Ask Dr. Firefox!

Dear Dr. Firefox,

Really, you like the new Firefox???
I HATE it! :(((

I've had it running for under an hour and it's crashed twice on me; I hate the new look (so gray and imposing!); I hate the vertical scrollbar space that moves several lines down at a time instead of one when clicked; and I hate that there's no "new tab" icon in the upper left corner of the tabs anymore. And I've only been using it for an hour! I wish there was a way to go back, because I would NEVER have "upgraded" if I had had a chance to try it out first :(((

Signed,

Miserable Firefox 3 User


Dear Miserable,

Dr. Firefox is here to help!

First, let's fix that gray, imposing awfulness. Head over to the Themes section of Firefox Add-ons and pick a new look. It'll take two seconds to install, and you can change the theme as often as you like. I'm using Phoenity Reborn at the moment, which is colorful and bright. [Foxkeh is another fave, and I hope it will be updated for FF3 soon. Do you like cats?]

Next, let's put a New Tab icon in the toolbar. Right-click somewhere above the browser window to open a toolbar menu box. Click on Customize, and you can drag the New Tab icon from the Customize window to the toolbar. There's a New Window icon, too, and a bunch more.

The jumpy vertical scrollbar and the crashing don't sound like Firefox 3 issues, but that only means I've never run across them in my experience or reading -- not on a healthy computer. You might try clicking on Tools, emptying the cache and rebooting... see whether that helps.

Finally, if you really and truly hate hate hate Firefox 3, you can go home again. If you were using Internet Explorer, for example, just close Firefox and select IE from your Start menu. And if you were perfectly happy with Firefox 2, click here to visit FileHippo, where you can select the Firefox release of your choice for download. [Link goes to Firefox 2.0.0.14.]

Good luck, and let me know how things work out! Yours in tech --

Dr. Firefox

ETA: Are you using a Mac? Macs were gifted with a special release candidate of their very own last week, but the issues seem to have been resolved — click here to be sure you're downloading the real McCoy Foxfire 3.