Feeling lucky? Firefox 3 beta 1 now downloadable
Running beta versions of your primary browser is a little like converting your car to run on cooking oil biodiesel. It's probably going to work OK, but be prepared for a few surprises along the journey. If you're ready for the social, swing by the Mozillaplex and download your copy of Firefox 3.0 beta 1, but note the warning: "We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release." Gotcha.
The beta DMG clocks in at 17 MB and new features/improvements include (quoting):
Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking for insecure plugins.
Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X.
Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart search bookmark folders, direct typing in location bar searches your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 300 memory leak fixes, and a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks.
Check out the release notes for more details. Note that Techcrunch's Duncan Riley is not impressed with FF3's memory usage profile (thanks Nik).
via Truemors
