Firefox 3 Launched

Mozilla's much maligned yet more beloved web browser launches it's third full version June 17th worldwide as the Firefox 3 tries to set a new Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a single day.

Before the start of Download Day 2008 it already had over 3 million pledges for downloads from Firefox fans around the world. The campaign ends June 18th at 5PM UTC. With a few more hours to go it looks like its well on its way on hitting its mark. However, a handful of pledgers have expressed disappointment for the lack of organization for the Download Day event with complaints ranging from the availability of downloads being late by as much as 17 hours to "Page Not Found" errors for certain language versions at the official download site. Some have even stated that their installation crashed.

Personally, I've beta-tested the FF3 prior to Download Day 2008 and it worked with no hitches thus far. I've thus made my download June 18 Philippine time and it's so far working fine. What I appreciate most about this version is the Bookmark Tags feature which lets you organize your bookmarks with keyword tags. So you can have for example a bookmark folder labeled "Blogs" but you can still tag individual blogs into regions or topics like say "Blogging Tips" or "Cooking". Entering the keyword tag on the address bar will bring up all bookmarks tagged as such even if they were saved under different folders.

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Another interesting feature is the full-screen mode which is really full-screen. Previously when pressing F-11 (full-screen mode short-cut) the navigation toolbar and tabs remain on screen. Now everything hides off your screen's edges, leaving only the unobstructed website page in all it's glory.

Pity though, Firefox 3 is no longer available for lower versions of Windows. So I'll have to be content with the FF2 series for my other ancient P-III Win98 machine.

Firefox as we know it have been around since 2004 with its 1.0 release. This latest Firefox 3 is boasted to contain more than 15,000 improvements and is expected to be faster, smarter and more secure with the latest anti-phishing, anti-malware and pop-up blocker technologies.

Go get your Firefox 3 today.