Next Firefox 3 Beta
The Mozilla developers have worked around 900 improvements into the fourth beta version.
Prior to the final release of the browser, which is still roughly scheduled for early 2008, there will be a fifth test version.
Optimization with respect to performance, memory usage and stability are typical of the updates between two beta releases. The developers mainly attribute the speed gains to Javascript engine tuning.
Feedback from a testers contributed to the considerable number of improvements. Further bug reports are welcome at Bugzilla. The Release Notes have a full list of the changes. The major changes include work on the download manager, which considerably improves the user’s ability to find files they have downloaded. At the same time downloads will be searchable and attributable to the website they originated from.
The new zoom function in the "View" menu, which is also accessible by means of a keyboard shortcut, offers various features for zooming texts, images and the whole page layout.
The browser’s multiplatform ability is due to customized menu bars, icons and widgets in the style of Windows Vista, Mac OS X and native GTK themes for Linux.
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