The battle of browsers will surely heat up again as Mozilla
has just released the first public beta of its upcoming Firefox 3.0
Don’t rush to download it as this version is intended mainly
for testers and developers, but if you feel pretty sure about your computer
skills you surely could give it a try.
Mozilla has done a lot of work for this version and Firefox
3 Beta 1 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under
development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code
changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues.
As a result Mozilla claims the new Firefox is more secure, more
stable, speedier, and easier to use. Also, as you can expect it introduces many
additional features.
As the security is a sensible issue for all users, Firefox 3
has added some interesting features. For example in the new version you can
click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site you are
visiting. The identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to
understand and Mozilla said that in later versions, Extended Validation SSL
certificate information will be displayed.
The new browser also integrates malware protection, a system
that will warn users when they arrive at sites which are known to install
viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. Also it has a new Web Forgery
Protection page, thanks to which the content of pages suspected as web
forgeries is no longer shown.
Mozilla also improved the add-on update security and those
add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
Beside all these security features Firefox 3 offers integration
with anti-virus programs, and compliance with Vista's
Parental Control settings.
Firefox 3 has also a number of ease of use enhancements. For
example, it offers an easier password management (an information bar replaces
the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login),
simplified add-on installation, new Download Manager, full page zoom, tab
scrolling and quickmenu and text selection improvements: Multiple text
selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in
"word-by-word" mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
But one of the best features is the resumable downloading:
users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting the
network connection.
On the interface side, Firefox 3 has introduced a simpler
management of bookmarks. For example it has a Star button with which you can: quickly
add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets
you file and tag them and Tags, that will let you associate keywords with your
bookmarks to sort them by topic.
Another feature is Smart Places Folder, which offers quickly
access to your recently bookmarked and tagged pages.
A complete list of the features and improvements can be
found here
and, believe me, it will totally worth your time.
Also as the Software-as-a-Service is a hot topic those days,
you surely find interesting that Firefox 3 introduced offline Web support, letting
you compose Web mail while offline to send after you're back online, a feature
that reminded me of Google and its
online office suite. Of course, not everything in the new Firefox 3 is working
flawlessly. For example neither the new interface of Yahoo Mail nor Windows
Live mail can’t be accessed nor some of the new redesigned pages of YouTube,
but still Firefox 3 offer a good experience and a glimpse of the things to
come.
Unfortunately Mozilla didn’t say when we should expect the
final version and said only that the new browser will be shipped when it will
be fully ready for users. Earlier this year Mozilla scheduled the Beta 1 for
late July and a second Beta was expected for September.
But as you can see we are in November and considering the
previous timeline maybe we will see a second Beta sometimes in February or
March next year.
