Some of the key features and improvements are:
- Improved security
- Improved add-on discovery and installation
- Improved download manager (I'm glad to see this)
- Performance Improvements
Here's the full announcement from the Mozilla site:
Firefox 3 beta 3 now available for download Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 3 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.
Firefox 3 Beta 3 is
now available for download. This is the eleventh developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the
Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in
mozilla.dev.planning and on
Mozilla IRC Network in #granparadiso.
New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
- Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security including support for Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager.
- Improved ease of use through: easier add-on discovery and installation, improved download manager search and progress indication in the status bar, resumable downloading, full page zoom, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
- Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that uses an algorithm based on site visit recency and frequency (called “frecency”) to provide better matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
- Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
- Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 350 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.
(You can find out more about all of these features in the
“What’s New” section of the
release notes.)
Testers can
download Firefox 3 Beta 3 builds for
Windows,
Mac OS X and
Linux in over
30 different languages. Please be sure to read the full
release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the
Firefox 3 for Developers article on the
Mozilla Developer Center.
Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Beta 3 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.