431 I detest Apple's OS X Software Update feature, and indeed its predecessors dating back to the Classic Mac OS. Among the forst things I would do configuring an OS 9 install would be to open Extensions Manager and disable Software Update, and I have doen the equivalent with my OS X installs by unchecking the "Check For Updates" box in the Software Update System Preferences panel. However, ya' just gotta love the way Mozilla.org quietly and unobtrusively delivers Firefox incremental updates in the background, than puts up a dialog politely asking if you want to install them. If you give the go-ahead, it only take a minute or two, and then the program restarts and restores whatever pages or tabs you had open. Very slick, polite, and convenient, and (this is a biggie for me) they seem to have engineered it so that (unlike Software Update)it doesn't slow your system to a crawl, even on my slow dialup connection. Incidentally, Firefox 3 also does a masterful job of restoring your Web sessions even after routine close/startups. The program (again politely) asks you if you want to save the current session when you shut it down.

Last evening, the third update to the Firefox 3 final release quietly arrived in the background as I was doing other things, and I duly gave permission for it to install, the entire process of which, including restoration of about eight open tabs, took only couple of minutes and I was back in business.

No major or even obviously visible changes, but Firefox 3.0.2/3.0.3 fixed several issues found in Firefox 3.0.1.

New in Firefox 3.0.3:
* Fixed a problem where users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords

Firefox 3.0.2 contained the following updates:
* Fixed several security issues.
* Fixed several stability issues.
* Official releases for Sinhala and Slovene are now available.
* Beta releases for Bengali, Galician, Hindi, Icelandic, Kannada, Marathi, Telegu, and Thai are available for testing.
* Fixed a number of minor issues with the layout of certain web pages.
* Fixed several theme issues that affected right-to-left locales.
* Fixed issue that caused some users with customized toolbars to have their Back and Forward buttons go missing (bug 426026)
* Add new Extended Validation (EV) roots to Firefox 3.0.2.
* On certain IDN sites, the password manager would not fill in username and password details properly.
* Fixed several hangs and crashes that occurred when using screen readers.
* Fixed Mac-specific issues:
- Keyboard shortcuts would stop working in some cases.
- Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters can not be entered (using IME) into text fields in Flash objects (bug 357670)
- Firefox 3.0.1 could not be used when the user profile is stored on an AFP directory (bug 417037)

Not stuff most of us couldn't get along without, and I hadn't been having any problems with Firefox 3.0.1, which I've had configured as the default browser on my G4 PowerBook workhorse for the past couple of months, but the nips and tucks are all to the good.

Firefox 3 for Mac has a much-improved and more attractive user interface compared with earlier FF versions, with a more native Mac OSX look, smaller buttons, more compact tabs, and new forward/back buttons that debuted in the Windows version of beta 3. I like the new Firefox interface a *lot* better thabn the old one, but I still think Opera and iCab, and even the Japanese Webkit based browser Shiira, have the edge in interface attractivelness. One thing I'm not taken with is Firefox's tiny page load progress bar at the bottom of the window. I've gotten used to progress bars at the top, a la Safari and Opera.

System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 and later

Minimum Hardware
Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
128 MB RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater)
200 MB hard drive space

You can download Firefox 3 here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?from=getfirefox

Charles W. Moore

Login   or   Register    

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: