The Mozilla development team recently announced that anyone could join the Firefox 3 Beta 2 Test Day. That was last Friday, but you can still download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 RC1 Build from here.
Before you install you should either back up your profile or use the profile manager to create a new profile for testing.
In order to limit distribution of this not-yet-tested release, anyone who was linked to the release candidate download directory will be redirected to this announcement. If all goes well during the testing, Firefox 3 Beta 2 will be released on December 21st in the early afternoon, Pacific Standard Time. You can track the progress on the Firefox 3 Beta 2 Release Checklist.
New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
- Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
- Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
- Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
- Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
- Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.
You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New†section of the release notes.
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