Firefox 3 Beta 3 tips up

THE GREAT LIZARD Mozilla has released Firefox 3 Beta 3 for those brave souls who live on the edge and want to test it and see it break their add-ons.

The first sentence of the Release Notes says, "Firefox 3 Beta 3 is a developer preview release of Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only." [emphasis in the original]

After some period of testing and bug-fixing, the Firefox 3 development team will begin issuing Release Candidate versions. Even those will likely still have some bugs, so unless you're happy with uninstalling Firefox 3 and reinstalling Firefox 2 you'll still probably want to wait for the final, released version of Firefox 3.

However, most of the new functionality in Firefox 3 is already there, including the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. The additional work that's needed before Firefox 3 will be ready for wider use reportedly has to do with making add-ons work properly and fixing up some fit and finish issues.

There's a safely readable in-depth tour of new Firefox 3 features available here.

There's also a download page linked at the Release Notes link below, but -- for those of you who think reading Release Notes before installing software is for pansies -- be aware that Firefox 3 Beta 3 will install on top of and replace your existing version of Firefox under Mac OS/X or Linux. Under Windows, Firefox 3 Beta 3 installs into a separate folder, so Windows users will be safer. Still, we suggest you'll want to back up your existing Firefox installation anyway, first.

Taking Firefox 3 Beta 3 out for a winter test drive might be fun and is sure to be interesting -- but don't say we didn't warn you. µ

L'INQ
Firefox 3 Beta 3 Release Notes