Loading ...Firefox 3 Alpha 7 released
As expected, a seventh alpha version of Firefox 3 has been released and while it brings some visible changes, most of the improvements are still happening in the background, just like in previous alphas.
Let’s start.
Perhaps the most visible enhancement is that the location bar autocomplete menu displays the favicons for each listed web address which helps to more quickly identify a previously entered address. Also, now the ten most recent addresses are listed instead of the previous six.
History now remembers sites visited during the past 180 days instead of the previous 9. The main reason for this is Places. With its powerful search and organization capabilities 180 days of history will be a manageable task while providing a more complete personal web, one of Places’ promises. For users who may find it excessive, they can always modify a preference to limit the number of days.
As previously announced, full page zoom capabilities are now available. However until a user interface is added, the Full Page Zoom extension provides necessary buttons to zoom web pages at will.
Support for Camellia, a powerful royalty free cipher initially developed by NTT and Mitsubishi. Camellia can now be used to encrypt connections with secure servers just like other encryption methods including AES.
Alpha 7 features a new protocol handling dialog that is prompted when you click on a link that uses a registered protocol that Firefox can’t handle and requires a third party application to access it. For example, when clicking on an iTunes popular video link (which uses the itms:// pseudo-protocol), Firefox prompts for confirmation to open iTunes to handle the link.
Which is a big improvement compared to the scary message Firefox 2 shows in the same situation:
Among many other improvements, the updated Google anti-phishing protocol is now supported and JavaScript in web pages can now access local files for local use. Previously, you were able to select a file (for example, a picture) to be uploaded to a web site. Now, a JavaScript can also use the file without having to upload it to a remote location. This will improve rich internet applications’ possibilities while accelerating some processing for developers and end users alike.
Next development milestone is scheduled for mid September and loosely labeled M8 (milestone 8 ) as whether it becomes Beta 1 or Alpha 8 will depend on the quality of the code at that moment and not the schedule by itself.
For more details check Gran Paradiso Alpha 7 release notes.
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August 4th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Great summary. Like everyone else around here, I can’t wait for the real deal, Firefox 3. I’m not crazy about the page zoom though, and I hope they will somehow keep both text zoom and page zoom available.
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August 4th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Judging by the fact the next nighly build is a8pre,I am going to say Alpha 8 (are we even going to see Fx 3 this year).
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August 4th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Guru, I agree. I think I think if the release date keeps approaching December as it is doing it will quickly slip to 2008 since most people at Mozilla may be on vacation.
But we’ll see. And using Firefox 2 is a good way to wait for it!
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August 7th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Thanks for the concise summary. These are always appreciated.
So far, other than passing the Acid2 test I have yet to see any reason to move to Firefox 3 to date. I’m still waiting for the “uses less memory” and “starts as fast as IE 6/7″ items to pop up before I start to care about Firefox 3.
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August 7th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Bob, glad to know you like them. While I don’t expect an improvement on startup time I think Firefox 3 should use less memory thanks to the garbage cycle collector that got in around Alpha 5 or 6.
Extensions, another “vector” for memory leaks, should also get better as FUEL modules get checked in.
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August 10th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Question:
Will Firefox 3.0 support saving web pages in a single web archive like IE7’s MHT format? If so, will IE7 be able to open these files?
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August 11th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
James, no it won’t support MHT. The Mozilla Archive Format extension used to provide this kind of support but it seems its development has stalled for some time now.
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April 27th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Boy I love Firefox now - except for two things. It does not work well with eBay ( requiring me to use the IE View to flip to I. Explorer. And like everyone it starts way too slow and occasionally hangs on start requiring me to use task manager to force kill it and restart.
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