Firefox 3 has been released!

I have been beta testing the new Firefox browser for a while now and have been anticipating its final release.  Even the IE team from Microsoft celebrated the day with a cake for the Mozilla team.

I have to admit that I have been quite pleased with IE7 and preferred it over Firefox 2 but I feel as though once again I will be switching favorite browsers.  I have also been beta testing IE8 as well as Opera releases but this post is a celebration meant for only one browser Mozilla Firefox 3.0  With over 3 years of testing and development the final release has finally arrived!

Here are some new features that are beneficial:

• Speed and performance:  Firefox3 by far is alot faster than IE7.  They are using a new rendering engine that reduce memory leaks or cycles.  I am not one to believe performance graphs provided by review sites but I can personally see a difference in speed with Firefox 3.  This is of course once the browser is open.  The startup times from a cold start in Firefox unfortunately are still slow compared to IE7
• Frecency:  This I have found to be one of the neatest features.  As you are typing an address in the address bar it uses a a combination of frequency and recentness—to determine the best suggestions.  I have found this to be quite helpful and can even type just a part of the URL into the browser and be taken directly to the site.
• Updated bookmarks bar, smart bookmarks, download manager.

Don’t take my word for it though, try it yourself! Firefox can be downloaded below.