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Filed under: Mozilla, Open Source, Browser Tips, Beta

Firefox 3 Alpha 7 released


Now that we've shown you how to test out Mozilla's latest nightly builds of Firefox without destroying all of your current settings, you can safely check out the just-released Firefox 3 Alpha 7 release.

Most of the changes include bug fixes and under the hood tweaks. But here are a few things you might notice:
  • The location bar autocomplete menu shows favicons for previously entered addresses.
  • Firefox will retain a history of recently visited sites for 180 days instead of 9.
  • Support for Mac OS X 10.3 has been removed.
  • There's support for full page zoom of images, text, and layout, but you'll need to install an extension to take advantage of Firefox's new zoom options, as there's no controls built into the program yet.
As you can tell from the Alpha label, the latest release is still far from ready for prime time. We wouldn't recommend using the latest build as your primary browser yet, but if you want to see what Firefox 3 might look like, go ahead and compile a portable build.

[via Mozilla Links]

Filed under: Mozilla, Browser Tips

Firefox 3 Alpha 5 released

Firefox 3 Alpha 5
Mozilla has released Firefox 3 Alpha 5. Keep in mind, when we say alpha, we mean this thing hasn't even earned the right to be called beta software yet, so install at your own risk. For example, when you install Firefox 3 (code named Gran Paradiso), you'll notice that clicking on your Firefox 2 icon will bring up Gran Paradiso whether you like it or not.

Gran Paradiso doesn't actually uninstall Firefox 2.0 though, so you can install Gran Paradiso and uninstall it with minimal risk. Except there's a chance you might lose some bookmarks. That's because the biggest change in the latest build is that Mozilla has added "Places," a new way of managing bookmarks, RSS subscriptions, and browser history in your sidebar.

Places first showed up in Firefox 2 Alpha 1, but has been disabled for the last few builds. It makes its triumphent return with Alpha 5, but you probably won't really notice any changes, since there's no graphical redesign to go along with the changes under the hood.

Some other updates:
  • A new crash reporting system is enabled on Mac OS X and about half of Windows installations. It's not yet available for Linux.
  • There's a new Javascript-based password manager.
  • And some miscellaneous bug fixes in the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine.
[via WebWare]

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