s what I plan on using for the foreseeable future. Unless enough things are fixed by the time that Firefox 2 reaches the end of it’s support life (six months after Firefox 3 is officially released) I’ll keep using Firefox 2 until, and possibly beyond the final update. Since I’m not on Windows I actually have fewer vulnerabilities to deal with, but when it comes to a choice of using a no-longer-supported browser or use Firefox 3 I’ll probably start looking at other browsers such as Epiphany. I’m that disappointed in Firefox 3, and a few users at the Mozillazine Forums seem to thing I’m an idiot because I haven’t enjoyed the Koolaid they were served, which doesn’t help matters at all. There’s a feline on the forums who designs some really nice themes, but his superior attitude has left such a bad taste in my mouth, especially when he tried to continue a subthread that I had already acknowledged was a case of “agreeing to disagree so let’s just drop the damed thing” (I had to send him an IM pointing out that continued arguments about the state of zooming in Firefox 3 don’t do anyone any good, especially Mozilla community as a whole), that I now refuse to even look at a single theme he’s created. When he has a post in a thread I keep up with I take anything he says with a very large grain of sale. And some Pepto. (If you’re reading this and recognize yourself, sorry, but I think you’re a jackass. The only reason I don’t identify you by name is because some people love your themes and are willing to use them despite what a self important asshat you are.)