Firefox 3 Reaches Release Candidate 1

If you've been hanging out to try Firefox 3 but are afraid of running beta system on your machine, now's the time to jump in and give Firefox 3 a try. After a lengthy beta period, Mozilla has released RC1 which is just about ready for prime-time.

Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering platform, which according to Mozilla has 'been under development for the past 33 months' and 'has more than 14,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability'

But Firefox 3 gets more than just a new rendering platform, and for most users the bigger news is the updated feature set which makes Firefox 3 more secure, easier to use and performs better.

Specifically, the improved performance means common websites that rely heavily on Javascript, like Gmail will run up to twice as fast as they did using Firefox 2. Other performance issues like memory usage and reliability of user data (like browsing  history, cookies and preferences) have also been improved.

Other enhancements include a re-worked user interface which now fits in better with the host operating system/ For instance, the OS X release now actually looks like an OS X application, rather than a copy of the Windows version.

While most Firefox plug-ins don't work in Firefox 3 yet developers are being given an improved platform for writing add-ons. Most notably offline support is now enabled that gives web applications (like Google Docs or Zoho Office) the ability to provide offline functionality, giving access to web-based documents to users regardless of a live Internet connection.

In the release notes, Mozilla doesn't specifically mention the improvements in RC1 over previous Betas however with RC1 the feature set of Firefox 3 is now locked down and getting close to being given the green light. With Firefox market share now above 20%, Firefox 3 should help continue to grow uptake.