Firefox 3 Release candidate available

Firefox 3 Release Client 1, also known as Gran Paradiso, is the fifth public preview of the Mozilla Firefox browser. It has been on everyone’s lips, both geeks and non-geeks alike. It was released on 18 May 2008 and the full version for everyday use is expected in mid-2008.Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s VP of engineering, claims Firefox 3 will use 4.7x less memory than Internet Explorer 7. Earlier versions of Firefox have been notoriously heavy memory users.

There might be more Release Clients available before the proper release of Firefox 3 in mid-2008. This version has over 15,000 changes from Firefox 2. The reason for the slight delay is so that developers can update the add-ons for the browser.

The current release fixes stability and feature bugs in the previous version and is supposed to improve the browser’s performance by fixing even more memory leak issues. There are plenty of nifty new features, is supposedly a breeze to install, and its speed is said to be 2 to 3 times better than Firefox 2.

Updates over Firefox 2

Of the numerous improvements to this new version, there are a couple of stand-out updates:

Add-On Manager, Download Manager, Phishing Protection, Password Manager, Security for Add-Ons, Tabbed Browsing, Faster Speed, and better use of memory.

The Add-On Manager has been revamped and makes it much easier to download plug-ins. Some of us who are loathe to use fewer than 20 tabs will be glad to hear the new version can easily handle up to 50 tabs while browsing. Firefox 3 also uses less memory than IE7, Opera and Firefox 2.

New Features

Smart Location Bar

Also referred to as the ‘Awesome Bar’ by some, this feature matches web addresses from the users’ search history when they start typing into the address bar.

One-Click Bookmarks

The new Firefox will have a star icon in the Location bar. If a page is already bookmarked, it is solid, if the page is not bookmarked, it is hollow. By clicking on the icon once, you can bookmark it; clicking it twice allows you to edit the name and tags.

Tabs

This new version prompts users to save tabs when exiting a page.

Default Mail Client

We can now use our own webmail provider to handle mailto: links rather than feeling as though we are forced to use the standard desktop applications to send email. There are a number of tutorials online to change the default setting – Yahoo! – to also include Gmail as a mail client.

Smart Bookmark Folder

The browser learns about your browsing habits and compiles its own list of links in this way. There are three defaults: ‘Most Visited, ‘Recently Bookmarked’ and ‘Recent Tags’, but there is the option to create your own.

Security

The team has improved the phishing and malware filters. By using Google’s ever-growing list of phishing sites, Firefox 3 can protect you against sites that might be harmful. When you visit sites that contain malicious software, the browser will warn you about it in a popup box. Passwords are saved only once you successfully login to a page. Pages suspected to be Web forgeries – sites that try to look like legitimate sites -aren’t even displayed in Firefox 3.

Instant Website ID

When Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate information is available, you can access it by clicking on the favicon, which is the tiny graphic at the left of the URL bar. a display box should extend down the location bar with the site’s details.

Full Page Zoom

Users can now zoom into and out of Web pages – including images instead of just text.

Future developments planned by Mozilla

• Mozilla 2 – To be released in 2009
• Firefox 3.1 – By the end of 2008
• Firefox Mobile
• Gecko 1.9.0.x – By end of June 2008
• Gecko 1.9.1.x – Beta stable summer 2008, production stable end of 2008
• Firefox 4, which will be produced on Mozilla 2, is only scheduled for release waaay in the future, possibly 2009