Firefox 3.5.1 is the first update to the new 3.5 series of Firefox. According to the users' changelog, this release fixes several issues, including security and stability-related problems.

This guide explains several methods on installing the latest Firefox in Ubuntu, including installing it from a PPA repository.

Since version 3.0, Firefox changed the way it saves your bookmarks, history, cookies, passwords and so on - it now uses SQLite databases. This has some advantages but also disadvantages because over time, the databases are growing in size and become fragmented and this affects the time Firefox needs to start.

I am aware of the fact that probably 90% of you must already know about Swiftfox so this post is for the other 10% of WebUpd8 readers. I wrote about how to fix full-screen flash in Firefox and Swiftfox but I never mentioned what Swiftfox is.

By default, Firefox (or Swiftfox) crashes when trying to view a full-screen video on say... YouTube. At least for me it used to crash until I found a fix and from what I've understand it's got something to do with the graphic card drivers and it's affecting both nVidia and ATI. If that is the case for you also, you may want to read on.

The Firefox version which comes in Ubuntu has Pango enabled by default. Pango is a font smoothing library which decreases Firefox speed by up to 45%.

A while ago I put up this article, reviewing 5 so-called 'essential' add-ons for Firefox. To continue in the same manner in this second part, here are 5 add-ons updated for Firefox 3.5 which can prove useful. Maybe not the most popular, but they definitely deserve a try.

Firefox 3.5 comes with several great new features, like the private browsing mode or the support for open video integration (full review here).

Firefox 3.5 was released just a couple of hours ago and it comes with great new features and a new version of Gecko, the rendering engine. Firefox is currently the most popular browser on the Linux platform and the top choice on Windows after Internet Explorer (although there are statistics showing it beats IE in terms of popularity in some countries).

To install the latest Firefox 3.5 (final) or Firefox 3.6 in Ubuntu, open a terminal and:

To install the latest Firefox 3.5 (currently Release Candidate 1) or Firefox 3.6 in Ubuntu, open a terminal and:

tmpfs is a virtual, RAM-backed filesystem. It’s lightning-fast, but since it’s RAM-backed, any file written to tmpfs uses precious memory while it’s there, and the entire contents of the virtual partition are lost on shutdown or crash.

Sometimes Firefox can become a real memory hog, especially if you keep it running for hours and have many tabs opened. In order to make Firefox a little more responsive and save some RAM memory, here are three tweaks I bumped into over time. Notice that most of these tips only free up some memory at the expense of (usually) loading speed for web pages.

You may ask why would you want to install Firefox 3.6 alpha1pre Minefield in Ubuntu. Well, for testing purposes of course. While it worked ok for me in the 10 minutes browsing i used it, being in it's early alpha stages it should only be used for testing addons and to see the way web pages are rendered.

tmpfs is a virtual, RAM-backed filesystem. It’s lightning-fast, but since it’s RAM-backed, any file written to tmpfs uses precious memory while it’s there, and the entire contents of the virtual partition are lost on shutdown or crash. The good news is that these detriments can be minimized, making tmpfs a viable choice for your profile directory.

Go to System > Administration > Software Sources, to the Third-Party Software tab and add this repository:

Full story.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.1 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

Not only Firefox became in a relatively short amount of time the most popular web browser on Linux, but it also turned out to be the most powerful competitor to Internet Explorer on Windows, proving itself faster, more stable, more flexible and secure. Some would say Firefox is one of the most important proofs that open-source can and is actually better than closed, proprietary software.

Firefox is the most popular application for viewing web pages on Linux, being the browser of choice for over 70% of the Linux users. In this article I will explain 5 of the most useful and used tips in Firefox, together with screenshots where I considered necessary.