Firefox 3 Looking Good

Firefox 3

Tonight, after completing all that I needed to complete (it's been busy- let's just say that for now), I decided to install Firefox 3.0b3 and take it for a spin. Lately I've been very dissatisfied with Firefox 2. It's been extremely sluggish, bogs down my system considerably due to the demanding resources necessary to run it, and has a tendency to crash at random. At this rate I may as well go back to Windows and run Internet Explorer!

The reviews I've been reading have indicated that memory and performance have been key issues that Mozilla has focused on for version 3. And while I've only had a chance to test Firefox 3 (beta 3) for an hour or so, the difference is already extremely noticeable. Pages load faster. My entire system just seems more responsive. My CPU usage hovers just below 10% (which includes having Thunderbird, XMMS, Pidgin and several BASH terminals open across 8 desktops), and my memory usage isn't through the roof. Even pages that are Flash-heavy scroll effortlessly.
Granted, many (read: most) add-on extensions and themes are not compatible with b3- so I'm running a very barebones browser from what I have with 2.0, so perhaps my tune about Firefox 3 will change once I run it consistently in a production environment with my usual 8+ tabs open and all my extensions loaded. But I do have a glimmer of hope that by the final 3.0 release- the browser will be stable enough to handle it. Perhaps I can run with a stripped-down browser anyways. It's not like I'm using the web development toolbar all the time.

But so far, I'm impressed. I'm also holding out hope that Mozilla's mobile browser will be just as good of an offering as Firefox 3 is shaping up to be. It's not without bugs- it's still rough around the edges- but Mozilla is definitely on the right track. Can't wait to see the finished version.