Upgrading Firefox

I finally upgraded from Firefox 3.6 (or 3.6.25) to Firefox 9 today. I held out on updating it until now for two reasons: 1. other people were reporting bugs with the succeeding Firefoxes to 3.6; and 2. the apparent loss of the "restore tabs" feature for when the browser is closed down and then opened next time. The tabs feature was the bigger issue for me, as bugs can be fixed.

For the past few weeks, Firefox 3.6 has been using up increasing amounts of memory, to the point where I had to close it down periodically and restart it. It also began to crash a few times a week...including crashing while I was writing one of my more recent, lengthy blog posts! (Fortunately I remember to save the content.) Now fed up, I decided to update.

While it has only been a few hours, Firefox 9 is working out: it is not hogging memory the longer it stays open, and it is more effective at loading pages than 3.6 was. 9 is different in its appearance to 3.6, but I can get used to a new look better than sluggishness and crashes! As for the issue of restoring tabs, the workaround for that is to load the previous session.

Firefox 3.6 was good for the length of time it lasted, but it really was time to move on. I do like Firefox overall, as it is an easy browser to use: I am happy to upgrade it.