Firefox 3 Beta

Today I downloaded and installed on Rohan, my MacBook Pro, the latest beta version of Mozilla Firefox 3.

As expected, a couple themes and extensions weren't compatible. One of the themes was iFox, which makes older version of FF appear more Mac-like. However, the new default FF theme for Macs which is debuting in FF3 is more Mac-like than previous defaults. So, I'll stick with that for the time being.

The extensions I had which don't yet work with FF3 include del.icio.us, DownThemAll, and Linkification. However, AdBlock Plus does work with FF3, which is great.

I'm not sure if it's having fewer extensions or if it's due to better code, but FF3 Beta is faster on Rohan than FF2. I've actually been using Safari 3 for the most part since I upgraded Rohan to Leopard, because it's quite a bit faster at page rendering than FF2, even when it has to display ads.

A neat new feature which I immediately noticed is an entry in the bookmarks bar: "Smart Bookmarks." FF3 automatically adds the bookmarks which you frequently visit to this folder, which makes it quicker to access them. It's not a killer app but it's a nice touch.

I think I'll stick with FF3 for a bit to see how it works. If anything blows up I'll post a followup.