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The latest version of the popular Firefox browser is available for download from Mozilla.

The primary improvement is in the performance department. Firefox 3.5 is said to be quite a bit faster than the 3.0 version. Less memory should be consumed and a new feature to hide your browsing trails a la Safari is included. The ability to restart after an unfortunate browser crash has already been around before – it is now faster and improved.

Download the browser here.

Here’s hoping most add-ons I use will still work after the upgrade…

With a round of computer installations coming up soon, I’ll inevitably find myself looking for my favourite Firefox add-ons once again. I don’t overload Firefox, but have four or so add-ons that I generally can’t do without.

Over at Mozilla, the add-ons site now allows collections of add-ons to be created and stored, then shared. Little more than a website that lists specific add-ons, the collections site is nonetheless rather useful and also provides a wealth of further information on additional add-ons to try out.

Though the collection will not assist with a bulk installation of add-ons, having all add-ons immediately available on a single page makes browser customization on a new system far easier.

Collections can be shared and, if permitted by the creator, augmented with additional add-ons that other choose to include. My rather basic Essentials collection is available here and many, many more are available at the Firefox Add-Ons Collections site.

Some time ago I posted some notes on how to download content from the Firefox cache using a decidedly low-tech approach. For a long time I’ve used  a very handy Firefox add-on with the name CacheViewer. This add-on does exactly what my manual method does, only far more elegantly and with a lot greater ease. It’s especially useful for downloading video content, something that may be considered questionable, though I consider nothing wrong with the fact that I may want to review something later whilst offline. Before targeting the download of some content, it’s a good idea to clear your browser’s existing cache.From Tools, select Clear Private Data. Make sure Cache is selected, then clear.

Video content in particular can be rather sizeable. The cache may not be large enough to hold everything. In Firefox, go to Tools, then Options. Under Advanced, select Network. Enter an appropriate amount to ensure the content will be cached completely.

Open the location of the content and allow the browser to cache everything. Normally, this is indicated by the text Done in the status bar – even if the actual video footage is still being played back, caching may already have finished. You can activate the CacheViewer. Scroll through the list to view whatever may have been downloaded locally…a preview of images is displayed.

The search field provides a handy filtering mechanism. Entering .jpg or .mov will display only JPG files and video files with the extension MOV, for example.

To save the selected content, a simple right-click and Save as… suffices.

The installation of the Windows 7 RC and subsequent installation of necessary applications (all of the latest possible version) has eradicated an annoying issue my Firefox browser exhibited: when opening a new window from a link on a landing page, that page would be unable to display any content when a proxy setting had been entered. In fact, clicking on such a link would reset the proxy to “No proxy“, necessitating a visit to the network connections windows to change the the proxy settings in Firefox back to the intended setting.

I’m pleased to announce that the issue has been fixed. I’m assuming that it’s something that was wonky in the Windows 7 Beta, as the Firefox 3.0.10 version had already installed itself while I was running the Beta. A closer look at the error seemed to indicate a reference to the built-in Java virtual machine, but I can’t confirm that as the source of the problem.

Nice to be able to navigate the Interwebs once again as they was intended

Windows 7 is still functioning flawlessly and I’m happy to repeat that this is one of the best OS releases Microsoft has ever mustered.

With the exception of CutePDF, I’ve had little hassle getting most of my favourite applications to work. As with CutePDF, a viable and free alternative is often at hand. For CutePDF, substitute BullZip PDF Printer, an excellent replacement.

A rather odd experience with the Firefox proxy settings has been occurring, however. I’m usually behind a very stringent proxy with all sorts of nonsensical filtering and URL checking going on. So normally, Firefox runs with a manual proxy setting by default.

But every now and then, it is necessary to escape the shackles of WebNonSense. So I jack in the E220 modem and get onto the MTN HSDPA network. For that sesssion, I turn the proxy setting off.

Everything works fine until I need to open another window from a URL or link.

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According to the latest news on Mozilla Developer, the public release of Firefox 3 is planned for next week Tuesday. 17 June will see the browser ready for download and installation after 34 months of development and plenty of alpha and beta releases.

The new features that have already been available in various extents of completion in the beta releases make the upgrade to Firefox 3 worthwhile. Of course, there is always the question of add-on compatibility.

If you’ve become dependent on certain add-ons, their lack of support for the latest browser version may be one consideration to hold on and wait. I for one absolutely love Google‘s BrowserSync. Sadly, it seems as though that extension is no longer under development by the team at Google. It is the unavailability of BrowserSync that has made me less than happy with trying out beta releases of Firefox. Now, I am forced to seek an alternative.

Other than that, help the Mozilla team out in their attempt to have the most downloads of any software package in 24 hours.

Go to the site and pledge to download Firefox on the day of its release. You’ll receive a notification email and get information on the progress of the world record attempt. At the time of posting, less than 4000 pledges from ZA. Once again: consider the switch to an alternative browser if you haven’t been converted yet

Firefox 3.0 is almost here. The beta release has been deployed on nx8220 for a while and has performed reasonably. There are certain issues I’ve experienced, particularly some crashes when multimedia content was loaded. The inability of the beta to move and copy bookmarks by drag and drop didn’t impress me. Thankfully, Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 fixes those issues and provides some of features that will be available in the final release.

The robots and aliens banner displayed once the browser starts is cool:

Immediately noticeable is the extended functionality of the location bar. Typing any part of a previously visited site provides autocompletion – different colours indicate web sites and web page titles. This makes finding entries much easier.

Though I haven’t installed the beta on Fedora yet, a feature that would be interesting to see is the native GTK theme for Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles. That makes the browser look like a native Gnome application. The same should be true in the final release for all operating systems the browser is provided for. The download manager has really improved, providing pause and restart functions and display file locations on mouse-over.

Once again, you need to be brave to try out beta software. Download the Firefox Beta 2 here if you dare

I’ve been running the latest Firefox 3.0 in its beta state for a week now. Overall, it’s stable and offers the browsing experience I’ve become accustomed to. The new features are not readily apparent, but I like the improved handling of bookmarks and the updated download manager.

One thing you should be aware of is that most of your present add-ons probably won’t work. I was caught out by that and am no longer able to rely on Google’s Browser Sync to ensure my bookmarks are transferred among my various systems. Trying to uninstall the 3.0 beta to go back to the 2.0.0.9 release works…until the Browser Sync add-on is initialized. It’s unable to run, generating an error and crashing the browser. There’s obviously some library or DLL that is changed and either not removed or not re-created by the earlier version 2 release of Firefox upon installation. No choice but to go back to the 3.0 Beta and live without themes and add-ins. It’s a strangely liberating experience

If you are not reliant on too many add-ins, or simply brave enough to discard them all and willing to wait and see whether they’ll be back for the 3.0 release, then download Firefox 3.0 Beta now.