Firefox 3 Released!

Firefox user anyone? After waiting for quite some times, Firefox 3 finally officially released on 18th June! I have upgraded my Firefox to this cool version in the 1st place. There are a lot improvements made, I have better browsing experience now. But what shocked me is, Firefox claimed that it has more than 15,000 improvements made! Wow. You better try it now and experience it today.

Unfortunately, every new software normally has bugs and vulnerabilit. The new vulnerabilities of Firefox 3 has been discovered by TippingPoint. Perhaps they are not happy with Firefox 3 launched.

If you are still using Internet Explorer 7, I suggest you try out Firefox 3 today. Why Firefox? I have 5 good reasons why you should swift and use Firefox.

For many years, Microsoft IE has dominating Web browser, but not anymore now. Since the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 on last year, Firefox has been steadily grabbing browser users market share from IE. According to W3counters, IE had 92% of the market in Oct 2004, where in Sept 2005 it dropped to 86%. IE's market share even dropped to 82% on September 2006, with Firefox rising up to 12.5%. And up to June 2007, Firefox has eroded about 25% of the market. I think this year Firefox should have already up to 30%, as people are aware of making the right choice.

IE share is shrinking til 66% on June 2007.

Reason #1 - Installation Procedure
IE7 installer always asks you to temporarily disable your antivirus and antispyware protection, which doesn't give confidence. IE7 installation requires Windows validation and even a restart, which significantly piss me off and slows down the installation process.

Firefox installation is a lot faster and simpler, where you can complete it in a minute. It scanned my existing version for incompatible extensions, and then update those are available, how nice and convenient. The setup file size is small, Firefox 3 is only about 7.8MB! And what is more satisfy, no reboot is required.

You'll see smart location bar at Firefox now.

Reason #2 - Look and Feel
IE 7 is now easier to find functions via graphical icons. IE 7 thoughtfully offers more customization than in the past, such as the ability to add more search engines to its search field.

Firefox has new UI features, such as a "word wheel" in the search bar. Firefox totally take advantage over IE7 in the extension and plug-in features. There are hundreds of tools for Firefox to enable all manner of customizing. IE has extensions too, but not as excellent as Firefox.

Variety of 'useful' plugins available for Firefox.

Reason #3 - Tabbed Browsing
IE7 copycat other advanced browser to offer tabbed browsing to it's users. IE7 includes a new tab button to the right of your last open tab that takes up unnecessary screen space, I don't like it but I couldn't find a way to remove it. Anyhow, it comes with a helpful tab preview icon displays thumbnails of all your open tabs for any window.

Firefox's impressive drop-down menu next to the tabs is a convenient shortcut to find viewed pages. If Firefox crashes, Firefox always allow you to restore the browsed tabs easily once you restart Firefox, which IE7 can't do.

Improved download window.

Reason #4 - Cool New Features
For RSS feeds, once you've subscribed to a feed via IE7, you can see, sort, manage, and read your subscriptions easily from a two-panel interface. Many people wish IE7 detected available feeds better.

Firefox does a much better job of managing feeds. It allows you subscribe in Firefox's own reader, which awkwardly makes bookmarks of headlines, or in Google, Bloglines, Yahoo, or any reader application you have. IE will subscribe itself only to feeds, and it doesn't display RSS content as reliably as Firefox. Firefox 3 top new features including one-click bookmarking, instant web site ID, full zoom, improved password manager and many many others waiting for you to experience.

Improved search suggestion.

Reason #5 - Security & Performance
Apart from pop-up blocker, IE7 has a phishing filter checks the web pages you visit using heuristics and a whitelist of legitimate sites. IE7 lets you clean out your history, temporary files, and Web cookies with one button, but it's not easy to delete specific files in those groups. Another nice browsing-security touch is the "Web page privacy policy" feature. However, the past history of exploitable security holes in IE is the major concern. Will they improve?

Web forgery warning when you browse.

Firefox's stronger reputation for security and Mozilla's practice of addressing vulnerabilities soon after they're discovered precedes its latest update. Firefox 3 is now includes strict anti-phishing and anti-malware measures, plus easy ways to tell you who is the good guys from the bad, that's instant web site ID.

I like Firefox, because it's a open source software.

Apparently Firefox shines and score among 5 reasons above.
So what you waiting for?