Mozilla releases Firefox 3 beta 1
Submitted by srlinuxx on Tue, 11/20/2007 - 09:38.
A few months later than had been planned, Mozilla released on Monday night the first beta version of an overhauled Firefox, the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 beta 1 includes a number of significant features that Mozilla said should improve security, ease of use, rendering of Web pages, and location of previously visited Web pages. And for the new era of rich Internet applications, the browser can run Web-based applications even when the computer is disconnected from a network.
According to the release notes, the core Gecko rendering engine--the component that interprets Web page instructions and draws text and graphics on your screen--has seen major changes in the upgrade to the new version 1.9 used in Firefox 3.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability," the notes said. Those changes "put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in beta 1, and will show further gains in future beta releases."
A quick test
A quick test of the new browser revealed that various important sites including eBay, Gmail, Amazon.com, and Icanhascheezburger appeared to work fine.
However, I got error messages at two, both with snazzier Web 2.0 user interfaces.
Also: First look at Firefox 3.0 Beta 1
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First look at Firefox 3.0b1: fast, stable, and full of new featu
Firefox 3 delivers an impressive assortment of new features and interface improvements. There are lots of changes under the hood as well, which improve performance and reduce resource consumption. Firefox 3 is built on top of Gecko 1.9, the new version of Firefox's HTML rendering engine. In Gecko 1.9, much of the underlying rendering code is now performed with Cairo, an open source vector graphics software library that can leverage hardware accelerated rendering. As we have previously reported, the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine can pass the Acid 2 test, a CSS test case developed by the Web Standards Project. Several impressive additions to Firefox 3 were made possible by the Gecko overhaul, including support for full-page zoom.
The inclusion of the Places feature is another major architectural improvement in Firefox 3.
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