Scott Gilbertson

Firefox 3 Headed For Feature Complete Beta Phase

The final alpha of Firefox 3 was released to developers today. After this Mozilla’s roadmap calls for the release of beta 1 on July 31st which will be the first feature complete version of the next generation Firefox browser. Alpha 6 doesn’t add too much in the way of new features, for instance the much […]

Mozilla_alphaThe final alpha of Firefox 3 was released to developers today. After this Mozilla's roadmap calls for the release of beta 1 on July 31st which will be the first feature complete version of the next generation Firefox browser.

Alpha 6 doesn't add too much in the way of new features, for instance the much anticipated Places feature has not been updated from the last release, though Places should be fully incorporated into the beta coming later this month.

A quick overview from the release notes reveals the following additions to Alpha 6:

  • Updated SQLite engine to version 3.3.17
  • Support for site-specific preferences - text size
  • A new Quit dialog box that resolves termination errors
  • Added permanent ‘Restart Firefox' button to Add-Ons Manager
  • Miscellaneous fixes to download manager including correctly displaying large file sizes
  • Various Places fixes
  • Miscellaneous Gecko 1.9 bug fixes

I just took the new version for a quick test drive and found that, as with previous alphas, it's faster than Firefox 2 but it still has a ways to go before it's stable and ready for the public.

We'll do a more detailed review of Firefox 3 when the first beta arrives. I'm particularly interested to see the revamped download manager and the rest of the Places improvements.