Firefox 3 RC2... One Step Closer

Mozilla has made the Release Candidate 2 of Firefox available to download. This RC sees over 40 bugs fixed which surfaced in RC1 (which was very stable in itself). By doing this, Mozilla further ensure that the end product is a high quality product, which will attract more users.

Firefox is much more faster, secure, reliable... there's malware protection, a web forgery protection page, checks for add-ons and plugins, protection against cross-site attacks, and the ability to see information about a particular web site simply by clicking on its icon in the location bar, and an intelligent "Most Visited" button. Firefox's JavaScript engine has been boosted significantly, and memory leaks are supposed to be tightened up. User data (such as bookmarks, cookies, and preferences) are stored in a more secure database format so that, even if the browser crashes (which is becoming rarer with every update) they'll be protected. Plus, a whole host of features have been added which are supposed to make FF3 easier to use, including better password management, simplified add-on installation, full page zooming, tab scrolling, and better integration with Windows and Mac.

All-in-all, Firefox is much better than IE7, even IE8 beta, which I checked out a month or so ago. And even slightly better than Apple's Safari. It's ease of installation and use, combined with the myriad options provided by add-ons and extensions make it the best choice on the net. I use firefox nearly all the time (unless there's a site which says it just won't work if I don't use IE 5.5 or better... dumb demand), and the memory footprint, though not low, is satisfying, as FF uses a greatly improved memory allocation technique, which makes it's memory footprint stable. Even multiple tabs (10 or above) don't hog too much memory even on my lowly 384 MB RAM-system.

Though FF isn't the most-used browser (in fact many people haven't even heard of it), there is no particular reason for it to stay so. I think Firefox may soon take over the majority of the Browser market.
I still remember when I first used Firefox (maybe it was 1.5 or something), it had an option like Rander the Page as viewed in IE/Opera... And now, in IE8 beta, there was an option to Render the page as viewed in Firefox!!! Changes are in the air...