Peng and I aren’t the only ones who aren’t thrilled with Firefox 3

It’s a known issue that Peng and I would rather use Firefox 2 than Firefox 3 and we figured there were more of us that hadn’t posted our displeasure online. There’s now another person who has posted a less than glowing recommendation for Firefox 3.

Firefox 3 RC1 is coming!

The first Release Candidate is now going through the early stages of preparation in advance for it’s release later this month, and when I do I’ll be recommending a lot of you give it a try to see how it works for you.

A user’s opinion of Firefox 3 Beta 5

Peng’s made it quite clear how he feels about Firefox 3, but he’s a geek and a bit of a techie so I wanted to post my feelings about it, simply from the standpoint of a user who got it when she upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy.

Mozilla makes another decision against usability

Firefox 3 seems to be about changing usability, and not always for the better. First we had text zoom made secondary and zoom levels being rememberd according to the site, not the tab, and now a button that has always been present in the Download Manager is removed, and the bug asking for it to be returned has ben marked WONTFIX.

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.

Reuters quotes Mozilla as saying Firefox 3 is “ready for prime-time”

Reuters published a story on Thursday reporting that one of Firefox’s “creators” told them Firefox 3 is “ready for download.” They may have gotten that quote from Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla Corp. (MoCo) Vice President of Engineering, but I think someone spiked his Red Bull because every tester knows that comment is bull for a number of reasons.

Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” is now a Beta

Ubuntu Linux has released the beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” with a number of improvements over Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon.”

The Zoomer extension has been changed

[Updated to include a response from the developer, below. - Peng]

In the past I’ve written about CatThief’s Zoomer extension for Firefox 3, which brought text zooming back to Mozilla’s newest browser. It was a welcome relief to all of us who prefer to zoom our text, not the entire web page. Unfortunately the extension has been updated for what should be the final release of Firefox 3 (no, it isn’t here yet), but something changed on it that may want to make you hold off on accepting the update if you haven’t gotten it yet.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is here!

I just learned that about an hour ago Mozilla officially released Firefox 3 Beta 4, after a weekend of false reports.

Why the Search tool is your friend

I’m helping test beta versions of Firefox 3 and I’m looking at helping test either alpha or beta versions of Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” and I’m amazed at how many times I see a new thread or a new bug report that duplicates one that already existed. Or even worse, how many comments keep getting added to a bug after the devs say “It’s a known issue. We’re working on it.”

For the love of God, people, if you want to help test software it’s not enough to want to report issues you find. Before you start posting the issue see if it’s already reported.