Bedrich Rios

Just a quick post to let you know that Mozilla has released its 5th and final beta update for the upcoming Firefox 3 release. Download your copy of Firefox 3 Beta 5. Enjoy!

Exactly what the title says. This is just a quick post, go and check it out yourself. Download the latest Firefox beta.

Initial Thoughts

So far so good. Pages are loading as fast, if not faster, than they do on Safari. Firefox 3 is definitely much more integrated with Mac OSX.

If you are having some problems with the way the theme looks in this new release, go to view -> toolbars -> customize and change the icons to small. This will cause the big, over the top, back button to be reduced to a reasonable size.

Have fun trying this new beta out. Also, if you are trying to run more than one version of Firefox, make sure to check my Running Different Versions of Firefox post.

I have seen several posts about this but none of them seemed clear and easy to follow to me. So, here goes my version of this tutorial. Keep in mind that this tutorial assumes that you are using Firefox 2 and are trying to install Firefox 3. Here is how to do it.

1. Download Firefox 3 Beta 5.
2. Move the new App somewhere other than your Applications folder, rename it (Firefox3 or something like that will do), and move it into the Applications folder . If you move it to your Applications folder without renaming it first, it will replace your current copy of Firefox.
3. Now, open a Terminal window and type the following:

   /Applications/[Renamed Firefox App].app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -Profilemanager

4. Create a new profile and makes sure to uncheck the “Don’t ask at startup” box. This way you will be asked which profile you want to use every time Firefox starts, allowing you to run two versions of Firefox at the same time.

Firefox 3 works very nicely on Mac OSX (almost as native as Safari) and with the new Proto for Mac OSX theme created for this version, not using Firefox on a Mac is pretty much a crime.