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- One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see
who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and
easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL
certificate information will be displayed.
- Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at
sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other
malware. You can test
it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
- New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web
forgeries is no longer shown. You can test
it here.
- New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when
Firefox encounters an invalid SSL
certificate.
- Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks
add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
- Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that
provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
- Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when
downloading executables.
- Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide
parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
Easier to Use
- Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old
password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
- Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed
making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer
clicks.
- New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much
easier to locate downloaded files.
- Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting
the browser or resetting your network connection.
- Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new
zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the
layout, text and images.
- Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new
tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
- Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on
exit.
- Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs
now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
- Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple
resizer item.
- Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with
Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode;
Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
- Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
- Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on
Manager.
- Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's
native theme.
- Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and
supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available
updates.
More Personal
- Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single
click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
- Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
- Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in
the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your
history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where
results are coming from.
- Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and
tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new
smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
- Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and
bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent
searches.
- Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite
webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for
handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available
for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by
registering as handlers with Firefox).
- Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane
provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and
protocol schemes.
Improved Platform for Developers
- New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering
architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG
as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
- Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look
and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
- Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config
and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with
embedded color profiles.
- Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline
functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to
their site for this feature to be available to users).
- A more complete overview of Firefox
3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.
Improved Performance
- Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are
now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will
prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
- Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a
rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place
for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in
Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
- Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and
a new XPCOM
cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are
continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects
more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.
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