Sounds like Mozilla is gearing up to take it to IE bigtime. The new vector based rendering should be pretty cool. ~~~~~~ http://reviews.cnet.com/Firefox_3_Gran_Paradiso_Alpha_1/4505-9241_7-32179647.html?tag=cnetfd.mt Not to rest on its many laurels, the Mozilla organization is hard at work on its next browser release, code-named Gran Paradiso. While an Alpha version of Firefox 3 (Gran Paradiso) Alpha 1 is available for download, this release is not meant for public consumption, only for testing. Add-ons for Firefox 2 may not work in this test release. For end users, Firefox 2 remains the latest public version. The final public release of Firefox 3 is not expected until the fall of 2007. What's exciting about Gran Paradiso is its new search engine. The Gekko 1.9 search engine will introduce some changes. For example, Firefox 3 will no longer support Windows 95, 98, and Me, and for the Mac OS X, versions 10.2 and earlier will not longer be supported. There will also be numerous changes made to the Dominant Object Model (DOM) in Gekko 1.9, which will affect developers more than end users. Also, there will be changes in the way Firefox paints frames within its display and the way object tags are handled, as well as changes in event threading. Also new are its advanced graphics rendering capabilities. Firefox 3 uses open-source vector graphics (code-named Cairo, and formerly known as Xr) to provide high-quality display and print rendering. Currently Cairo supports output produced by X Windows, OpenGL, Quartz, Win32, in-memory image buffers, PNG images, PostScript, and PDF files. Cairo attempts to reproduce identical images on all output media (paper, disc drives, and such) and use hardware acceleration where possible to improve images on display screens. Mac OS X users will also have the ability to create Cocoa Widgets for their desktops. Cocoa Widgets will replace Carbon Widgets on all Mozilla products beginning with Firefox 3.
Ok I am a Firefox vet so I decided to dl the alpha to see how it went. And OMG you'd think that the alpha release would not be noticeably different from 2.0. But in about 5 minutes of playing with it is seems so much crisper and way way way faster at loading pages.
Some more FYI You can get the alpha release here: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/moz...1/win32/en-US/Gran Paradiso Setup Alpha 1.exe And another article that really piqued my interest with the movable tabs: http://www.techshout.com/internet/2006/11/firefox-30-alpha-release-announced-by-mozilla/
I can move the tabs in version 2. Not sure if that's the same feature that they are talking about in the article you posted. Thanks for the quick test Castor...I'm going to download it and test it here at work. Coworker said he had already downloaded it and was having some issues with plugins not working correctly.
You bastards! Look what you've done. I'm a total beta w****, and now I just HAVE to try Firefox 3. (Yes, I know. I'm weak.) Hope it doesn't mess up my machine like Office 2007 did...
