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

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Source: http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/11/19/fi…

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Software Open Source Beta Beat

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...

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Greg

If anyone knows of a link to Firefox 3 Beta 1, I'd really appreciate it. I tried Beta 2, and the new "Location Bar" is so large, hideous, and distracting that I immediately removed Firefox.
I understand the intent behind revamping the security GUI, and I'm all for that, but the current implementation is so in-your-face that it makes me wretch.

December 21 2007 at 11:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

PSM

I have just tried switching back to Safari since installing Leopard, so it's no harm to me to try the new beta. I've played around with the alphas a couple times, but when it was my primary browser it was too annoying. Looking forward to seeing how it's coming along though.

November 21 2007 at 3:47 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

alexgreen

PPC Tiger - Used up ~1GB of RAM after 10 minutes of not browsing (loaded one page with mostly text, zero flash or multimedia). Memory usage alone makes it feels like alpha rather than beta.

November 20 2007 at 7:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rob Campbell

If you feel like checking out the preview of the new OS X theme, it's available as an installable add-on from:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6050

Like the browser, it is also still "in beta". :)

November 20 2007 at 6:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joe

Wow, the biodiesel crowd whines almost as much as their engines do while climbing an incline greater than five degrees.

November 20 2007 at 4:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Slartibartfast

Have they updated the look of the app yet to be more Mac native, or is it still as ugly as FF2?

November 20 2007 at 4:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Halopend@gmail.com

To Jak Logan, Firefox has many extentions available which add extra abilities. There are a few that do what you ask but DownloadHelper (just do a google search) is one of the better ones.

November 20 2007 at 3:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jak Logan

I'm curious, can it download Flash movies like Safari's Activity Monitor window?

November 20 2007 at 2:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Jak Logan's comment

d-90

FF2 has a more than one pluggin that will download flash movies nicely. Don't know if they're compatible with FF3 but I sure they will be

November 29 2007 at 5:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris McCorkle

First launch on Intel iMac: 43MBÂ± RAM usage
First launch on PPC Powerbook: 894Â± RAM usage (?!)

November 20 2007 at 2:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

fresh99