Mozilla has finally released Firefox 3, bring the entire world into parade for its long awaited version. Firefox 3 is the most anticipated browser in a long while, bringing goods for everyone. Where others tend to go for new features alone, Mozilla took up the daring task to improve where its predecessor was weak. Victory is for the taking...

It took three release candidates, five betas in almost two years, but Firefox 3 is deemed ready for public consumption and Firefox 3 is one hell of a beast.

New looks
When first meeting Firefox 3 you will no doubt see the new looks. Each platform (Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Linux) have been given their own looks to match their respective platforms. The Windows and Mac versions both feature a new concept, the key hole back/forward button. Of all platforms the Mac and Linux version look the best, personally I don't really much like the default look on Vista, which is different from XP, but looks can be changed anyway. Another bonus is the support for Mac OS X widgets for forms, previously only Windows and Linux had this, but now you can click on Aqua buttons in rendered web sites.

Memory and performance improvements
Regardless of any other changes in Firefox 3, the best and most welcome are in the areas of memory and performance. Memory management in Firefox 3 has seen great improvements, fragmenting has been reduced, garbage collection added and caches for pages and images have been tweaked. The end result? On default settings Firefox 3 actually consumes less memory than Opera or Safari, whereas Firefox 2 was a hog. Performance improvements are always welcome, and due to the latest Gecko 1.9, Firefox 3 now renders pages faster even if they're not fully downloaded. Following the trend set by Safari, Firefox 3 now uses profiling extreme increases in JavaScript performance.

Usability improvements
The new pretty look of Firefox 3 has a companion in the shape of usability improvements. With the realization of SQLite for managing bookmarks, it not only give you a more trusty way of storing your data (you have about 5 back ups if it corrupts at all), but also allows for far more advanced querying and better performance. Bookmarking has seen so many improvements, it's intoxicating. First there is a star in the location bar, just clicking it bookmarks it (the star is filled) in an unsorted folder. Clicking it again allows you to set the bookmark and specify the location as well as tags. Tags? Yeah, tagging a bookmark means you can categorize it and find bookmarks in the same category by typing the tag in the location bar. Of course you can still specify keywords as well. Speaking of the location bar, it has been improved in a way that the folks of Mozilla actually call it the Awesome bar. It now searches through your bookmarks, history of URLs and web site titles to match what you've typed in. It doesn't end there, every time you type something and select a location Firefox 3 learns and makes it a higher priority in the list. The Options window of Firefox 3 has been changed slightly, reordering options and adding a few new ones to have better grouping. The page info has also improved, showing permissions and security as well. The download manager has improved, and the nicest thing about it that if you disable the window it will show its status in the status bar. Also nice is the ability to enable/disable individual plug-ins which are now listed in the add-ons window.

Security
Powered by a superb auto-update system and a solid code base Firefox 3 does come with improved security. Most interesting is actually Larry. Who? Well, unofficially called Larry, he resides in the location bar. The favicon has been promoted to be clickable and once you do the click it shows Larry. Larry tells you how secure the web site is. On normal sites it's simple non distinguishable from a normal favicon, but if it's secure Larry turns blue. If it's even better identify able, using EV, Larry turns green and shows the identity of the site. This way of showing security makes it easier for you to know your security level. Fraud protection, by Google, is now turned on by default. It will protect you from phishing as well as malware. And also much requested, Firefox 3 uses your local virus scanner to immediately scan downloaded files.

Add-ons
No, Firefox 3 doesn't come with new add-ons bundles, you'll need to download anything you want from Mozilla's Firefox Add-ons site. But there have been made major efforts in this area. First of all when you upgrade it's possible that not all your add-ons will work, Firefox 3 will check this for you on a first start after the upgrade, download them and restart. Those who don't have the proper updates available should be disabled and are checked on intervals for compatible add-ons. Of course with the wide amount of add-ons this might happen to some users, most popular add-ons have been made ready for Firefox 3 though as the betas and release candidates were out for several months already. Restarting Firefox for add-ons have been a pain, and it will remain necessary, but the pain is softened by the ability to properly restore your session on restart. As a final usability improvement, you can also search and download add-ons through the add-ons screen itself.

But wait, there is more...
There is so much more that cannot be written in this short review, but without getting to technical Firefox 3 has introduced Cairo as it's new graphics engine. What does this mean? Well hardware acceleration (OpenGL, DirectX) for those intense operations allow Firefox 3 to finally do some feasible graphical tricks. But what is most important when reading a web site? Indeed, the fonts. With the help of Cairo, Firefox 3 uses a technique that allows it to render fonts far crispier than before (including anti-aliasing, compliant with the platform), and even allows characters to "move" into each other when forming words. Another bonus of using Cairo is that you can finally zoom images and text, previously this was only text. Cairo will size images for you, using an algorithm that reduces a pixel effect as much as possible. Support for colors profiles isn't available yet by default, as the code is rougher and takes a lot of performance. But if you're like me and you have a powerful PC, you can enable it to enjoy much nicer colors (about:config -> gfx.color_management_enabled -> true).

Verdict
Firefox 3 is awesome and victory is near. Mozilla did a daring step, and it took some time, but in all areas Firefox 3 has been improved. Even Apple is inspired as Snow Leopard will also focus on memory and performance improvements. The amount of usability improvements is also staggering, bookmarking has never been this easy and powerful at the same time. Security is still top notch, with the auto-update, and has been improved by supporting EV, virus scanners and lending the help of partners such as Google. With add-ons still as a key player in Firefox 3 strategy, and no challenger in this area, Mozilla will have nothing to fear of the competition. The word of Firefox is already out on the street by its predecessors, and the competition, such as Opera and Internet Explorer won't make a dent, as frankly they haven't changed this much to be compelling. Safari and Camino should be careful, with Firefox 3's improved platform integration.

Firefox 3 will be succeeded by Firefox 3.1 at the end of the year, which will add some features that just didn't make it in time, before taking a jump to Firefox 4.