[Edit: as of 14h15 EST, the site seems to be up and running again — nice and speedy, too. I’m impressed.]
As of 13h00 EST (10h00 PST), or right about the time this post is published, Firefox 3 will be unleashed upon the masses, and it’s apparently good. Really good. As if you needed another reason to put IE behind you.
My main beef with Firefox 2 has always been its nasty tendency to leech 350MB of RAM or more if I leave it open all day. And with Vista slurping up half my RAM to begin with, I’m reduced to scrimping and cutting back on RAM usage everywhere I can. This latest version is apparently leaner, meaner, zippier, quicker to start up and much less of a memory hog. You can now zoom in on pages, and according to a glowing PC Magazine review “Firefox 3 may be the most secure browser around.”
More from PC Magazine’s take on Firefox 3 security:
It goes beyond the phishing protection in current browsers by also blocking sites known for distributing malware (viruses, spyware, trojans), as well as standard phishing sites that try to trick users into entering personal information and passwords. It uses a blacklist compiled by Google for this purpose, but the feature will work with other blacklist providers as they become available.
[…] You can easily access information about the validity of any site you visit by clicking on the site’s favicon—the small icon to the left of the URL.
[…] To wrap up the security enhancements, insecure versions of plug-ins won’t run, and the browser integrates with antivirus software using the Microsoft Antivirus API. If you’re letting your kids browse via Firefox, note also that the browser works with Vista’s parental controls.
Incidentally, there’s a campaign afoot to set a world record for the number of times a file has been downloaded in 24 hours. If the Firefox site’s incredible crashy/sluggish behaviour today is any indication, that may not be much of a stretch — good luck getting it before tomorrow.
1 response so far ↓
1 JW // Jun 17, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I had good luck at http://mozilla.mirrors.easynews.com/mozilla/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US/
Downloaded in under a minute!
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