Dave Hildebrand.com » internet

Firefox v3.0 First Impressions

Dave — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:53:27 +0000

Browse Safe with Firefox 3

Firefox 3 was released yesterday to much fanfare. The first tallies are showing over 8 million downloads in 1 day. Of that total 269,901 were by Canadians.

Update June 19: Download total is now over 11 million, 320,000+ by Canada.

I’ve been using it for about a day, here are my initial impressions.

I don’t have any stats to back it up, but Firefox 3 seems faster. Pages come up fast, there is very little lag when switching tabs and so far the memory used by Firefox 3 is not growing by the second. Now I never had the memory issues some users of Firefox 2 have had, but, I regularly have 8-10 tabs open a time, often even more, and Firefox 3 so far seems to hang around 120-140K. Much like my old install of Firefox 2. This may be because I keep the amount of add-ons I use to a minimum, so I was never affected by the memory issues.

After installing Firefox 3 the first thing I noticed was the update interface. Thankfully Mozilla didn’t mess with the standard browser placement like Microsoft did in IE7. I also noticed that a new folder showed up on my toolbar. Firefox 3 adds a “Most Visited” folder. I’m not sure if i will use it yet, but could see how it could be useful.

I’m still learning & playing with all the new features in Firefox 3, and getting used to the new url bar, but, so far I like the new version. This is a required upgrade to all Firefox 2 users. I also strongly recommend IE users to take the plunge and give FF3 a try. I really think you will be impressed.

Who is a failure?

Dave — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:47:57 +0000

Everything that I had read said that Google had adjusted their algorithms to combat link bombs, also known as Google bombs. Turns out this may, or may not be the case.

Head on over to Google and search for the term “who is a failure?“. The #1 result should look like the photo below.

This story originally broke back in February. Perhaps this isn’t a true Google Bomb, and is just an unfortunate coincidence for Mr. Bush.

Wayback Machine Fun…

Dave — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:00:24 +0000

I stumbled upon the Internet Wayback Machine today. It was great fun looking back a the early days of the web. Google, MSN, NBC, CBC have all come a long way since the static web pages that we were treated to in the late 90’s.

MSN then:

And Now

Firefox & IE7

Dave — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:30:36 +0000

With the impending releases of Internet Explorer 7, I would like to remind my readers that there is another option. In fact there are two other options that would be a good choice as a primary browser, Firefox and Opera . Personally I prefer Firefox to Opera, the bias is purely subjective. I just like how Firefox does things and I like the the user interface. There is nothing wrong with Opera, its just not for me. With that being said, Firefox is set to release its latest version late this month. You don't have to wait for 2.0 to come out, the latest stable release 1.5.07 is available and I urge you to at least give it a spin. Check out TweakGuides.com to learn how to optimize you new copy of Firefox.

In related IE7 news, Microsoft will be pushing IE7 via Windows Update as a high priority update, but will be an optional update. There have already been a few concerns over possible exploits, but one thing is for sure, this update will be worth the time to download it. Until website developers stop designing sites to use activeX there will always be a need to keep a IE around. It may as well be a more secure version than the porous IE6.