A few months later than had been planned, Mozilla has released the first beta version of an overhauled Firefox, the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 beta 1 includes a number of significant features that Mozilla said should improve security, ease of use, rendering of Web pages and location of previously visited Web pages. And for the new era of rich Internet applications, the browser can run Web-based applications even when the computer is disconnected from a network.
The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux at Mozilla's download site in 20 languages. You can also download the English versions for Windows or Mac from CNET.com.au's Download channel.
Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the dominant Web browser, the open-source rival has achieved a critical mass of users -- Firefox has been downloaded more than 400 million times--and it's now common for designers to make sure their Web pages work with the browser. Even Microsoft has bowed to the reality, testing its Live.com Web sites with Firefox and helping with technical issues such as playing Windows Media files from Web pages.
According to the release notes, the core Gecko rendering engine -- the component that interprets Web page instructions and draws text and graphics on your screen -- has seen major changes in the upgrade to the new version 1.9 used in Firefox 3.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability," the notes said. Those changes "put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in beta 1, and will show further gains in future beta releases."
The Firefox 3 beta had been due to arrive in July, and there's no word yet on when the software will come out of beta. "The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users," the release notes said -- a polite way of saying it'll be ready when it's ready.
New features
Besides Gecko 1.9, there are a number of areas of change for Firefox 3. Among them:
• Security. New features include the ability to integrate antivirus software with downloads; one-click Web site identity verification; automatic testing to make sure plug-ins aren't older versions found to be insecure and automatic disabling if they are; and support for Windows Vista parental controls.
• Ease of use. Touted improvements include downloading that can be resumed after the browser has been restarted or network connection reset; users can zoom and out of Web pages in their entirety, including layout, text and graphics; plug-ins can be managed centrally with the Add-On Manager; and mailto links can now launch Web-based e-mail applications such as Gmail, not just local applications on the PC such as Outlook.
• Personalisation. Web pages can be bookmarked with one click and tagged with a double-click; the aforementioned feature provides a list of possible matching Web pages based on what you type in the location bar; and a new Smart Places folder provides access to pages that are frequently visited or that have been recently bookmarked and tagged.
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extradry
21/11/2007 04:34 PM
i would love to chat
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Dean
21/11/2007 05:48 PM
Err, "improved but imperfect" is the title, but there's no mention of anything "imperfect" in the article...
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Matt
25/11/2007 02:43 PM
well obviously dean it is beta - while some people won't have any problems, others will.
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