Firefox 3 beta 4 released

by Brad Linder Mar 10th 2008

Mozilla has released the 4th public beta version of Firefox 3. If it feels like the next generation of the Firefox web browser has been in beta for pretty much ever, that's because it has been. The first public alpha was released in 2006. But with each new test build, Firefox 3 gets a little more stable, and gets a few new features. Here are a few of the updates packed into Firefox 3 beta 4:

Full page zoom - Up until now, Firefox would let you make text larger or smaller, but there was no way to increase or decrease the size of all the content on a web site (something you've been able to do with Opera for years). Now you can choose whether the zoom feature works for text or full pages.
New download manager - The new download manager shows active time remaining, and the status of downloads. You can also search your downloads and see the site where your downloaded files are from.
Improved OS integration - Firefox 3 beta 4 includes specific icons and themes for Windows Vista, OS X, and Linux (using the native GTK theme).
Improved memory usage -

Firefox 3 beta 4 also includes a ton of other tweaks and bug fixes. The browser is also designed to use less memory, and there are major improvements to the JavaScript engine that should allow web based applications like Gmail and Zoho Office to run twice as fast in Firefox 3 as Firefox 2.

Tags: firefox, firefox-3, firefox-3-beta-4, java, javascript, zoom

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

aanidaani said 8:54AM on 3-11-2008

Seems like the time it takes to launch Firefox is improving -- no more five minute waits!

Guido said 9:16AM on 3-11-2008

depending on the number of extensions Firefox can take a long while to start.

Mark said 8:55AM on 3-11-2008

It never took five minutes to launch Firefox, unless maybe you were using a 386.

DagMX said 5:06PM on 3-11-2008

just because you never experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Firefox preloader exists for a reason. And its a shame when an application requires another app to preload it so that it launches in a decent time window

Josh said 8:57AM on 3-11-2008

They still haven't scrapped Proto (default skin for Macs) in the nightlies even though they are getting nothing but complaints about it. =\

Nayf said 10:32AM on 3-11-2008

I'm really hoping they're doing something about memory leakage - at the moment I'm using the latest version of 2 and it's using 140Mb with four tabs open... Sometimes it even goes up to about 350Mb, surely that can't be normal?

roark said 10:41AM on 3-11-2008

It looks like they've fixed some of the memory leaks. When FF2 reached around 180MB, it would stay even when I visit different websites. On FF3, it comes back around 80, or 90MB.

Nayf said 1:11PM on 3-11-2008

Just gave it a bit of a testing, looks good and the memory usage is much better.

...although that my be due to half my extensions not being compatible!

RP said 8:27AM on 3-12-2008

There is a "Nightly Tester Tool" you can use to force your extensions to be compatible. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543

Using that to enable extensions, I have to say that memory use is improved.

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