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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
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Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download

By | January 26, 2011, 4:55am PST

A quick note for all of you who like to live on the cutting edge - Firefox 4 beta 10 is now available for download.

Here’s what’s new:

  • Compatibilty and stability improvements when using Adobe Flash on Mac OS X
  • Improvements in memory usage
  • Support for a graphics driver blacklist to improve stability

Complete changelist can be found here.

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Topics

Mozilla Firefox, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Web Browsers, Internet

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

Disclosure

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

All opinions expressed on Hardware 2.0 are those of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. Every effort is made to ensure that the information posted is accurate. If you have any comments, queries or corrections, please contact Adrian via the email link here. Any possible conflicts of interest will be posted below. [Updated: February 23, 2010] - Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other actual/potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted so far on this blog.

Biography

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology -- whether that be by learning to program, building a PC from a pile of parts, or helping them get the most from their new MP3 player or digital camera.

Adrian has authored/co-authored technical books on a variety of topics, ranging from programming to building and maintaining PCs. His most recent books include "Build the Ultimate Custom PC", "Beginning Programming" and "The PC Doctor's Fix It Yourself Guide". He has also written training manuals that have been used by a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Adrian also runs a popular blog under the name The PC Doctor, where he covers a range of computer-related topics -- from security to repairing and upgrading.

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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
Greenknight_z 28th Jan 2011
@rmwade - Before installing a Firefox beta or other test build, you should back up your Firefox profile. See: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

It's not hard to do manually, but there are programs that make it even easier - both ways are explained in the above link. Profile backup is a good idea even if you aren't running test builds.
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Never mind cutting edge
Dietrich T. Schmitz, ~ Your Linux Advocate 26th Jan 2011
What I want to know is what can be done about paper cuts and hang nails?

Boy, those are painful.
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Updated yesterday
Cylon Centurion 26th Jan 2011
She is a thing of beauty in Windows.
b10's font rendering is much improved. One change I'm happy to see. Also, I'm not sure if it is just me, but she also feels faster more responsive in this build.

Looking forward to the final release.
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Is it just me?
mmarquis 26th Jan 2011
Or has this been the longest beta period in recent memory? When the heck is it going to be released without the "beta" tag?
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Nah
Cylon Centurion 26th Jan 2011
@mmarquis

Google software is notorious for carrying a 'beta' tag for years.
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This is actually one of Firefox's longest beta periods
Michael Alan Goff 26th Jan 2011
To my knowledge, at least.
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Now all they need to do is...
Michael Alan Goff 26th Jan 2011
is update Minefield x64 to beta 11.

But other than that, I've got no complaints at all. It's a lot better than using 3.6
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
Loverock Davidson 26th Jan 2011
Can't wait for final to be released so I can ditch 3.6.x. Still took them too long to get this far.
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Fails on Win 7 64-bit
rmwade 26th Jan 2011
It freezes as soon as it opens. The browser window won't minimize; I can't close it; I can't even move it. There's a window partially opened in the upper left corner that looks like something I'm supposed to approve, but it doesn't open enough to give me something to check. When I uninstalled it and ran 3.6.3 again, it had that same partially opened window and froze up. I uninstalled that version, leaving my info (bookmarks, add-ons, etc.) on the computer, and it still happened after reinstalling. So I took every blasted bit of Firefox off the computer, reinstalled 3.6.3, and it works. Less all my personal modifications.

Back to Chrome.
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Fails on Windows 7-64 bit?
Michael Alan Goff 26th Jan 2011
Sounds like a personal problem, it runs on mine rather well.
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
rmwade 26th Jan 2011
It's not personal (unless you consider a computer to be a person). It happened just as I reported.

Firefox has gotten too bloated over the years, and has been laggy for some time (on three separate computers I use). I'd be glad to find out how to make it work well like it used to. Suggestions would be welcomed (those more substantial than the previous one).
@goff256
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There are some things that should be considered
Michael Alan Goff 26th Jan 2011
I apologize for coming off as holier than thou, by the way.

I would suggest that the first thing you do is try to run 4.0 in "safe mode" without anything running. This will make sure that it isn't a bad addon ruining it for you.

Another thing that you can do is try to run it in "compatibility mode" to see if it runs well on Vista/XP. If that doesn't work, then that means there is something wrong with your browser in terms of overall use. This could be fixed by uninstalling completely and reinstalling.

If all of that doesn't work, then check your computer for a virus to make sure it isn't interfering with it at all.

If all of that doesn't work, I don't know what to say.

Also, computers are people too D:

:P
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
DNSB 26th Jan 2011
@rmwade

Hate to say this but it works on my Win7 x64 virtual machine.

Performance seems quite a bit improved over the 3.6 branch.

Did you try a clean install of the 4 beta much as you did for the re-install of 3.6.3? Does an update to 3.6.13 work?
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
rmwade 26th Jan 2011
@DNSB

Thanks for the suggestion. I must have had 3.6.13 before since I've kept up with updates; I had 3.6.3 in my downloads folder, so that's what I installed. I updated to the former, and all was well. Then I uninstalled it, installed 4.0, and all is working okay.

I think the problem before was with some app that it tried to installed from apps.conduit.com. I could see the first part of that URL before in the window that partially opened. Why it popped up and wanted my permission, I don't know.

Thanks again. I'll give the newest version a good try-out later.
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
Classic94 26th Jan 2011
@rmwade
What browser are you talking about, 3.6.3? Best way is to back up your bookmarks and uninstall all firefox versions and download a new setup and install then import your bookmarks back. This would be a clean install. I have Minefield running on Windows 7, runs perfect.
I updated to FF4 Beta 10 on my 10 year old HP Windows XP and Firefox 4 runs outstanding on that old harddrive. wink
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
rmwade 26th Jan 2011
@Classic94

The problem is solved (except for the part where I flushed out all my personlizations!), but to answer your question, I have the file Firefox Setup 3.6.3.exe in my downloads. After (re) installing that, I was able to update to 3.6.13.

The new version is a big change looks-wise. I just hope it doesn't lag like the 3.6 series.
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
Greenknight_z 28th Jan 2011
@rmwade - Before installing a Firefox beta or other test build, you should back up your Firefox profile. See: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

It's not hard to do manually, but there are programs that make it even easier - both ways are explained in the above link. Profile backup is a good idea even if you aren't running test builds.
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RE: Firefox 4 beta 10 available for download
CobraA1 27th Jan 2011
Still needs a bit of debugging, it seems - still seems to crash on a regular basis, and still locks up. Looks great otherwise - if they can address the stability issues, it would IMO be the best browser.

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