Mozilla is almost ready to release the new Firefox 3. Now it is at Beta3 stage so we can expect a release candidate very soon. I downloaded Firefox3b3 to see what is new and to test the browser for you. All day long I have been browsing the internet only with this version of Firefox and here are my first impressions on this new software. When you openFirefox 3 the new theme is the first thing that you see.It looks much better than the default theme of previos firefox versions with smoother icons and everything, but I can’t wait for the custom themes to be released.

A major and useful improvement is when typing the address. Now it doesn’t just display all the addresses that start with what you typed in, but a list of addresses that contain that word, ordered by relevance. Below is a screenshot of what I am talking about:

The bad thing is that when you press CTRL+T to open a new tab, you must manually position your cursor in the address bar, because Firefox doesn’t position it automatically. Hope this will be fixed in the final release.

Another interesting thing is a security feature that lets you see additional info of a website with just one click. This way illegal websites can be avoided easy. Also it has a feature that blocks some content from various websites that are suspected of phishing and other illegal activities.

The download window also has been improved and now you can search for downloaded files, resume downloads if you close Firefox or get disconnected from the network and some other features that aren’t so obvious, but will help you. Also installing add-ons is easy since you can install them without going to the add-ons page. You just open the add-ons window and browse the add-ons.