Firefox 3

[AlexJ]

Ffx 3 has reached it's second beta and isn't far from full release.

I've had Minefield (as it was called during development) as a secondary browser for a while and now with the new beta version, I find it's stable enough to take over full time from Ffx 2.

What's new? Well there's some nice additions, the download manager is much improved and supports multiple session resuming (break the connection, close the browser etc. and you can still pick up where you left off). There is the option built-in to load-up with the tabs when you closed. The address bar now searches your history as opposed to finishing off what you're typing. Takes a bit of getting used to, but is very useful when you can't remember the start of an address but can remember the page name or subdomain.

Only downside is that currently a lot of extensions don't work, although these are likely to be supported pretty soon as updates are released.

[Puni/Void]

Sounds interesting, so thanks for the news, Alex. I'm very happy with the version of Firefox I'm currently using, but it will be nice with some upgrades and new features.

[Harrison]

The improved session restoring and download manager sound useful, although I'm happy with the plugins I'm using that does these in FF2.

I probably won't upgrade straight away, until the plugin support increases and the existing coders update their plugins. Although I might install it on another system for testing.

[Buleste]

I've downloaded it and starting to give it a try. They have managed to install some of the old bugs back in like the inability to get all of the IE bookmarks but on a general usage level it's still the same old Firefox. Much needed now Netscape is dead.

[Harrison]

Is Netscape dead? I know it has dropped from the mainstream in recently years, but version 9 was only released this year and supports the use of all FF2 extensions.

[Stephen Coates]

They finally decided that they are no longer going to make it anymore, so yes, it is dead.

Apparently it is now just FireFox repackaged and so is quite pointless.