If you are like me, you probably have IE 7 and Firefox 2 installed on your system. I am a heavy Firefox user but getting increasingly frustrated with how bloated it has become with regards to memory leaks. Firefox regularly eats up 500MB+ after a couple of days of usage prompting me to restart it. This could be in part because I am a Firefox extension addict with 20+ extensions.
Along comes Firefox 3 touting extensive fixes (or is it complete rewrite?) for the memory leaks problem plus numerous features enhancements. That piqued my interest, so I decided to test-drive it. If you are risk-averse like me, you would like to explore Firefox 3 beta without risk to your current stable Firefox 2 setup.
The simplest way is to use Portable Apps Firefox. I haven’t used this option but I heard others raved about it. Be sure to read all the instructions before installing it as there are some quirks. I used an alternate method (more complicated). If you feel adventurous, you can try it.
At this point, I do practically all of my surfing and browsing on FF3. The only thing I have running on FF2 is Yahoo mail (the new interface) which is a known issue. I have also experienced some issues with flash videos not playing properly on FF3, so I have to use FF2 in those cases. Overall, I love FF3 lean memory usage (I haven’t installed any extensions though), so give it a a try and let me know how you like or dislike it.
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Posted by Bob Ngu 
