There's Much To Love About The New Firefox 3

Firefox has long been the Web browser of choice for users who love to customize their online view and thumb their mouse at Internet Explorer in the bargain. The new Firefox 3 (free at firefox.com) just goes to show a great browser can get even greater.

The folks behind Firefox at Mozilla sure have the numbers to back that up — Firefox 3 surpassed 8 million downloads in just 24 hours in hopes of setting the Guinness World Record for most software downloaded in that time period. (Firefox 3 clocked more than 21 million downloads worldwide.)

But don't take my biased word for it. (Did I mention I love Firefox?) With more than 15,000 improvements, here are some of the finer Firefox 3 features.

Better performance. Much as I enjoyed Firefox 2, it was a real resource hog. Firefox 3 has better memory management and faster page loading, so browsing swims along much smoother. I'll take two to four times faster any day.

A clever location bar. I don't like to broadcast my Web activity every time I type in the location bar. That said, the so-called “Awesome Bar” lives up to its name with an auto-complete function for faster site matches based on browsing history, bookmarks, even site tags (special keywords).

Add-ons Manager. Now this I dig. Firefox is only as good as its add-on features, which are plenty. The Add-ons Manager makes accessing such Firefox tweaks a cinch without the need to visit the add-ons site. If you're new to such customizations, start with the recommended add-ons and go from there.

Better bookmarking. Like a site? Just click the star at the end of the location bar to bookmark it. A bookmarked site has a gold star — click that gold star and you can pick where to save the site and if you want to tag it.

A built-in spellchecker. A must for bloggers who hate thumbing through dictionaries, online or otherwise.

Subtle password saving. Be gone, annoying pop-up asking me to save a password. Firefox 3 integrates the request right into the browser.

Save on exit. Save your tabs before you close Firefox 3 and they're back up next time you open the browser. Why, it's like you never shut off this wonderful window to the Web.

Source: MySanAntonio.com