3.0 Beta Version
You can try the Firfox Beta 3.0 version by clicking the above link!
Released: November 19, 2007
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of Mozilla's
next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing
purposes only.
These beta releases are targeted to Web developers and our testing community
to gain feedback before advancing to the next stage in the release process. The
final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as
fully ready for our users. Users of the latest released version of Firefox should
not expect their add-ons to work properly with this beta.
Much of the work leading up to this first beta has been around developing
the infrastructure to support a bunch of exciting new features. With this first
beta, you'll get a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3, but there's still more
to come, and much of what you'll see is still a bit rough around the edges.
Please see below for an extensive list of features and
enhancements found in Firefox 3 Beta 1, as well as
known issues and frequently asked
questions.
As always, we appreciate your feedback either through this feedback form or by filing a bug in Bugzilla.
What's New in Firefox 3 Beta 1
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering
platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes
nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9
includes some major re-architecting for performance,
stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3
has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under
the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
- More Security
-
- 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.
- Easier to Use
-
- Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old
password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
- Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed
making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer
clicks.
- New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much
easier to locate downloaded files.
- Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after
restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
- Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the
new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the
layout, text and images.
- Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new
tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
- Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on
exit.
- Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in
tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
- Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple
resizer item.
- Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made
with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode;
triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
- Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current
selection.
- Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on
Manager.
- Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's
native theme.
- Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and
supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available
updates.
- More Personal
-
- Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a
single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
- Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by
topic.
- Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the
location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history;
favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming
from.
- Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and
tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart
places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
- Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and
bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent
searches.
- Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite
webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling
mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other
protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as
handlers with Firefox).
- Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane
provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and
protocol schemes.
- Improved Platform for Developers
-
- New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering
architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well
as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
- Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look
and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
- Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in
about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images
with embedded color profiles.
- Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline
functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their
site for this feature to be available to users).
- A more complete overview of Firefox 3
for developers is available for website and add-on developers.
- Improved Performance
-
- Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences
are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent
data loss even if their system crashes.
- Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a
rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) 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.
- Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and
a new XPCOM
cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing
to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and
reducing fragmentation.
A more complete, yet "unofficial" list of Firefox
3 changes with their bug numbers is available at the Burning Edge
website.
Downloading and Installing
System Requirements
Before installing, make sure your computer meets the
system requirements.
Downloading Firefox 3 Beta 1
Mozilla provides Firefox 3 Beta 1 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a
variety of languages. You can get the latest version of Firefox 3 Beta 1 here.
For builds for other systems and languages not provided by Mozilla.org, see
the Contributed Builds section at the end of this document.
Installing Firefox 3 Beta 1
Please note that installing Firefox 3 Beta 1 will overwrite your
existing installation of Firefox. You won't lose any of your bookmarks or
browsing history, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work
until updates for them are made available.
Removing Firefox 3 Beta 1
You can remove Firefox 3 Beta 1 through the Control Panel in the
Start Menu on Windows, by removing the Firefox application on
OS X, or by removing the firefox folder on Linux.
Removing Firefox 3 Beta 1 won't remove your bookmarks, web browsing history,
extensions or other add-ons. This data is stored in your profile
folder, which is located in one of the following locations depending on
your operating system:
 Windows Vista |
Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox |
| Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 |
Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox |
 Mac OS X |
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox |
 Linux and Unix systems |
~/.mozilla/firefox |
Any version of Firefox that you install after removing Firefox 3 Beta 1 will
continue to use the data from this profile folder.
Extensions and Themes
Extensions
installed under Firefox 2 may be incompatible and/or require updates to
work with Firefox 3 Beta 1. Please report any issues to the maintainer
of the extension. When you install Firefox 3 Beta 1 all of your
Extensions and Themes will be disabled until Firefox 3 Beta 1
determines that either a) they are compatible with the Firefox 3 Beta 1
release or b) there are newer versions available that are compatible.
Known Issues
This list covers some of the known problems with Firefox 3 Beta 1. Please read this before reporting any new bugs.
- All Systems
-
- Privacy > History > Remember visited pages to "0" has no effect
(bug
366075)
- MathML does not render properly in Firefox 3 Beta 1 (bug 324857)
- Google maps sometimes prints without turn-by-turn directions (bug 399238 and
bug
397428)
- Yahoo! Mail will not work; users must use Yahoo! Classic Mail (bug 398381)
- Windows Live Mail will not work; users must use Hotmail Classic Mail
(bug
396259)
- Add Bookmark dialog is inaccessible to screen access technologies (bug 393398)
- Unfiled bookmarks don't show up anywhere in the Bookmarks and History
organizer (bug
393547)
- The malware protection blacklist is not currently activated
- Using the Internet Download Manager add-on will cause Firefox to crash; it should
be disabled or uninstalled (bug 382356)
- Microsoft Windows
-
- Non-administrator Vista users are unable to launch Firefox if Vista
Parental controls are enabled (bug 396509)
- A Windows Media Player (WMP) plugin is not provided with Windows Vista. As a
workaround, in order to view Windows Media content, you can
follow these instructions.
Note that after installing you may have to get a security update and apply it before you can
see the content in the browser.
- Mac OS X
-
- Some focus issues remain when running on OS X (bug 354768)
- In OS X Leopard (10.5) an extra "File" menu appears to the right of
the help menu (bug 385966)
- Linux and Unix
-
- Breakpad crash reporting system doesn't work on Fedora 8 (bug 392919)
- Some GTK themes fail to properly render the disabled state of
checkboxes and radiobuttons (see bug 388131)
Troubleshooting
