FireFox 3.0 Reaches Release Candidate Status

According to Mozilla developers Firefox 3.0 RC1 edges closer to final code. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.

Firefox 3.0 is built on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform and includes better memory management, improved performance, enhanced security features, and improved usability. Other new features include built-in antivirus protection, easier password management, a new download manager and improved integration with Windows and OS X.

According to Mozilla, changes specifically attributable to the latest release of Firefox 3.0 include:

• Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
• Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.
• Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

Firefox 3.0 RC1 is currently available for download in multiple languages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.

My thoughts:
I've been trying it out over the weekend and so far I'm not highly impressed. Some of my plug-ins aren't functional, I can't find a theme I like that will actually work, and the overall feel just doesn't fit for me. The first two are more an issue for the developers of the plug-ins and themes but its still an annoyance.

While page load times do seem to be faster, I see little to no change in memory usage. In fact if anything it almost looks like I'm using more memory now than with the latest version of FireFox 2. The new looks and feel of the address bar is great, you don't just get the url but a quick title for the page. Bookmark handling has also been upgraded nicely.

I can say I don't see anything majorly wrong, I've had no crashes and little to no issues. I just really don't see anything that is all that impressive. Maybe I'll need more than a day or two of surfing to spot a few extras that I haven't found yet.