The good folks over at Mozilla have finally released the first beta of Firefox 3.0. A lot is being done under the hood, and I’m sure a lot of users won’t even recognize that there are changes. However, I have been using it for a couple of days, and I wanted to point out a couple of things that I really like about this new version.
- Passes the Acid2 test
- Full page zoom
- Dynamic image dragging instead of outlines
- Cocoa widgets (OS X-style buttons)
- Tag-based bookmarking
- Bookmark button is integrated into the address bar
- The theme is slowly getting closer to a slick OS X app, but the milky white has got to go
- Simplified MIME manager (You can manage what applications open what files from the web)
- Image blocking is much improved
- Searchable download manager
- VisualHub-style scolding for about:config
- Uses OS X’s spell checker
- Growl integration for downloading files
I would suggest holding off until there is a stable release (Especially if you have a lot of extensions in Firefox 2), but I am very impressed with the improvements that have been made in Firefox 3.0 Beta 1. I am going to continue using it as my main browser for the foreseeable future.
