Firefox beta 2b... evaluation?

Well... against my better judgment I downloaded and tried this beta version thinking it might be ready for prime time. What I found was that most of my extensions and most of my themes were disabled and that over a period of twenty minutes of browsing the memory usage jumped to about double what it normally is with 1.5.0.4. I also found that pages "seemed" to render more slowly than with the last stable version. Needless to say, I'm not knowledgeable enough to act as a beta tester and I'm not patient enough to accept these limitations. So... I dumped it and returned to the last stable version. Overall... I'm not impressed. Granted... it has some great features which will make for a wonderful browsing experience WHEN it is ready and WHEN these glitches are ironed out.

 

James,
I signed up a tester, but, I never install any experimental builds. I work with unzipped nightlie, which may or may not be representative of the released milestone. Perhaps I cheat by using the Nightly Tester Tools extention to make my few extentions compatible.
Unfortunately, it goes this way. A new version comes out, and the developers of the extentions have to fumble around to get compatible updates.
I am not impressed with 2.0, but it does not bother me. But unzipped files are great for such work.

 

I agree, Westside. In the future I'll probably follow your lead in this.

 

Note to Moderator: This previous post should be removed. It is completely irrelevant and adds nothing of substance to the discussion. One-liners are surely against the ROC.

 

James,
I agree with you. What have we learned?
By the way, 2.0b1 chugs along. with one exception, when the incremental failed, I have updated 2.b1 daily. It is ok, but I am using it, right now as my preferred browser, especially since Roboform figured out how to produce an extention which works. I use the Nightly Tester Tools extention, and, the few extentions which I have been using have worked well. Roboform is another story. Otherwise 2.0b1 uses up memory at the same rate a 1.5.0.5, and renders as well.
I am, also, testing FF3.0a1, due out, perhaps in 2007. It is based on rev.1.9, and it tried my patience. Forget about most extentions, even with help. But that is part of the game. I had been ok, till yesterday's update messed everything up. Later in the day, I found out that it was a bad nightly. Today's incremental restored peace. I am using FF3.0a1, now. Yet, another nightly.
The main reason why I am testing, is to see where they are going. And, provide input. For instance 3.0 does not have a way to Set another folder as the personal toolbar.So far, I don't have a clue how they are handling bookmarks. But, it is good to know, ahead of time.

 

Thanks for the update, Westside. You're a pioneer!

I think, though, that I'm going sit tight with 1.5.0.5.

 

Yea, till 1.5.0.6 comes out. Look at the other post.
I must caution people about using 2.0b1, or whatever. It has rolledover twice in the past few days. Once in Yahoo Mail. I did not make anything out of it, but today, I was just looking at the "addons" (extentions}. I closed the Tab which had come up. And, within 10-15 sec. I realized that I wanted to go back in. Next thing I was on the desktop, no error, no QFE. When I clicked on the shortcut again, I was told that there had been an unexpected error on closing, and, if I wanted to restore the session. with the Yahoo debacle, the session was restored, but it crashed again few seconds later. This time, it did nothing.
This worries me, because although a session restore is a good feature. why is it happening in first place? I can always blame the beta part. Anyway, I have all these browsers to get an idea of what they are up to. However, it is difficult to tell apart features from bugs. So, I am reserving judgment.
However, with unzipped files, incremental updates, and separate profiles, it is so easy to give up on a troublesome program, and not cause problems elsewhere.
Yesterday, I came this close to give up on FF3.0a1, which gave me a lot of problems. The earlier nightly was fine, and, the update fixed the problem.
I am leery of a nightly which download an entirely new program. It did it this morning for 2.0b1, and it messed up. But, you will be surprised to know that I don't spend much time on any of these guys. Just enough to make some sense.