The day for the first milestone of Firefox 3 has already arrived! That’s right, Firefox 3 Alpha 1 can be downloaded off of the FTP server but at this time they only have the English version posted. I expect that other languages will be following very shortly so this will be the downloader for those versions, but as of right now only the English-US version is available:
| Update: |
I just removed the other languages from the drop-down menu because I realized that Mozilla only releases the English version for these very early milestones.
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So you’re probably wondering what exactly is new. It isn’t like you’re going to open the browser and say “oh my goodness…is this Firefox?” because there aren’t any ‘visual’ changes. Here is a list of what’s new according to the release notes:
Gecko 1.9 Alpha 1 introduces several new features which can be tested by using Gran Paradiso Alpha 1:
- Cairo is now being used as the default graphics library, affecting all graphic and text rendering
- Cocoa Widgets are now used in OS X builds
- An updated threading model
- Changes to how DOM events are dispatched (see bug 234455)
- Changes to how <object> elements are loaded (see bug 1156)
- Changes to how web pages are painted
- New SVG elements and filters, and improved SVG specification compliance
Some of the changes in Gecko 1.9 Alpha 1 will affect the web and platform compatibility of Gran Paradiso Alpha 1:
- Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME are no longer supported platforms
- OS X 10.2 is no longer supported, and OS X 10.3.9 or higher is recommended
- Moving DOM nodes between documents now requires a call to importNode or adoptNode as per the DOM specification.
So there you have it, the first milestone of several for Firefox 3. I have put together a portable version for anyone that wants to quickly test it out and I am trying MediaFire as the host. To use the portable version just extract the download and browse for the FirefoxPortable.exe file. Once you’re done testing it out you can just delete the folder.
| Update: |
MediaFire seems to be having problems, so I managed to find another host that appears to have a remarkable service. Download portable Firefox from here.
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Enjoy!
any word about Places? is it implemented in this alpha? i’ll give the portable version a test drive later.
Nope, still the same old bookmark system.
What exactly is Cairo and is it going to be used for Windows and Linux versions of Firefox 3.0?
Thanks
I am almost positive that it is only for Windows but Cairo is the rendering engine that Firefox uses. Currently it is GDI but Cairo is supposed to offer some improvements in the speed and quality of rendering.
The download of the portable version via MediaFire does not seem to be working.
Is anyone experiencing any problems with MediaFire? I am trying to access the Portable version and everytime I try it I get an error message.
Yes, it seems that MediaFire is having troubles. Not a very good first impression…I’m uploading it somewhere else right now.
Edit: [fileho.com]
As per a previous meeting, this means dbaron will be landing reflow on the trunk immediately!
Yeah, I was a little disappointed that it hadn’t already landed in this release but I am excited to see it happen.
Why would I even want this? I’ll stick with stable production releases thank you!
I downloaded it and after using it for a couple of hours it seems pretty stable for an alpha release.
However, one big problem that I just encountered is copying and image from a webpage and pasting it into Photoshop for editing gives a weird red caste to the image that I can’t get rid of. I don’t know if GranParadiso is doing something to the color profile, but I’m not having this problem in any other browser.
Anyone else experience this?
Some people, like myself, enjoy tinkering around with software that hasn’t been released.
I just tried that with PhotoShop as well but can’t reproduce the problem. I assume that it is pretty obvious and not something so lite that I would have to use a color picker to find.
Update: I just tried out today’s trunk nightly and it DOES pass the Acid 2 test. This means reflow has finally landed!
Hey, where is ACID2-passing Gecko engine from [ftp.mozilla.org]
BTW, Cairo is rendering pages slightly different (comparing to Firefox 2). For example, when viewing [mozilla.org] all headers are larger, and all link underlines are nearer. Also many other differences. But overall quality, IMHO, good. It is fast, and look better. For example, if there is text with inserted small images (smilies, icons, bullets, etc.), then spaces between lines are consistent (it WASN’T in Firefox 2!).
Thanks! I just posted about that.
Cario is on Unix, not just Windows but while it can be fast or even faster than Bon Echo it can be slow as heck on Linux in some cases, say for example Chinese text spam.
[bugzilla.mozilla.org]
[wiki.mozilla.org]
[wiki.mozilla.org]
Cairo is now being used as the default graphics library, affecting all graphic and text rendering.
[mozilla.org]
Also Firefox 3.0 will be the first release of Firefox using Cocoa widgets.
Very Stable with my Win2k SP4 box . Renders pages faster than FF2 and everything looks sharper on my 23″ LCD . It is now my default browser.