Posted on 06/12/2008 6:02:12 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A new version of the Firefox Web browser is scheduled for release Tuesday with improvements in security, speed and design.
Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new "Places" feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently but haven't bookmarked.
There's also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list-similar to what's already available on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 browser.
Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn't disrupt the log-in process.
Firefox also will start blocking rather than simply warning about sites known to engage in "phishing" scams that try to trick users into revealing passwords and other sensitive information. The new version adds protection from sites known to distribute viruses and other malicious software.
The list of suspicious sites come from Google Inc. and StopBadware.org, a project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities.
Security researchers who need access to problem sites can manually turn the feature off.
Firefox 3 also offers speed and design improvements-the back button is now larger than the forward button, for instance, because people tend to return to a previous page more often, said Mike Schroepfer, the project's vice president of engineering.
Firefox is the No. 2 Web browser behind Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer. It comes from Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products.
Mozilla has been developing Firefox 3 for nearly three years and has been publicly testing it since November for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Its supporters are organizing launch parties around the world next week, and Mozilla is trying to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.
Microsoft is currently testing Internet Explorer 8, while Opera Software ASA released Opera 9.5 on Thursday.
Tech ping!
I like the “Restore Last Session” feature.
That feature absolutely rules.
I use Firefox almost exclusively, but the one complaint I have about it is the propensity toward “memory leaks”. It ends up committing way too much RAM, which I have tried to address (unsuccessfully to date) by creating new integer and Boolean values.
the only reason i use IE 7 is for that little magnifier button on the lower left corner, It comes in handy.
I wonder if this new version will have that.
The new version is supposed to magnify both text and pictures when you hold down the CNTL key and spin the wheel on the mouse.
Another Firefox fan, especially with the extensions that make it easy to use FR. But it absolutely gags on many TV web sites with current video or live streaming radio. I gave up trying to nurse it and just use an add-on called IE View to go directly to IE-6 for viewing/listening.
Beat me to it!!
Same here.
The only problem I have on my Win2k3 box at work is that after an hour or so, the memory usage slowly balloons from the usual ~30Mb to over 150Mb. It really slogs the machine....which doesn't have as much RAM as it should.
I used to use Firefox, but I started using Safari in addition to Explorer instead. A lot of pages look better on Safari than Firefox.
I’m running Opera (9.5 today) Firefox, Safari and IE, all have advantages when you get a PC with some RAM!
All are cool!
That's been the one that's annoyed me most often.
Good news—the Mozilla Foundation extensively changed the memory handling so Firefox 3.0 no longer “hogs” system RAM to cache web sites. After all, web site caching is less needed with more and more Internet users now on broadband connections.
I hope they increase its security more, I got my first malware ever the other week on Vista using Firefox, IE blocked that site completely. As far as freeze ups etc you are right Firefox doesn’t crash as often but it most certainly does lock up, certain video players do muck it up. Frankly IE and Firefox both have their positives IMO, so I will download both when they come available.
That does sound promising. I’m looking forward to the release.
I wonder if it will have a zoom feature similar to IE7?
Set a Guinness World Record
Mozille/Firefox wants to break all download records with this release.
They want it to be Firefox Download Day (June 17).
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord
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