The 4th beta version of Firefox 3 is out, and it’s impressive. I can’t say I’m pleased with the new designs for some of the toolbar buttons. But man, is it FAST! With all of the new features I’d heard the Mozilla team was planning to pack in to Firefox 3, I was sure it would be much slower than Firefox 2 (which, while faster than IE, still had plenty of room for improvement). But I was wrong.
Aside from the great speed improvements, I’m really excited about other new features too.
Topping this list for me is full page zoom. Unlike earlier versions of Firefox where zooming only changed the text size, zooming Firefox 3 changes the size of EVERYTHING. Pictures, movies, even flash. Where do I think this will come in the most handy? KIDS SITES! Take a look at the website for PBS Kids show Big Big World. Unless you’re on an early-90’s computer or legally blind, the interactive content on that site will be SMALL for you. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like on my old work computer. Sure, it’s big enough to see and interact with, but there’s a LOT of wasted space on any decent sized monitor. Here’s a screenshot after I used Firefox 3 to zoom in on the page so the interactive part fills the width of the screen. MUCH better (especially for a little kid).
Other great new features that I’m especially fond of include site specific preferences (which also means that zoom settings for individual sites are retained and applied automatically the next time you visit them), an improved download manager (goodbye Download Statusbar addon), more dialog boxes converted to pop-down toolbars and button pages, and the ability to search and add new addons from within the addon window in Firefox. The newly redesigned bookmarking system, now called “Places”, is also a good addition to Firefox; but since I’ve been using the official Del.icio.us Firefox extension, tags and smart folders like “Most Visited” and “Recently Bookmarked” are nothing new to me in Firefox.
In case you couldn’t tell, I’m really liking beta 4. It sounds like Mozilla plans to release a 5th beta near the end of March to wrap up some loose ends, and then the final, official release of Firefox 3 won’t be far off. Congratulations (and thanks), Firefox team. You’ve got another winner here.
I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ll be sure to do so tonight. The page zoom sounds great, as does the new ‘places’ feature.
Can you install this without overwriting version 2? I don’t want to lose the functionality of all my extensions, but I really want to try it!
Whoops, I planned to mention that from the start Adam! I completely forgot about that.
Download Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3 Beta 4 . It’s geared towards being self contained on a USB pen drive, but it’s a great way to use the beta while ensuring it won’t mess up any of your existing software.