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Mozilla has announcedthe official release of Firefox 3 beta 2, the tenth major developermilestone in the Firefox 3 development timeline. The new beta, which isavailable for download from Mozilla's web site, includes interface improvements and a lot of extra polish.
Mozilla's quality standards for betas require that all of the plannedfeatures be fully implemented and robust enough for daily browsing by alarge number of people. That standard was fulfilled last month by the Milestone 9release, which was the first to bear the beta designation. Additionalbetas will be released on a consistent basis until all of theimplemented features are finalized and performance matches or exceedsthat of Firefox. At that point, Mozilla will transition to releasecandidates to resolve last-minute regressions before the officialrelease.
Download Squad wrote:
Today Mozilla released beta 2 for download by willing testers andimpatient ‘fox users. The second beta plugs memory leaks (yippee!) andadds features like a new URL auto-complete display, smart bookmarksfolders, and revamped download manager. Get more details about beta 2goodness after the jump.
Notable beta 2 improvements from the release notes include:
Quote:
Location bar & auto-complete: type in all orpart of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matchesfrom your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scanthrough the matching results and find that page you’re looking for.
Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access yourrecently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequentlyvisited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmarktoolbar.
New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and displays where a file came from.
Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leakshave been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completelyeliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizingmemory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducingfragmentation. Beta 2 includes over 30 more memory leak fixes, and 11improvements to our memory footprint.
Of course, this is a beta so you don’t want to move over to itfull-time—unless you’re cool with some instability and incompatibleextensions while the kinks get ironed out. The Firefox 3 Beta 2 is afree download for all platforms.
Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download
Its also more secure:
Quote:
More Secure
One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can test it here.
New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
[Improved in Beta 2!] Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
In addition to usability enhancements, Firefox 3 beta 2 also deliversbetter performance and a reduction in memory overhead. During theFirefox 3 development cycle, over 300 individual memory leaks have beenplugged and many more are eliminated by the new XPCOM cycle collector.In beta 2, more than 30 additional memory leaks have been fixed, andthere have been 11 improvements to the Firefox memory footprint.Mozilla also says that performance is better in beta 2 as a result ofperformance tuning that was made possible by architectural changes.
Overall, it's another very impressive release that reflects therapidly-growing robustness of Firefox 3. I've been using the nightlybuilds as my primary browser for some time, and I've been very happywith many of the new features. The quality of beta 1 was so high thatit even managed to convert a few skeptics. The second beta further refines the experience and brings us closer to the release candidates.
The following resources contain useful information about Firefox 3 Beta 2:
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