Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1
Firefox 3 RC1 has been released, which has been my first look at the new Firefox 3. I haven’t tested any of the other beta versions mainly because there were no compatible versions of Firebug available, which I depend on daily for development. Now that Firebug 1.2.0 beta has been released and is compatible with Firefox 3, I decided to give them both a try.
My First impressions were that it looks a lot like Safari, which has been my browser of choice lately for browsing (not development). Take a look and tell me you don’t see a little Safari in the new interface.
Even the tabs look almost identical to how they appear in Safari.
On top of the design changes, which I think look great, there has been quite a few enhances as far as functionality. There has been rumors that FF3 will eventually be the fastest browser to date, which would obviously make Firefox the best browser available. The amount of Add-ons for Firefox is endless and leaves an open door for any developer who wants to add functionality into their web browser of choice.
I noticed the address bar has undergone some changes, it gives you a bit more information in your history of recently visited web pages, traditionally it would just give you the link or the address of a website in your history, now it gives you the title of the page along with the URL, check it out.
Now to my favorite thing about Firefox, which is Firebug. If you have no idea what Firebug is and you do any web design, you have been missing out on the best utility ever for web development. It’s saved me tons of time and is an absolute must for any web designer. Firebug version 1.2.0 Beta is compatible with Firefox 3 and appears to be working without a hiccup. Here’s my proof for the non-believers.
I’m very impressed by the latest browser from Mozilla, I would highly recommend anyone who doesn’t currently use Firefox as their primary browser to checkout Firefox 3 and anyone interested to install the Firebug add-on.
