yewknee.com

Firefox 3 Arrives

So, after many "Server Unavailable" messages, the latest Firefox version is officially released. I can't speak for how it is on a PC but the Mac version certainly opens a lot faster and, on the whole, seems to render pages a lot quicker than before. Deep down, that's really all that matters. I have a few gripes about the newer version (see below) but I am willing to bet that over time they will either get officially fixed with patches or someone will release an Add-On that takes care of the issue. Speaking of...

• "Awesome Toolbar" - their name, not mine. The new address bar functionality is far from awesome. Whatever algorithm they are using to determine predictive results is incredibly awful and, more importantly, looks terrible. I get what they were going for (making the Address Bar more functional for the lowest common denominator web browser user) but it erks me to no end that I can't turn it off and roll back to the previous functionality. Even more aggravating after reading this in which they intentionally removed the option to switch it on and off and it only saved them 6 lines of code! Supposedly there is an Add-On that rolls back to a somewhat similar looking functionality but it doesn't actually work if you attempt to install it. This is, obviously, my biggest gripe.. and I'll stand by it being quite a doozy.
• Default skin is gross. Not that I expect Mozilla to have the design skills to match Apple or anything but the enormous Back button is hideous. Fortunately "Use Small Icons" seems to make things better.
• Hard returns in a rich text editor scroll the entire browser window. This one is hard to explain but I've had it happen a number of times. Very lame.
• Some pages that used to render just fine are now completely illogical. Granted, this may be due to a stricter adherence to standards but c'mon.. don't make the web worse!

That last one sounds pretty huge but it's really only happened once or twice as far as I can tell. I welcome Firefox 3 becoming a new standard (assuming it's javascript support is up to par, haven't tested that yet) but I hope they get some of these kinks worked out quickly.