Firefox 3

As part of spreadfirefox.com’s Download Day 2008, I grabbed Firefox 3 yesterday. It’s all the rage on digg and on G4 today. Anyway, here’s my review …

Speed

Unfortunately, Firefox 3, just isn’t up to par with Safari. CultOfMac did a nice, short review on Firefox 3, featuring speed testing, proving what I had expected but was still disappointed to see: Safari is faster.

While writing this review, I watched Mozilla’s Director of Engineering on Attack of the Show’s The Loop segment. Despite its taking a back seat to Safari in overall speed, there are noted improvements in speed and efficiency. Apparently, it still pwns IE, taking just 60 milliseconds to switch between messages in Gmail.

Features & Efficiency

This is one area I’ve always thought of Firefox as being the winner (with the exception of Opera sometimes coming close in previous versions). With the many add-ons and built in features, Firefox has always shined, and it continues to. The overall UI received a nice overhaul, bringing it more in line with other mac apps.

It also features what is being called the “awesome bar” and “one bar to rule them all.” The address bar in Firefox 3 rocks my socks. It’s pretty much amazing. It automatically searches your history and bookmarks as you type to bring you a list of relevant potential sites. It’s hard to describe, other than it’s sweet and you need to check it out.

Overall

Overall, Firefox 3 is a solid browser with great features, great looks and great speed (not the fastest mind you, but still pretty fast). The add-ons make it extremely customizable and I’m sort of excited to re-download my old favorites and search for new sweet add-ons, themes and plug-ins. I’ll be making the switch back to Firefox. It might not be for everyone, but give it a test drive: at the very least you will impressed with a solid piece of programming.