Firefox 3 is in its final stages of Alpha development with a host of new features and improvements.
Mozilla has unveiled for the first time several security features it's talked up for months. Among the security provisions are built-in anti-malware warnings and protection against rogue extension updates.
Debuting is Places, the name given to the new unified history and bookmark manager. Unlike current browser bookmark tools, Places will use a database — the SQLite database engine powers it — so users can search for saved pages. Places will also support the use of tags, or user-defined labels that are applied to categorize bookmarks and make them easier to retrieve via searches.
On offer is also a new download manager that will integrate with third-party virus scanners and malware protection.
The graphical rendering of Firefox also gets an update with the Cairo rendering engine and animated PNG image files. The versatile Cairo graphics library is a vector-based drawing API that supports a wide variety of backends. Cairo can take advantage of hardware acceleration where available and simplifies cross-platform graphics application development by providing an internally consistent and cohesive framework that emphasizes platform-independence.
Thanks to this new graphics infrastructure, boxes with corners rounded by the pre-CSS 3 property border-radius are rendered with beautiful anti-aliasing (currently accessible as the non-standard -moz-border-radius and soon -webkit-border-radius). Cairo also provides smooth scaling of images. Up until now scaled images looked jagged.
The new improvements in Firefox 3 will finally enable it to pass the Acid 2 test, a CSS test case developed by the Web Standards Project to illuminate flaws in HTML/CSS rendering engines. To pass the Acid 2 test, browsers must comply with W3C standards and provide support for a wide variety of features that are considered relevant by web designers. The Acid 2 test has been passed by several other browsers, including Safari, Konqueror, and Opera, but not Internet Explorer. Passing Acid 2 is considered to be a significant milestone in Firefox development.
Firefox 3 has particular implications for the development of the Mac version of Firefox, as it provides support for the use of Cocoa Widgets.
One downside of Firefox 3 is that several older operating system versions are no longer supported: Windows 95, 98 and ME and OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
Mozilla has not officially committed to a release date for the final version of Firefox 3.0.
