Firefox 3 Beta 2 Released

If you are developer or tester type person who grabs the latest betas… then this is a heads up that Firefox 3 Beta 2 has just been released. This release is slated to be more secure, easier to use, more personal (improved UI), an improved platform for developers, has increased performance… and fixes over 330 memory leaks.

I am a big fan of Firefox. I also believe it’s in everyone best interest for IE competitors (such as Firefox and Opera) to keep pushing Microsoft. Besides, I like Firefox much more than IE. ‘nuf said.

New changes in this milestone are:

• Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

For official details check out the What’s New section of the Release Notes

Here is the Firefox 3 Beta 2 download link (If you don’t want to Beta test, I highly recommend you stick with Firefox 2)

For a technical perspective on Firefox memory leaks (and memory usage), be sure to check out Pavlov, a Firefox developer.