FireFox Ver. 2 vs. Ver 3

[autowasherfreak]

Anyone on here using FireFox 3.0? I just did a reinstall of Windows XP, and when I reinstalling FireFox I decided to try version 3. For some reason on Ver. 3 the web pages took for and a day to load. So I went back to Ver. 2 and the pages load a lot more quickly. Anyone else have any similar experiences?

 

[sudsmaster]

I'm using Firefox 3.05 on my Vista notebook and it's fine. There were some occasional freeze-ups but the 3.05 update seems to have addressed them - at least I haven't seen any lately. Remains to be seen if it also works better with some web sites that demanded IE instead.

I also use Firefox 3.x on my Windows 2000 Pro desktop - it's a slower Pentium III machine but Firefox performs about the same speed as IE did. I went to Firefox because Microsoft keeps on bugging me to upgrade to the latest version of IE but IE6 is the latest version that will work on W2K.

I have a motherboard upgrade ready for the Pentium III system... but have been busy with other stuff. I mainly just use it for apps I didn't want to install on the notebook.

 

[autowasherfreak]

It would take at least two minutes at times for the pages to appear on AW, and VacuumLand. But now that I went back Ver. 2 everything loads almost instantly. I have 512mb of memory and a 1.10GHz processor. I'm going to try installing 3 again and see if the same thing happens again.

 

[whirlcool]

I have heard this from several people who were upgraded to Firefox 3, it is slower that version 2.0 was.
I am running a Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz with 2GB ram. Firefox seems to run fine, however it does slow down on occasion. This last release update from last week has seemed to improve things.
I think the performance you see is directly related to the processor type and ram used.

 

[autowasherfreak]

I reinstalled Ver. 3 and it moving a lot faster than the original install.

 

[j2400]

It's been my observation that when a new version of software comes out it will often be slower than previous versions. When performance improvements get cited, it's often in a specific area or two.

Then, Firefox has never struck me as being particularly fast. Right now, I'm using Opera almost all the time.

 

[autowasherfreak]

I think something must have happened during the first install, because it moving a lot faster, especially for eBay which was super slow before. On the first install the progress bar would remain white for the longest time, sometimes it wouldn't even show up.

 

[sudsmaster]

Sometimes when a page is slow to load in Firefox I just click stop and then reload, and it loads quick.

 

[DADoES]

IIRC, one of the touts on V3 is that the rendering engine supposedly is faster than V2. I held-off on updating all my computers to V3 because a couple of my favorite extensions haven't yet been ported to it. But I found alternatives, so I'll likely go ahead in a few days. Except for one system at work which is WinNT so can't run V3. I reworked a 900Mhz system left from the Internet service as a "new" computer for my mother, V3 works fine on it.

 

[2drumsallergy]

Totalidea FireTune

Hi Folks,
I personally find Firefox 3.0 much faster than version 2.0 but every Computer is different so results can and do vary.
A useful and totally free product by Totalidea Software of New Zealand called FireTune can be downloaded from my link. It tweaks the Firefox about:config file optimizing the page rendering settings according to the type of PC, e.g. Fast Computer - Fast Connection, Fast Computer - Slow Connection etc. It is very easy to use and all changes can be reversed by a couple of Mouse clicks.

I hope this helps.

David

http://www.totalidea.com/product.php?Product=FireTune

 

[mattl]

FireFox 3 works quite well for me, quick and responsive. If I could outfit Opera like I do FF I might be tempted to switch. I've got an old laptop, P233. 98m of memory that runs Win 2000 Ok, but I wanted something faster. I'm using a variation of Puppy Linux on it and the Opera browser that is installed with the distro is BLAZING fast. I was really surprised.

If your are not married to all your plug ins in FireFox give Opera a try.

 

[autowasherfreak]

The only plug-in on FF that I really use, is one that allows me to download videos from YouTube and XTube. Ver. 3 started acting up a little while ago. So I closed it and opened Outlook and had no problems with Outlook. I don't know if its a software issue, ISP issue, or if it's the computer.

 

[sudsmaster]

I found that AVG's Link Scanner was interfering to retrieving new web pages with both IE9 and FF3.05 on my Vista notebook. So I disabled that feature and new web pages are loading just fine again.

 

[countryguy]

I was using Firefox 2.0 with Vista and found it started to take a long time to load pages. I thought there was something wrong with the computer because I use IE also and it was also taking a long time. But then I uninstalled Firefox 2.0 and did a fresh install of 3.0 and wow what a difference. It is much faster now...even faster than IE.

Gary

 

[2drumsallergy]

Firefox 3.0

Hi Gary,
Glad you got things sorted.
You say "even faster than IE" LOL anything is faster than IE.
If its speed everyone is after there is a new kid on the browser block, Google Chrome 1.0. It is blazingly fast faster than IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera. It uses the Open Source Webkit Rendering Engine (Also used by Apple in Safari).

Well worth a try.

David

Google Chrome - The Fast & Secure Web Browser Built to be Yours

Chrome is the official web browser from Google, built to be fast, secure, and customizable. Download now and make it yours.

www.google.com

 

[autowasherfreak]

3 started acting up again, went back to 2 but I'm going to try Google Chrome later today.

 

[2drumsallergy]

Corrupt Firefox Profile Folder

Hi Jim,
You likely have a corrupt Firefox Profile folder on your Computer. It can cause Firefox to behave in unusual ways and even crash it. Before you give up on Firefox 3.0 please uninstall it then use the instructions on my link to locate your profile folder and delete it or them if more than one is present. Finally reinstall Firefox 3.0 from a freshly downloaded Firefox installer file. You will loose any extensions you may have installed but you can always reinstall them when your done.

I hope this helps.

David

Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data | Firefox Help

Firefox stores your personal data and settings in a profile folder. Learn what information it contains and how to find your profile.

support.mozilla.com

 

[j2400]

Completely deleting the Firefox Profile folder will also kill bookmarks. So, before deleting the Profile folder, one should export the bookmarks from Firefox.