Do you think Google Chrome is faster than current Firefox 3?

Firefox Minefield runs a separate system so you won’t have to do anything to your current Firefox installation.  Don’t expect too much in terms of stability, because it’s in its alpha stages… One of the things that people talked about chrome was that how fast it can execute JavaScript.

Google Chrome got popular due to its fast javascript engine. This future Firefox is even faster.  Soon, firefox is going to adapt this new JavaScript engine.

As it says on minefield project page:

Warning: This is NOT A FINAL OR PRE-RELEASE VERSION. This program is provided without any guarantees of stability, so please use it at your own risk. It is recommended that you back up your profile regularly, as there may be bugs that corrupt your data. If that sounds scary, you’d probably be better off with the latest version of Firefox that you can download here.

Minefield is same as Firefox except that it has a new javascript engine and it doesn’t support any of the add-ons that you use in Firefox. Minefield is testing purpose only.  It’s really worth it to install it and check the new javascript engine.

For further info on this project:

• Minefield Project Page
• New Firefox Javascript engine is faster than Chrome’s V8 (Visit here to see actual tests)
• Minefield post at Linuxhaxor

Couple of months ago,  I have posted about a problem which I was having with Gmail and yet I’m about to post a new one. 

I’m sure everyone has noticed that progress bar after you enter your account information in login form.  I don’t know how long it has been since gmail put that loading bar. This is one of the problems I’m having with Gmail in Firefox. 

Here is the screen shot. It stops at that very end of the bar and it doesn’t go trough. At first, I waited bit more for it to load but didn’t go through. I tried clearing cookies, browsing history and other private data but it didn’t work. Only thing that works is that you have to hit “refresh” button.  Either it stops at the end like that screenshot or it never starts loading. 

I’m going to try to reinstall Firefox 3 if this keeps being a problem. I’ll also update this post if anything works. Gmail works fine with other browsers. I don’t get this problem in Safari, Opera, IE7.

From now on, I won’t be fixing my CSS to make it work in Internet Explorer 6. The reason for that is that web browser is too old.

I think web the browser is too outdated and it should not be used to browse the web. Besides, Microsoft has updated as well. So should you. They are now about to release Internet Explorer 8. It’s now in its beta versions. You should at least upgrade it to Internet Explorer 7 which is better than IE6. There are just dozens of browsers that are better than Internet Explorer 6.

Anyways, I will not be fixing my CSS to make it IE6 compatible. This also goes for any of templates or wordpress themes I made or will make.

So I have finally decided to switch from Firefox to Google Chrome, I went ahead and imported all of my bookmarks to Google Chrome. But my RSS bookmarks were missing so I went ahead and did one more time and still the same. 

RSS Icon

RSS is a great thing, especially Live RSS Bookmarking. In other words, I hate using those RSS Readers such as Google Reader or Bloglines. I think they are time consuming. Anyways, I was surprised why Google Chrome didn’t support RSS Bookmarking.  RSS is supposed to be one of those “cool” things about web and google is not supporting that. 

More thoughts on Google Chrome

It’s been over a week since I started using Google Chrome as my second browser. For some reason,  Firefox has been freezing a lot lately and provoking me to switch to Google Chrome completely.  A lot of people say that they can’t abandon Firefox Addons. That’s really not a big problem for me. It’s because my purpose of using Internet has been changed last couple of years. I get online to do research, check my emails, update my blogs and that’s about it. So I really don’t need those add-ons. 

As long as they release a better version, with RSS Bookmarking Feature, I’ll switch to Google Chrome. It’s because it’s faster than other browsers and it doesn’t freeze.  I hate when a browser freezes while I’m typing or watching something. This used to happen a lot when I was using IE 6, so I switched to Firefox. Now, fireofox started to freeze a lot (It’s probably my system), so I decided to switch Google Chrome but since I don’t want to leave nearly 40 RSS Bookmarks in Firefox, I’ll stay using and supporting Firefox. 

One other thing I’m really wondering about that what IE and Firefox is going to do to get back those people they lost to Google Chrome.

I finally downloaded Google Chrome and installed it.  Before I say anything, here is the a small video you should watch.

It looks like they have done a great job.  It definitely beats IE including the new versions. But not so sure about Firefox. Well, Google chrome is in beta stage. So i think it’s kind early to talk about competition with other browsers. Although, most of the Google products are in beta stage and they have already the leading position in the market.

Go ahead and take a look at google chrome website. You should also take a look at this release post at google blog. The post has useful information about this new browser.

For now, I won’t switch to Google Chrome. My reasons are;

1. I have gotten used to having menus on the top of my screen.
2. You can’t drag. This feature is a time saver in IE. When you think about it, it saves 2 years of my life.
3. I’ll be wating for future releases to see how they improve.

Lately, I was having this problem with Gmail site. I’m not sure if it was my system only or browser itself in general. But I have encountered this problem twice so far. It happened once when I was using Firefox 2 and one more time couple of days ago in Firefox 3.

There seems to be a problem with Gmail Logging process in Firefox. Again, I’m not sure if it was only my system but I remember reading it some where else as well. I’ll put it that other source if I find it.

What is the problem?

When you enter your username and password at gmail’s main page, it will not let you access your mail index page where you can browse your mails. If you type your information correct, it will recognize your username but not your password. It won’t tell you it’s wrong. When you enter it wrong, it will tell you that it doesn’t match.

You know that information is correct but Gmail simply won’t accept your password and it will keep asking you to re-enter. To make it more clear; lets say that you are logged in and browsing your emails, when you want to use another service of google, it will ask you to re-enter your password just to make sure but not your user name. So this happens after your first correct try. It will ask for your password but it won’t accept it even though you know it’s the correct information.

What can you do to fix it?

This never happened in other browsers or at least the ones that I used. Before I list couple of ways that I think it might be able fix your problem. In firefox 2, nothing in this list worked for me, it just started working again. I don’t know how. I was able to fix it by clearing cache and cookies then restarting firefox from the menu in firefox 3.

• Before you do anything with Firefox, Restart your browser then restart your computer.This might just work if it’s anything with your system.
• Re-installation of Firefox after uninstalling the one you have.
• Disabling recent plugins
• Clearing Private Data (Ctrl+Shift+Del)- Cookies and cache should be enough.

One more time, this is a problem I encountered two times already, Maybe It was my system only,  I posted this to make it easy for others who might be having this same problem.

Mozilla released Firefox 3 just a week ago. Firefox download day was a big success. Estimated number was a million for that day. But in 24 hours, Firefox 3.0 had been downloaded over 8 million times. As of now, Mozilla counted over 22 million downloads since the release day June 17.

Right after it was released, there have been Firefox 3.0 vulnerability talks around the web. A researcher, who prefered to maintain himself anonymous, found a security hole in firefox 3.0.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

According to this post at TippingPoint, this problem was encountered in previous firefox versions as well. There are some good comments to that post. In response to this notice, an article has been posted on firefox security blog saying that it’s being investigated. Some people claim that vulnerability is known but they kept it as a secret until now. If this is the case, why would mozilla release firefox 3.0 with such a critical vulnerability? It wouldn’t make sense. Also, according to that post, this problem has been noticed five hours after FF3 was released. Although, this is hard to believe since the previous release candidates were relatively similar releases with the final release.

The good thing is that the researcher has taken the proper action and let Firefox team know about this. This could have caused a lot of problems if it made it to public. This seems to be the only valid news about firefox after the release.

Again, Firefox 3.0 was big success and has been getting good reviews since they released the first beta version. They have made a lot of changes to make it better and firefox team did a great job with it. If you haven’t downloaded Firefox 3.0 yet, you can click on firefox 3 image above. Also check out this download counter to see how many times it has been downloaded.

Firefox 3 Final is only couple of days away and ready to set a world record with a million downloads in 24 hours. Firefox will be released to public on next Wednesday, June 17th.

If you want to help Mozilla set a world record, go ahead click on the banner above. It will take you to SpreadFirefox. On june 17, they will send you an email when firefox 3 downloads are avalilable for public. Don’t miss out. Go ahead and pledge now. Read more about this world record attempt at mozilla’s blog.

It hasn’t been long since they released the first candidate about 3 weeks ago.  Some people didn’t even get to download the RC1.  They released the RC2 on June 4th. RC2 doesn’t look different from RC1 at first but I see a lot of things fixed.  During the three weeks I had RC1, Firefox crashed only one time and my settings was messed up. This of course occurs on any web browser and I think Firefox is doing an amazing job preventing these crashes.

Since I switched Firefox 2 to Firefox 3, I started having less problems with the browser. It’s faster, It doesn’t use much of CPU and the most important of all, It’s stable even though it’s not a final release.

One of the great things about Firefox is that  the add-ons you can get. If you are switching from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3, most of them are not compatible with Firefox 3. But popular add-ons (like StumbleUpon) has already upgraded their software. The ones that work in RC1 are mostly like to work in RC2.

Downloads (via official Firefox site):

• Mozilla Firefox 3 RC2 English Windows | 7.15 MB

• Mozilla Firefox 3 RC2 English Mac OS X | 17.17 MB

• Mozilla Firefox 3 RC2 English Linux | 8.66 MB

I’m not sure about the source but I remember reading or hearing about the release of date of final version of Firefox 3 will be at the end of June.  Since they released the RC2 real quick, I’m starting to believe this rumor.

You can read the official release notes at Mozilla. If you are still one of those other web browsers, you are missing out big time. Go ahead and switch to Firefox and enjoy a better experience.