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Long experience has taught me to be leery of new software. It’s much better to wait and let everyone else find the bugs before even thinking of changing my set-up.
In the case of Mozilla Firefox 3 I made an exception, spurred in part by the hype surrounding its attempt to set a one-day download record. (Mission accomplished.)
After nearly a day living with the new Firefox, it’s very nice. Very, very nice.
I must admit that Firefox 2 often frustrated me, crashing at inopportune moments. (I can break anything.) So far (knock on wood) Firefox 3 is sailing through like a champ.
One thing I often do is bring up a host of tabs while writing a story, as many as two dozen. Firefox 2 hiccuped badly. Firefox 3 seems to handle it.
Firefox 2 would sometimes forget that I like big text for these old eyes. Firefox 3 hasn’t forgotten yet. (This is now called the Zoom feature. It used to be called increase or decrease text size.)
One reason I was reluctant to be a beta-tester for Firefox 3 was because I have add-ons, some of which I paid for, and the beta versions did not support them. It took me five minutes to get them working in Firefox 3.
There are new security settings on the Advanced tab under Tools, which are very, very nice. I especially like being warned if the page tries to re-load — a favorite phisher trick foiled.
You can customize the controls on toolbars through a single screen accessed from the View menu. The Page Source under View is also very clear now — makes it easy to see how pages are made.
Entering unfamiliar Web pages is now easier. As soon as you start entering an address, the new Firefox starts guessing at your meaning. Keep typing and it’s bound to guess right, so you click on that entry and don’t go wrong.

blogs.zdnet.com

From the ‘not far now’ files:
As I had predicted when Mozilla Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) came out, RC2 is now officially in the works. Considering that code quality and stability should always be Job #1 this is the right decision - no need to rush and then upset users with a sub-optimal experience.
In a mailing list posting, Mozilla Developer Mike Beltzner noted that RC2 is not expected to impact a final delivery of Firefox 3 for mid-June. In order to make sure that happens Mozilla is being quite strict with the patches it is accepting into the RC2 stream. Beltzner wrote:
Many of the issues to be fixed in RC2 have already been patched, reviewed, approved and landed, thanks to work done last week to identify and drive the bugs into the product. Several localization
updates have also been accepted. Please note that just because we’ve decided to produce another release candidate does *not* mean that we are accepting new patches - only those which fix issues that have been identified as required fixes for RC2 will be accepted, and even then your patch must come with a risk assessment and tests.
Sounds kinda tough to me - but it’s a good kind of tough. Without some kind of strict control over patch inputs the release process could easily spiral out of control.
Officially the code freeze for Firefox 3 RC 2 is Noon PT today with final QA by Thursday June 5th.

blog.internetnews.com