Mozilla Releases Firefox 3

After three years of sweat, Mozilla Firefox 3 has been finally released; the outcome: over 15,000 bug fixes and feature improvements, a new page rendering engine, outstanding performance growth, multiple OS integration. This has “hit” written all over it.

The difference between Firefox 3 and its antecedent in terms of look is not big, still, a slight change can be noticed — specifically, the Forward and Back buttons, in combination, seem sideways keyhole. Also, the browser buttons and window frames have a new design to match the look of the OS you're using (Windows XP, Vista, Macintosh, or Linux).

There’s a new feature called Places which stores bookmarks, browsing history and other user data in an SQLite database. Along with it a new functionality is enabled, namely improved Location bar autocomplete (which fans call the "awesomebar"). While typing into it, a list of suggested Web destinations which your browsing history triggers turns up.

Besides the fact the feature matches fragments of words even if they come about in the middle of a URL, when typing a phrase with spaces you'll generally be directed where you want to go right away.

What used to be the site icon to the left of the Location bar has become the Site Identification button. If so far versions of Firefox focused on notifying users about their connection to a website being encrypted or not, the latest version pays more attention to who runs the site. If you go to a secure site the Site Identity button now turns blue (and if you click on it you’ll find the domain name of the site and who provided the security certificate) as compared to previous editions when Location bar turned yellow and showed a padlock icon (this, however, is still maintained in the Status Bar).

Another aspect that undergone transformation (read improvement) in Firefox 3 is file downloading. The new Downloads window lets users pause a download and resume it in a new Firefox session (in previous versions pausing and resuming downloads were possible only within the same session). From now on the Downloads window will also memorize where files were downloaded from and add a search box to sort out the downloads list. Additionally, you’ll check out the status of in-progress and paused downloads on the Status Bar. Moreover, Firefox 3 will require installed anti-virus software to do a thorough scanning of the downloads and will allow downloads at the “advice” of Windows Vista Parental Controls.

If you might think that installing Firefox 3 will cause you to lose savings from Firefox 2 (such as history, bookmarks, start page, search engine preference and even downloads performed in the earlier browser version) well…think again. Nothing will be lost.

Firefox 3 comes in 46 languages. The U.S. English version weighs in at 7.1 MB for Windows, 17 for Mac OS X, and 8.6 for Linux. Installation is just as simple as you’d have it.

To read a more detailed “inventory” of Firefox 3 features visit http://www.mozillazine.org