The last of the Firefox 3 Alpha’s was just pushed out the door today, which brought some new features along with it. Here’s a quick list of what’s new along with some screenshots:
- A new Quit dialog box
- Improved cookie performance
- Added a permanent ‘Restart Firefox’ button to the Add-Ons Manager (as seen in the first screenshot) .
- Miscellaneous fixes to download manager including correctly displaying large file sizes.
- Various Places fixes.
- Support for site-specific preferences – Firefox will now remember "text zoom" settings for a specific site. There are some other things that you can configure on a site-by-site basis as well, which can be found when right-clicking on a page and choosing the "View Page Info" option:
I was hoping to see some more changes to the Places bookmark management, but in terms of the UI not much has changed. It still isn’t at the point of the original Places we saw back in early Firefox 2 builds. Back then it provided a central location to manage your history, bookmarks, and subscriptions. As it stands right now the major additions to Places should be complete by Beta 1.
I also started going through the Product Requirements Document to see what things were still on track, and which weren’t going to make the cut for Firefox 3. There are quite a few low-priority features labeled as being "at risk" for not getting completed. The thing that gets me is that they are still planning to ship Beta 1 on July 31, at which time Firefox 3 should be feature complete, and there are still some big things that haven’t peeked out yet. For instance, a revamped download manager and a new Firefox theme are both higher priority items that haven’t been discussed too much.
I’m strongly hoping that they will be able to stay on track, but they still have a ways to go. I do wish that so many of the tab-related features weren’t labeled "at risk" right now, because some of them would be nice to have.
Download Firefox 3 Alpha 6 for:
Microsoft Windows 2000 or later
MacOS X 10.3.9 or later
Linux
Perfect. Just waiting for the en-GB and the portable version.
It looks like beta 1 might have to wait a bit for alpha 7. [ftp.mozilla.org]
Just like last time I think I’m going to be holding off on creating a portable build this time around. The guy that creates the portable versions isn’t happy with me creating them.
I did see that, but the advancement of the filename doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be releasing another Alpha. If another Alpha was planned I would think that they would update the schedule to reflect the change, because that will set them back at least a month.
Well I am posting this with Alpha 6 and I just tried out the Acid2 test and guess what FF 3 Alpha 6 passed it.
[webstandards.org]
Fx 3 Alpha 2 already passes it
faster booting time for the application, radically changed download manager. and i’m good with it
According to [squarefree.com] they might release another alpha before the first beta – although this is still under discussion.
An advanced download manager is something I’ve wanted Firefox to incorporate for a long time. Especially with all of the users who download files I think this should be a strong focus.
Nice catch! I looked at that list and glanced right by it. I believe that another Alpha is needed, but I have a strong feeling that they are going to try and force themselves to stick to a schedule that will keep them delivering a new version later this year. The last thing they would want is for more than a year to go by between major versions.