The World Awaits the Mozilla Firefox 3 Release

On Tuesday, June 17, Mozilla scheduled the release of its newest version of the web browser Firefox 3. The Firefox 3 release will sport lots of new features geared towards several audience. Mozilla holds about 20% of market share amongst other browsers, according to Net Browsing Statistics.

Updates from Firefox 2 include features such as the "awesome bar" which allows users to type in simple words instead of cumbersome URLs. Based off previous browsing habits, the awesome bar will pick up on what website the user is trying to access and take them straight there.

Offline content will be available for users to access when not connected to the internet. Applications will also be available for use.

A Cairo Graphics engine will be another step closer to video being within the browser without the need for a media player.

Portable network graphics will be available and will look to phase out the old-school GIF (graphics interface format).

Full-page zoom and display features will better utilize the full breadth of the screen. A small bar across the top of the screen can be clicked which will bring down all useful controls, but otherwise almost the entire screen will be available for viewing content.

More vivid displays will come up when a page is suspected to contain Malware. This feature will hopefully keep more people from accidentally accessing harmful websites.

The list of features goes on considerably. For a full list of features found with the Mozilla Firefox 3 release, visit the supporting links below.

Mozilla has enjoyed a solid user base over the years and is looking to further encroach upon Microsoft's Internet Explorer's territory. The main aspect that Mozilla is working to overcome Microsoft on with the Firefox 3 release is the speed of performance. Many people, including myself switch to Mozilla Firefox because Microsoft Internet Explorer is too slow and seems to receive more error messages.

With more and more websites being designed to support Mozilla Firefox, the market share should narrow even further towards Mozilla's favor. I personally look forward to the Firefox 3 release and will certainly download it for use on my home and work computer.