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Like millions of others who were willing to play along and help Make History with Firefox 3 and set a world record for downloads, I downloaded Firefox 3 on the appointed day.
Okay, so Firefox set a record and I had a new browser version. I started using it without really exploring what was new and different about it. I've noticed a few things, just from my normal use. There must be other new features that could be good to know about. After all, people were raving about Firefox 3 like it was going to be something really special. You can get a complete list of all the New Features from Mozilla.
I turned to Lifehacker, where they were listing the best new features while Firefox 3 was still in beta.
Lifehacker mentioned the new Add-ons interface. I took a look and found that it was easy to find add-ons, extensions, and themes.
The extra large Back button is a nice features. The best thing about the Back button is that it's greyed out if there's nothing to go back to. That sort of visual reminder can save you a lot of frustration.
Firefox can now be configured to launch an email link in Gmail or Yahoo mail right in your browser. Lifehacker tells how in Set Firefox 3 to launch Gmail for mailto Links. This is a big and welcome change for people who use online mail services rather than some installed software on the desktop like Outlook Express or Eudora.
You get an instant warning if you try to launch one of those phoney bank or PayPal sites that try to scam you out of your account information. Firefox checks sites against the list of Google's blacklisted phishing sites. This new feature could save you money and pain.
Ever had a crash or interruption of service during a big download? The new Firefox download manager can resume an interrupted download. Useful, that.
Now the default theme matches the look and feel of your OS. Since I'm running Mac OS X, I get the Firelight theme as the default. But it's very easy to get a different one using Tools > Add-ons > Browse all add-ons.
Firefox 3 remembers your passwords and learns your browsing habits. It can turn your browsing habits into bookmarks. There's a recently bookmarked item in the Bookmarks bar. You can now add Tags to bookmarks. I think this is a big help as far as organizing and finding bookmarks goes. You can tag a bookmark when you first create it, or do back later and add them.
Of course, once you've tagged something, you can find it and any other items tagged with the same tag in the Bookmarks menu.
A new item in the bookmarks bar called Most Visited may prove handy for you. A blogger with one or more blogs to track may visit the same sites daily, as I do. This item is a help because it gives you quick access to your most visited sites.
The location bar has improved as well. It's now called the Awesome bar. The autocomplete feature opens up with several choices related to what you're typing. Each autocomplete guess from Firefox contains a URL and page titles.
I think the location bar's an improvement. Pam from Nerd's Eye View says,
I hate that stupid Awesome bar. Oooo. I
hate it so much. Did I mention how much I hate that thing?
I think it's possible that she may be of the opinion that she does not view the Awesome bar with high regard. Or something like that.
Firefox claims major speed advantages for Firefox 3 over other browsers, and especially for Mac users because the memory usage has improved. Quite a few people mentioned the speed increase. Megan, from Megan's Minute said,
I think it's fun to use and as advertised, runs faster than
the previous version.
Laura from rare pattern agreed about the speed, and said Firefox 3 making online life much nicer.
I don't know about you, but on both Macs I use regularly, Firefox 2 was crashing all the time. Last night, while writing a blog post for BlogHer, my browser crashed at least a dozen times. On my Mac Pro, Firefox completely melted down -- twice -- requiring complete rebuild from the start, manually adding one
