Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 was released to the public a few days ago. It’s available in 40+ languages and is one of the last major development releases before Firefox 3.0 is published.
Note: Because this is a Release Candidate, it’s primarily for early adopters and software developers to work out the last remaining bugs and stress-test the new features. As such, not all of your extensions/add-ons will work until RC1 versions for those extensions/add-ons are released (you can work around that by forcing them to install but if you have problems, you won’t know if it’s the add-on or Firefox itself).
Some of the changes coming with Firefox 3.0:
– Look/styling are changed/updated.
– Security improvements/additions (Malware Protection, etc.)
– Improved user interface and user friendliness (save Tabs on exit, etc.).
– Increased performance, faster rendering, and lowered memory usage
– Increased stability (bookmarks, history, cookies, preferences are much more resistant to data loss in the event of a computer crash)
– Improved JavaScript engine
For those of you who use some of the Google (and other web) applications (like I do), the Mozilla folks claim that when compared to Firefox 2, things like Google Mail (GMail) and Zoho Office are twice as fast under Firefox 3.
Memory usage is drastically improved (important to those of us using ultraportable devices with limited memory).
All in all, a huge improvement over Firefox 2.
Release Notes: Mozilla.com
Download: Mozilla.com