Firefox-3 posts

Mozilla has pushed out the first release candidate for Firefox 3. That means this version should be more stable than any of the betas that have been released over the last year, but there may still be some bugs to work out. If you want to be absolutely certain you won't lose settings or mess up your system somehow, you might want to hold off on downloading Firefox 3 until a final build is released. That said, we've been playing with early builds of Firefox 3 for months, and it's way faster than Firefox 2 and includes some nifty new features like improved bookmark management and a more useful location bar.

Firefox 3 RC1 looks and feels a lot like Firefox 3 beta 5, but there are a few changes:

• Changes to the JavaScript engine and optimizations for web applications like Gmail and Zoho Office
• Improvements to the user interface
• Changes and fixes for bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and location bar autocomplete
• Security improvements

You can check out the complete list of changes in the release notes, or you can just go ahead and download the release candidate. Firefox 3 is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Mozilla has released yet another beta version of the next generation Firefox web browser. Firefox 3 beta 5 doesn't have a ton of new features, but it fixes a lot of bugs and packs a bunch of under the hood tweaks that make the browser easier to use and more attractive.

Firefox 3 beta 5 features tighter integration with the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating system. That means you have native icons and interface widgets. The OS X version supports Growl notifications, and the Linux version uses the native GTK theme.

The Places organizer has been updated, making it easier to organize, search, tag, and browse through your bookmarks and browsing history.

And the JavaScript engine has been updated, meaning web applications like Gmail and Zoho Office run much faster in Firefox 3 beta 5 than in Firefox 2.

Keep in mind that this is still a beta, and you may experience problems. Extensions and add-ons that work in prior versions of Firefox might not be compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5. And for those of you who are tired of hearing Download Squad bloggers complain that Firefox 3 beta doesn't work well with the version of Flash used by Blogsmith, our blogging client, you're in luck. That problem has disappeared with this build, so we'll finally shut up about it!

We've been following the development of Firefox 3 pretty closely around here, because we're a software blog, and what else are we going to do? The beta versions of Firefox 3 have added a ton of cool new features like an improved location bar, better bookmark management, full page zoom and better memory management. But it's still beta software. And we're not quite ready to agree with Mozilla VP Mike Schroepfer when he tells Reuters that Firefox 3 beta 4 is ready for the masses.

Don't get us wrong, most of the time Firefox 3 beta 4 works perfectly. But as far as we here at Download Squad are concerned, there's at least one fatal flaw. It's not compatible with Blogsmith, the blogging client we use, which relies on some Flash features that aren't supported by Firefox 3 yet.

Schroepfer may be right when he says that Firefox 3 "is much more stable" than most other browsers. But if there's a web site you need to visit every day that's not supported, stability only takes you so far. What have your experiences with Firefox 3 been like? Anyone else having problems or is it just us? What other features, bug fixes would you like to see in the final version which should be out in a few months?

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.

Mozilla is continuing its march toward an official launch of Firefox 3 with the release of Firefox 3 beta 2. This update features more infrastructure improvements than major new features, but it packs all the goodies of Firefox 3 beta 1 plus a few new items including:

• New location bar that shows history and bookmarks
  
• Improved security features including anti-virus integration in the download manager and stricter SSL error pages
• Better password management
• Easier add-on installation
• New download manager with resumable downloading
• Full page zoom
• One-click bookmarking
• New graphics and font rendering architecture
• Over 330 memory leak fixes

You can find a complete list of updates in the release notes. There are still some kinks to work out, but that's to be expected in any beta release (with the possible exception of a Google beta product). We're not quite ready to give up on Firefox 2 as our everyday browser, but Firefox 3 is tempting us a bit more with every beta release.

If you want to try out Firefox 3 beta 2 without installing it and risking data loss from your Firefox 2 profile, you might want to check out the portable version.

Want to test out Firefox 3 beta without messing up all of your precious Firefox 2 settings? Easy, just install the portable version. The Portable Apps developers have been doing a great job of pushing out versions of Firefox that can be run from a flash drive within a few days of every major Firefox release lately. And now that Firefox 3 has hit the beta stage, they've started portablizing (is that a word?) it as well.

Because Firefox Portable is self-contained, it will not write any data to your hard drive or registry. That means you can test out Firefox 3's new features like Places, and improved location bar without messing up your current settings. You don't have to install Firefox 3 Portable to a flash drive, you can just as easily install it to a folder on your hard drive.

If you want to run Firefox 3 beta while you have a Firefox 2 window open, you'll need to make one small tweak. Find the FirefoxPortable.ini file in \Other\Sources\ and copy it to the directory that has FirefoxPortable.exe. Edit FirefoxPortable.ini with Notepad, Wordpad, or whatever text editor you prefer, and change AllowMultipleInstances=false so that it says true. Save the file and you can now run Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time.

[via CyberNet]

The first real, official, and honest to-goodness beta release of Firefox 3 is out. You know, not like that little false alarm pre-beta version we told you about a few weeks ago.

Still, the main differences between this beta and that pre-release copy are that the Firefox team has spent a few more weeks hammering out bugs. The feature set is pretty much what we knew it would be.

• Updates to the Gecko rendering engine which should improve stability.
• New Places feature makes it easier to find the sites you've visited most recently, most often, or starred for coming back to later.
• New security features alert you when you're visiting insecure web sites and let you auto-scan downloads with your antivirus software

We're still not quite ready to replace Firefox 2 with an admittedly still buggy beta. But it's pretty exciting to see where Mozilla is going with its flagship web browser.

Firefox 3 is going to have a whole bunch of new features, including a new rendering engine and a new way to organize bookmarks. But probably the first thing users will notice is the new skins. And those skins will be designed to integrate smoothly into your operating system.

In fact, as of right now, the proposed Windows Vista skin looks a lot like Internet Explorer's, while the proposed OS X skin is reminiscent of Safari. There will also be two separate sets of Windows icons: one for Vista and another for XP.

Mozilla is also working on a standard theme for Linux, but this is a bit trickier, since there are many different Linux distributions and desktop-styles.

Honestly, it's nice to see the team working on a visual refresh for Firefox 3. But we kind of like the standard Firefox look and feel. We can open Firefox on a Mac, PC, or Linux machine and pretty much know where the menus are without struggling with a new menu system. Of course, most computer users don't find themselves switching back and forth between 3 or more operating systems on a regular basis, so we might just be in the minority here.