Firefox 3 Released

Well I guess just about everyone has upgraded to Firefox 3 by now, considering they have over 15 million downloads. India has over 200,000; I think a lot of Indian ISPs install a transparent proxy... Mine certainly does :) That must be lowering the number quite a bit. Also I guess we Indians use computers mostly for work, there are relatively fewer people who use computers and have a passion for it, or are in a environment where all the software installed is not locked down :) Even at office, a lot of my developer friends stick with IE (some with IE6!)

For those who actually participated in the world record attempts you can get a certificate here. By the way, Firefox RC 3 was silently re-released/rebranded as Firefox 3 final. So amazingly, just checking for update with Firefox RC 3 installed will lead to it starting to call itself Firefox 3.

As for add ons, most are now working with Firefox 3. Google Toolbar was updated in the nick of time - a few hours before Firefox 3 final. Still not toolbar 5 for Firefox users so, the button gallery is useless... If you still have something not working, you can use this tip.

One critical add on I found missing is Tab Mix plus. I combine it with the information given here to convert my Firefox to Widefox. A developmental but stable build of Tab Mix Plus that is FF3 compatible can be gotten here. (Direct link). Unfortunately, Widefox does not work with Firefox 3 and Tab Mix Plus. One solution is to use the experimental Tab Kit addon (You have to log in, and its not compatible with TMP). Alternately, you can follow the instruction here.

1. Navigate to your Firefox profile - %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.
2. Inside this there will be a folder ????????.default (the ??? will be random characters). In the extensions folder inside this, there is a folder - possibly {dc572301-7619-498c-a57d-39143191b318} - having a tabmixplus.jar inside of it.
3. Open the jar file in WinRAR. Navigate to content\tabmixplus\tab\ inside it
4. Open the file tabmix_3.xml in a editor.
5. Change the line saying
   <xul:scrollbox class="tabs-frame" anonid="scroll-tabs-frame" orient="horizontal" flex="1">
   to say
   <xul:scrollbox class="tabs-frame" anonid="scroll-tabs-frame" orient="vertical" flex="1">
6. Replace the file back in the jar, restart Firefox and presto - Widefox is back...
   

FF3 has its own nifty new skin :) Actually the skin is different for each OS. If you want the Vista skin on Windows XP, you can download it here. If anyone is using Opera, then I am sure you have seen its new skin also; I had to download the classic skin and reinstall it as my parents use Opera and they are used to that one.