Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 31 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 12,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

What’s new in Beta 4?

Firefox 3 Beta 4 includes more than 900 enhancements from the previous beta, including drastic improvements to performance and memory usage, as well as fixes for stability, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta.

When may we expect the final release?

If you remember back from the time Firefox 2 came out it only took 2 months after the last Beta until the first official FF2 release. According to the project calendar it looks like there will be a Beta 5 shipping out later this month. If this is the last Beta we might get the first official release before June!

In my mind I think this is going to be the best browser so far and I keep my fingers crossed for an early summer release.

On March 3rd the Web Standards Project (WaSP) announced the release of Acid3, the latest in a line of tests designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in Web browsers. By making sure their software adheres to the test, the creators of these products can be more confident that their software will display and function with Web pages correctly both now and with Web pages of the future.

The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards. Collectively known as DOM Scripting, it is these technologies that enable advanced page interactivity and power many advanced web applications such as web-based email and on-line office applications.

As a series of 100 mini-tests, Acid3 has already been found to expose flaws in all tested browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. WaSP hopes that Acid3 will prove useful to browser makers during the development of future versions of their products.

There’s a lot of services available on the Internet that claims to be able to let you browse behind proxies and firewalls. However, even though most of these services work the bandwidth you get is close to what you had back in the nineties. A decade later you simply wont be happy surfing with the speed of an old dial-up modem.

Today I discovered Tor. Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Tor helps to reduce the risks of both simple and sophisticated traffic analysis by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination.

The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you — and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going.

I successfully bypassed the company’s proxy server today after only a few minutes configuration. Not only did the whole set-up process run smoothly, but the end result was quite amazing. Previously blocked URI’s opened fast, not as fast as normal, but fast enough. Through the Torbutton Firefox add-on you can turn it on or off with a single mouse click. Finally it appears I’ve found a solid HTTP tunnel that works!

Sounds good? Well give it a try! Windows users should follow the Windows howto, OS X users should follow the OS X howto, and Linux/BSD/Unix users should follow the Unix howto.

I’d be happy the hear what you think of it if you decide to give it a go…

Picnik is a website that allows you to make your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools through your browser. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames. It’s fast, easy, and fun.

Features

• Fix your photos in just one click
• Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
• Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
• Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
• Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
• Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
• Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
• Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• No download required, nothing to install

You can also import your photos from Flickr, Facebook, photobucket, Picasa and Webshots with just a few clicks. Very impressive and easy to use. Your perfect companion when you are away on holiday and want to send a few photos to the people at home.

Subbmitt is a social news site for those addicted to news. It is a great place to read and share articles, photos or videos. If you see an article that you want to share with your friends, why not share it with the world?

You can submit articles to 26 categories containing photos, videos or new stories from any site you want. You can even submit articles without signing up. Articles are sent to the queue where Subbmitt quickly approve or disapprove within 30 seconds. They only disapprove SPAM or anything deemed illegal.

On the internet, democracy is overrated. On many sites, you rate, or rank stories based on user votes. This approach fails to account for the douche bag factor of those who band together and vote for the same article just to move it to the front page (e.g. Digg, Reddit). At Subbmitt, everyone gets their fair webtime instead. This means that you won’t waste your time posting articles that no one will ever see.

All articles will make it to the front page. They rotate articles from the queue to the front page every minute. This approach keeps the website from becoming a stale and boring one like many other ones.

So to get your story on the front page (for a change)  just subbmitt it…