Firefox
Version: 3.0.3
Downloads Count: 225,162
License Type: Free
Price: Free
Date Added: Sep 30, 2008
Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista
File Size: 7333 KB
Author: Mozilla
- Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) 304,484
- Adobe Reader 239,989
- Firefox 225,162
- Netscape 221,918
- Crazy Browser 179,384
Editor's Review of Firefox
Upgrade to Firefox 3 from version 2, and you may at first forget you even made the change. But keep using it, and you'll realize how much this browser has to offer.
Aside from a pushed-together back and forward button, the new open-source browser looks much the same as its predecessor. One of the only other visual cues, a little star in the location bar, only hints at the major changes for bookmarks it represents.
Click that star, and you'll add your currently viewed page as an unfiled bookmark. Click it again and choose a particular folder, add a description, or select tags, all of which is stored in a new, behind-the-scenes database. You can search that database, along with all of your browsing history, by typing a keyword (instead of a URL) into the location bar. The search checks page titles, tags or addresses, and while it sounds small, in practice it's a big feature. Instead of hunting through your ever-growing list of bookmarks, or trying to remember how to get to that great site you looked at last week, you can type a quick word into the location bar and find what you?re looking for.
That's not to say the new bookmarks couldn't stand some improvement. For one thing, you can't see unfiled bookmarks in the normal bookmarks drop-down list (you have to go to Organize Bookmarks to find them) . And while you likely know how useful it can be to add tags to multiple mp3 files at once with a media player, you can only add tags to one bookmark at a time.
There are a number of other interface changes as well, including an updated download manager that can resume halted downloads, a zoom menu option that can let you resize the entire page or just text, and a new password saver that lets you wait until after you've successfully logged in to decide whether to save your credentials.
On the security front, Firefox 3 will block sites known to spread malware, based on a Google blacklist, along with phishing sites. It also supports Extended Validation certificates, so if you view a site that uses one to verify the site owner's identity, it will be made clear by a large green button with the company's name on the left side of the location bar.
Mozilla says that even with these new features, the new Firefox should use less memory after memory leak clean-ups and other programming improvements. In one informal test with four open pages--Yahoo mail, CNN.com, PCWorld.com and Icanhascheezburger.com--Firefox 3 used about 85MB of memory, compared with 106MB for IE7.
Those tests didn't include add-ons, but if you use Firefox you know they make the browser. And most, though not all, of the must-have extensions--such as Foxmarks, Adblock Plus, and McAfee SiteAdvisor--work with version 3, which also sports an upgraded add-on manager.
If you already use Firefox, then no doubt about it, you'll want this upgrade. If you've resisted Firefox until now, give the new browser a try. It just might win you over.
--Erik Larkin
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