Finally Using Firefox 3
Usability and Technology | 2:55 pm Friday, Nov 7 2008 |
I took the plunge today and upgraded to Firefox 3 … my second try, since the first time around I found a few annoyances that I couldn’t resolve (and it was too early for many of the add-ons I use to have caught up to a major change in versions).
So now I’ve gone from 2.0.0.17 to 3.0.3.
I try to balance between waiting awhile while new release bugs are sorted out (I never download the x.0.0 version!) and add-ons and plugins are updated, and then not too far behind that old versions are no longer supported.
The biggest frustration was the way FF3 handles bookmarks: in FF2, I’m used to grabbing the icon in the address bar, and dragging it to the sub-folder where I want to place it.
But I can now only do that in the first folder level down in FF3, not sub-folders. Aarrrggghhhhhh, that’s crazy and frustrating!
However, I’ve managed a workaround by using a new add-on called Add Bookmark Here 2 — seemed the best of the options I found in the add-ons after a little Google research.
This nearly emulates the FF2 way of bookmarking by dragging — you can just navigate to the folder you want the bookmark in and click on “Add Bookmark Here…”. In fact, in one way it’s better, because as you do, the Properties box pops up automatically to allow you to change the name (which I often do, especially to remove “Welcome to” from the names of websites!).
The only downside is that the bookmark is added at either the top or the bottom of the folder — you can’t specify exactly where in the folder it goes (you can go back into the folder and do that manually) — but, at least it’s in the right folder. Saves going the long way via the sidebar or “organise bookmarks” — which are too clunky and time-wasting for me.
The second issue related to my actual bookmarks: because it’s previously installed FF3 and reverted to FF2, somehow I had lost my new bookmarks. This mozillaZine knowledgebase article on recovering bookmarks after upgrading to FF3 fixed the problem for me.
The only other annoyance I’ve discovered to my usual browsing habits is how FF3 shows you your address bar history as you type in a URL. This nifty article helped me clean up my address bar history.
Now these issues are sorted out, I think FF3 and I will remain friends.
I’d still like them to fully revert bookmarks back to the FF2 way, but I can live with it for now. There is one good change though to the FF3 bookmarks: when you have a folder open, and delete a bookmark (right click and choose delete), the folder stays open — like it used to way before FF came onto the scene (probably the way it was in Netscape — it’s too long ago to remember!). So it ain’t all bad!
And now I’m here, I’ll also be checking out the 15 coolest FF tricks.

