FireFox 3 Beta 4 portable released
I’ve just spent some time over the last few days taking FireFox 3 beta 4 (portable version) out for a test drive. Overall I have to say that I like the way it’s shaping up. Page load times appear to be significantly faster than the Firefox 2.0.0.12 that I’m using now.
The browser looks very similar to the current version with a few tweaks here and there. One thing I *do not* like about it is the fact that the little green arrow on the location bar (where other browsers used to keep a “Go” button) now resides within the location bar at the end and once a page has loaded, that button disappears and is replaced with something else that indicates something about page status. Ok, I’ve slept since then but the point is I would really like to have the green-arrow / “Go” button back full time.
Another issue is a lot bigger because this one will stop me from switching over to it full time. That’s the browser extensions. As of this writing, most of the extensions I have in my current version don’t work with Firefox 3 yet and until versions that support FF3 are available, I’m not even going to think about upgrading.
I do appreciate the fact that I saw a site (I forget where or I’d link it) that showed a way to allow multiple instances of Firefox so that you could run Firefox 3 beta while keeping a Firefox 2 window open for side by side comparrison.
Assuming you have the portable version installed in C:\FirefoxPortable, open the C:\FirefoxPortable\Other\Source directory and copy the FirefoxPortable.ini file and paste it into C:\FirefoxPortable. Then open the file in notepad and change AllowMultipleInstances=false to AllowMultipleInstances=true and save the file
Now you’ll be able to run Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time and make your own side by side comparisons of the two browsers. Firefox 3 beta 5 is expected to be released in early April and the final release is supposed to be in June.
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