Testing Firefox 3

There are several ways that allow you to test Firefox 3 without interfering with Firefox 2 if that browser is also installed on your system. If you simply install the regular Firefox 3 version it will use the same profile folder which means that it will check all add-ons for compatibility and Firefox 2 will do the same on the next start. A practicable method is to install the portable version of Firefox 3.

The main advantage of this method is that the portable version does not interfere at all with Firefox 2, they are completely independent so to speak. This method does have a downside however, none of your settings are imported which means you cannot access your bookmarks for instance. Since it’s only installed for testing purposes it should not matter that much however and you could still move some of the files - like the bookmarks.html file - from the Firefox 2 profile folder to the one of Firefox 3 to be able to use them.

Another possibility is to create a new profile and assign that shortcut to Firefox 3. This still has the effect that both browsers use independent settings and don’t interfere with each other. Since it is a little bit complicated to setup I would probably go for the portable version to test Firefox 3.

Lastly you can simply install Firefox 3 in another directory which would mean that it would use all of your settings.

Below is a list of changes in the new Beta 5 of Firefox 3:

[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.
[Improved in Beta 5!] Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 5, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.