Oh yeah, the new version of Firefox is upon us.
Firefox 19 for Windows, Mac & Linux was released yesterday with some bug fixes and major change being an in-built PDF viewer. We’ve been using third party (read Adobe) add-ons until now to view PDF files within the browser itself, now no need for those. PDF files will open within the browser itself, a la Chrome.
See the full release notes & changes here and download the latest version by clicking on the banner below.
It feels just like yesterday that Mozilla released the major-est version of their Firefox browser – Firefox 4, with various enhancements. Both within & without, especially in the GUI/look-and-feel department. I’ve never liked the tabs-on-top feature and the disappearing status bar either so I’d tweaked it to look as similar to 3.6 as possible. Well, except the orange menu button – looks nice.
And now hot on the heels, Firefox 5 is upon us. Mozilla had earlier announced that they were ditching the old numbering system and instead focusing on rapid releases and hence we don’t see many 4.x versions. After having been in beta for a couple of weeks, Firefox 5 is available for public download via your browser’s built-in update or from getfirefox.com
And I thought Chrome’s versions were too quick for my liking*!
P.S: * coz I’m a tester and compatibility testing with so many versions is a PITA 
Ever since I’ve started using Firefox 3, I’ve been noticing that the ‘profile folder’ (where FF stores all the user’s personal info, extensions info etc) was steadily growing in size. Right from my initial usage of Firefox, I’ve not been using the default folder path for this profile but using the firefox -p startup option, create a Firefox_Profile folder at a different location so that the personalization could be carried over from version to version.
With Firefox 3, this profile folder started to bloat in size very often. Whilst with FF2 it was almost always nearabout 50 megs, with FF3 it grows to ~100 MB after a few hours of browsing. I looked into the individual files and bam! the culprit stood out to be a urlclassifier3.sqlite file which was topping out at 68 MB 
. Alarmed at this, I Googled around and found this Mozilla Knowledge Base article on the same.
The urlclassifier2.sqlite file contains information on known phishing sites that is used to warn you should you visit one. The information is downloaded by default from a Google database once a day. This functionality can be modified or turned off in “Tools → Options → Security
Firefox 3 contacts Google at each startup to get an updated list of known phishing websites and updates the same in the urlclassifier3.sqlite file. Agreed this is what makes our browser safe and secure but why is it bloating up in size? Are the phishing sites on the web increasing as fast as the size of this folder? Naah! Apparently, there’s a known bug in FF specific to this urlclassifier file which says that it has a lot of vacuum/blank space within and there ought to be a mechanism to automatically compress it effectively. Continue reading
The Mozilla Foundation has clocked up 8 Million+ Downloads for its Firefox 3 browser as part of the record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. While the record is still to be verified by the Guinness authorities, the Mozilla foundation is giving away certificates for all of those who have participated in the ‘download spree’.
Of course, there is no verification in place to actually check whether you’ve downloaded Firefox 3 or not before it gives you the certificate!!! All you gotta do is to enter your name in the certificate page, and out comes a PDF file with your name on it! So get it and proudly flaunt off your record attempt participation.
After almost two hours of waiting, the Fox has arrived onto my notebook. The Download Day started for us in India at 22:30 Hrs but the site was down even before the said hour approached! I gave it half-an-hour time (maybe they were uploading the files, beefing up the cache etc etc) and was constantly monitoring the release tracking Wiki. I also was checking up most of the Mozilla mirrors…might be there was a new version all ready for me to grab…but alas! all the 3.0 folders had was a “We’re not quite ready yet” message.
Finally, at about 00:35 HRS IST, this download page was accessible and I promptly clicked upon the Download link for the en-US/Win32 version. The 7.1 MB download took a little over a minute and when it was ready, I was in two minds as to whether should I uninstall the older version or overwrite it! I eventually chose the latter and boy! was the installation quick! The mandatory extension-compatibility check took a while (since I have many of them) and I was a tinge disappointed to see many favourite extensions not making the cut! Hopefully, the makers will scale upto 3.0 soon. Once installed, I quickly tweaked some settings and am good to go….and this is my first post from the latesht and fastesht and coolesht browser – Firefox 3.0…..FTW!
First Impressions:
More as I continue using it further…
As of now, I should get back to the Italy Vs. France EURO 2008 game…Italy leading 1-0 with France down to 10 men 
17th June, 2008 – the day after tomorrow – is the official release date of Firefox 3 browser. The latest version of the popular open-source browser contains “more than 15,000 improvements” and is said to be “faster, safer and smarter than before”. The Mozilla corporation is publicizing the release date as “Download Day” where they will attempt to set a new Guinness World Record of most software downloads in 24 hours. Enthused people can go here and register a pledge saying that they will be downloading Firefox 3 on that day. As of now, there are more than 1,200,000 pledges with a little over 23,000 coming from India.
Even if half of the ‘pledged’ members download FF3 on that day, it still will be a record! Why? Coz the Guinness Book of Records doesn’t have a record for “most software downloads in 24 hours” or any similar record. Suffice to say, the record will be created come Monday.
Will I download it? Well, depends on how soon I get back from work and also on whether the Mozilla servers haven’t crashed by then 
