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Firefox 3 finally released!

The Mozilla firm's leading product, although unknown a few years ago, has experienced a huge evolution since version 1.5 and is now offering the long-awaited version 3.
It has been done up like new, from the rendering engine to the interface (even though the latter hasn't changed so much).
Let's go through this new version together, and see what arguments it presents to convince all kinds of users.

A new rendering engine

Firefox's rendering engine (i.e the part of the browser enabling to transform HTML code into something that can be displayed), Gecko; was updated and is currently going through the Acid 2 test. So we can estimate that Firefox 3 is respecting the standards better than its predecessor.

However, Firefox cannot pass Acid 3 yet. It reaches 71% for this test. Note that the Acid tests 2 and 3 are not exhaustive and are being more and more criticized regarding their relevance.

An improved design

The interface is quite staggering, if we compare it to Firefox 2.
First, the default design is different according to the operating system you are using. There are even differences between the desktop managers under Linux.



Next, we can notice that the personal toolbar (the toolbar containing the bookmarks) includes a button to return to the home page, and a folder listing the most visited pages, the pages booked recently, etc. This is enabled by the use of SQLite, a very light D.B.M.S. to handle the bookmarks.

We also observe the suppression of some dialog boxes, replaced by information bars, above the tab bar. Not only is it a bit less annoying but it also allows to validate the storage of a password once we are sure that it operates.

A new star-shaped icon appears next to the address bar. If the star is yellow, the page you are displaying is already bookmarked. If it is white, the page you are displaying is not. In this case, one click will do to bookmark it.

The download manager was improved as well, now featuring a search box. Besides, when typing a particular word in the address bar, we get all pages containing this word in their address listed. It allows to find a page recently visited more quickly.

Even more coming...

We have seen the major changes brought by Firefox 3, nevertheless there are others that you might be interested in:

• A tab "catalog" makes its appearance in the plugin manager. This tab offers to download and install recommended plugins.
• An improved support for colours.
• A better font.
• A full screen zoom that enlarges the whole page, including images, which was not the case before.
• The history settings were rethought, to become more convenient and intuitive.
• Better support for the <canvas> tag.
• Increased security.
• Support of the web applications when you are offline.
• Firefox 3 is lighter and faster (it takes less room in the main memory) than Firefox 2.
• A better management of plugins (you can activate or disable them as much as you like in the plugin manager).
• The websites' identification button on the left of the address bar.
• The multiple selection.

Bugs being fixed

One of the big problems for Firefox was memory leaks. On occasion, Firefox happened to consume high quantities of the main memory unnecessarily (apparently around 200Mo).

With Firefox 3, one of the developers' goals was to find and fix what created these memory leaks problems. More than 350 memory leak sources were found and fixed. So Firefox 3 is really less avid for main memory than its predecessors.

What about security?

Firefox 3 is also doing pretty well with security. First, the anti-phishing protection has been improved. From now on, you only have to click on the icon on the left of the address bar to know if the site has been verified or not.

Moreover, Firefox 3 also verifies if the sites you are browsing are not installing viruses, spywares, and other malevolent software programs. When you download a file, it automatically checks if the said file is not infected, using the anti-virus program installed on your system.

Firefox 3 and its world record

It has caused such a stir that it is almost impossible not to talk about it! Firefox 3 wanted to break (or establish) the record of the biggest number of downloads in 24 hours. The downloads counted for this record are those of the 17th of June of 2008, Firefox 3 release date.
On D-Day, as it was named, the downloads managed to reach the huge number of more than 8 million!

Conclusion

If you like Firefox, this new version will certainly suit you . If you don't know this browser yet (or if you'd rather use another one), it may actually make you change your mind. The memory leaks correction, its main drawback, is a very good thing.

However, some extensions for Firefox 2 remain incompatible with this browser.

• Download Firefox 3