Install Firefox 3.5 in Jaunty

The new version of Firefox, Firefox 3.5 was released this week. There is no update available for Firefox in the official ubuntu repos. But there is a package firefox-3.5 in the repo. But instead of replacing the old firefox with the new one, it installs the new version alongside it. The new browser is named Shiretoko(which is the codename for Firefox 3.5). This blog post aims to help users install firefox 3.5 from the tar file downloaded from Offical Mozilla website.

The very first thing I would like to do is to put an end to a very common superstition. The tar file you download doesnot contain the source code of firefox and thereby there is absolutely no need to compile it. The archive merely consists of the executbles needed for the browser. So extract the archive and then double click on the file named firefox to run it. Yeah! it is that simple. Now to find a good place to keep the untarred folder(I don’t like it cluttering my home folder). So keep it in the /opt folder.
Now remove the firefox link from your /usr/bin folder. For this run
$sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox
(Don’t worry. This is not going to uninstall firefox 3.0)

Now create a link to your new firefox executable. Run
$sudo ln -s /path/to/firefox/exe /usr/bin/firefox
i.e. in this case,sudo
$ln -s /opt/frefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
Run firefox, set it as your default browser. Enjoy!!

Now here is a small review of the new browser

Firefox 3.5 comes with no new feature that amazes an end user(The support for HTML5 is not something that wow!s an average computer user.). But there are a lot of usability improvements and stuff. Pages load faster. Firefox developers have included the one feature that all it’s competeters presently boast of : The so-called “Porn-Mode” (Private browsing and neat history management). There is an option “Forget about this site” in history. LOL!! It is now possible to recover recently closed tabs and windows. Google chrome fans are going to like the fact that they could simply drag the tabs between windows. There is also a new text recovery feature. Firefox remembers filled forms if it accidently crashes.
I am still not able to load the site http://bbservice.bsnl.in/ (Bsnl accounts management).
Anywas, I am a fan of firefox. This release is bound to attract more people towards it.