New and Improved

Firefox 3 definitely does have a huge array of newer and updated/improved features. Some of the top new Firefox 3 features include:

• One Click Bookmarking: One click on the star icon at the end of the location bar bookmarks a site.  File bookmarked sites in easy-to-access folders and organize according to theme (like “job search” or “favorite shopping”).  Find your bookmarked sites in a flash by entering the tag, page or bookmark name into the location bar.
• Instant Web Site ID: Want to be extra sure about a site’s legitimacy before you make a purchase? Click on a site favicon for an instant identity overview. Check up on suspicious sites, avoid Web forgeries and make sure a site is what it claims to be.
• Improved Performance: With all new management functions in place, Firefox 3 keeps memory usage under control. The XPCOM cycle collector continuously cleans up unused memory. Plus, hundreds of memory leaks are now remedied.
• Full Zoom: Visit your favorite news page and read the caption under the picture—or view the picture itself in a size you can see. An elegant new zoom feature lets you swoop in and see entire web pages. They scale in the way you’d expect them to, with all the elements of a page’s layout expanding equally, so you can zero in on what matters.
• Password Manager: Mozilla have seamlessly integrated this feature into your surfing experience. Choose to “remember” site passwords without intrusive pop-ups. Now you’ll see the “remember password” notification integrated into your view at the top of the site page.
• Smart Location Bar: A quick way to get to the sites you love—even the ones with addresses you only vaguely remember. The new Firefox 3 location bar learns as you use it—it’s so highly evolved that we like to call it the “Awesome Bar”. Over time, it adapts to your preferences and offers better fitting matches. Type in a term and the autocomplete function includes possible matching sites from your browsing history, as well as sites you’ve bookmarked and tagged in a drop down. For example, you could enter the tag: “investments” to find “www.fool.com”. Matched terms are highlighted, making the list of results easy to scan.

And there are also many, many more. There is a whole list of Firefox 3 improvements and features.

Personal Favorites

Amongst all of the new updates and all of the new features, there are some new and improved aspects that really put a smile on my face.

• Improved Performance: When I say improved, I mean it. A simple test on my computer showed that Firefox 3 was taking up half the amount of memory that Internet Explorer 7 uses and it also was using around 50,000,000 bytes less on average than Firefox 2. The new performance increase is a real bonus and should be enough as it is to make anyone switch.
• Places Organizer: In previous releases of Firefox, bookmarking was mediocre. Thankfully, there has been a nice feature introduced in Firefox 3, the Places Organizer. This lets you organise your bookmarks a lot better, causes less clutter and in general helps your browsing experience. In older versions I really didn’t use many bookmarks and never really had a reason to. However, because of this new feature, I know add bookmarks whenever I feel like it.
• Bookmarks with Brains: There are already a few other programs that have advanced bookmarking powers but Firefox 3 has now also integrated them. Some of the new smart bookmarking features include “Most Visited”, “Recently Bookmarked”   and “Recent Tags” lists.
• Remembering Passwords: A nice feature of Firefox already was the remember password feature. However, the annoying popup that continuously bugged you did get quite annoying. As a result, Firefox 3 now has a streamlined remember password feature allowing you to still get Firefox to remember your passwords but without being hassled each time you fill out a form.
• User interface: The user interface of Firefox has been improved a lot! One of the cooler things is that it adjusts to the native look of your system. Whether you’re running a Mac, using Windows or delving into Linux, Firefox 3’s unique UI will adjust and morph into your OS standards. Firefox 3 also has a nicer, cleaner, sharper and more efficient UI and has kept nearly everything in its usual spot, but has cleaned it all up and made it nice and modern.
• Download madness: Yet another huge improvement to Firefox is the new download manager. The latest version of Firefox 3 still uses the usual Firefox download manager but with a few bonuses. For one, Firefox 3 keeps you updated on your downloads in its status bar so you can still browse without the need to go back and forth between all your windows. Furthermore, the new resume downloading feature will save you a lot of time if you are downloading something and your computer crashes or restarts.
• Spam and Phishing? I don’t think so: One of the original features of Firefox was that it was immensely secure. Compared to Internet Explorer, Firefox never once got my computer into trouble. In the new version of Firefox, Mozilla has kept their standard and even added in some new features. Firefox 3 has stronger filters against malware, phishing sites, cookies and other compromising websites so your computer will always be safe.

Summing Up

As a whole, Mozilla has really gone out there with this release of Firefox. The incredibly improved browser really amazes me and will be a huge benefit to have on anyone’s computer. One downside to this great new browser is that some of your favourite add-ons for Firefox 2 will have to be sacrificed for the installation of Firefox 3. Other than that, I can think of no real reasons why anyone shouldn’t be upgrading right now unless they already have! All of these new features and amazingly improved aspects really make me wonder what they could possibly improve in the next release? Share your ideas with a comment below!

Related Content:
Sorry, no related posts.