This is a big treat! This review of FireFox 3.0 was written by Al Brown. Many of you know Al as Big Toe from the Compu-KISS message boards where he shows his computer expertise and willingness to help others with their computer problems. In this, his first article for the Compu-KISS website, Al gives his thorough review of FireFox 3.0.

In a blog from .NET developer Sam Allen who devised an unscientific ‘memory loss over time test' and reported in ‘Info World' and other tech publications, Firefox 3.0 was the clear winner of the test, not only because it used the least amount of memory of any of the tested browsers, but its memory use didn't noticeably grow over time. "Firefox 3.0 browser exhibits memory usage that is by far lower than the others," Allen said. "It releases memory to the system and the trend line is nearly flat." The poorest marks went to Apple's Safari 3.1 for Windows -- Allen tested only the Windows versions of each browser -- which consistently consumed more memory the longer it was used. "Safari on Windows shows extremely poor memory management," he said. Other browsers, including Microsoft's IE 8 Beta 1, Flock's Flock 2.0, and Opera Software's Opera 9.5, were in the middle, memory management-wise. While their memory use crept up over time, the increase was much more gradual than Safari's. "IE did well...although a worrying trend in the data could indicate that its memory usage would keep escalating upwards," Allen said.

8.3 million copies of the Firefox 3.0 browser were downloaded in the first 24 hours. There were over 17.3 million downloads within the first week of the release. And my downloads onto a desktop and a laptop were part of those record setting numbers.

I updated FF 2.0 on my laptop where I predominately use Firefox browser. On my desktop, which only had IE 7.0 Pro browser installed, I did a full install. My laptop extensions almost immediately had updates for some showing as the installation had required a reboot of my machine and I have FF 2.0 set to check for updates each time it boots up. I have since obtained updates for almost all of the other extensions that I had already been happily using. I suspect that all extensions will be updated quite quickly by their developers and made available to all Mozilla browser users.

On my desktop, after the download and fresh installation I immediately went to the web to find and retrieve extensions for 3.0 that were already available for the new version of Firefox. For other extensions that I find as a must for me, I went to the Mozilla extension and add-on site located in Tools at the top of the FF 3.0 page and retrieved all of them that I found fairly quickly. I say fairly quickly, as the list of add-ons and extensions available for Firefox is quite extensive and does take a little bit of time to browse.

The most satisfying improvement I have noticed with the newest version of Firefox is how much quicker it is over the previous quickly-responding Firefox 2.0.... there goes that tiny bit of Type A personality I haven't been totally able to overcome with retirement...LOL. And I am sure this has to be psychological imagination and not rational scientifically provable observation, but the display for FF 3.0 seems to be brighter and easier to see. That actually might have some merit to it though, as on the desktop with the full install of FF 3.0 the display is different and more pleasing on the screen than on the laptop that was an overlay install of FF 3.0 upon the already installed FF 2.0. But even the laptop seems brighter, clearer, and the changes to the display certainly are not distracting even though they are slightly different than I was used to.

All in all, even though some experts are advising people to wait before changing to FF 3.0, I can truly say that I am quite happy with it. I have not experienced any real problems at different web sites that I frequent. The most noticeable difference in a very few sites is that the display wants to be twice as wide as it would normally be. That means I have the good old arrow bar across the bottom of the screen so I view the right half of the screen by moving the bar to the right. That is not a real problem, and I certainly suspect that on those web sites will make the modifications needed to handle FF 3.0 just like they did with FF 2.0.

One beautiful extension I have always used with FF is one called IETab.If I have a page that is not displaying "properly" in Firefox, I just click the IETab icon at the top of my browser page. That causes the computer to render the page just like it was using the Internet Explorer rendering engine, so that the web site believes it is being displayed in IE7 and works just fine. That was a needed step when FF2 came out, especially on many banking and finance sites that use a lot of column displays for numerical figures. A soon to be phased out web site on another senior site, which Sandy Berger so effectively published on, is a site similar to many normal web sites and it will not display correctly with FF 3.0 at the moment. A simple click of the IETab icon, and the page is rendered in the Microsoft IE7 browser, and works just like it should. The CompuKISS web site has been recently undergoing some appearance changes (much neater, IMHO thank you) but I have noticed absolutely no difference in how it works with Firefox 3.0 than it did with FF 2.0, or IE7 Pro.

Should you update or get Mozilla's Firefox 3 browser? That would be like me telling someone they should use a beach cruiser bicycle and not a 10-speed racing/touring bike, or drive a Ford and not a Chevy. We all have our own likes and dislikes, our own needs, our own comfort zones with new releases and programs.... Or have different levels of Type A or Type B personalities. But, I can say that for me, so far the update or the new installation has been a complete pleasure and I certainly have no regrets. I know that weaknesses have been reportedly found in the browser already, but weaknesses have been found in every single browser that has ever come out for a Mac or a PC, and within hours of their release; that is never a consideration for me. My only recommendation is for you to have a Happy 'Puterin experience with your machine.

Date of review: 7-17-2008

Free Download: www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox