While not revolutionary or even truly evolutionary, version 3 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser looks very good. Some of its new features may even get me to use it as my default, which is now Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Some of the new features I look forward to most relate to security and ease of use:
- Site ownership. The "Passport Officer" lets you know who really owns a web site. This helps reduce accidental visiting of malicious sites.
- Malware protection. A "Reported attack site!" message box with a red background pops up when the site you asked to visit is on a list of malware sites. Firefox blocks access and you must select the "Ignore" link if you really want to visit that URL. I also like that the link is small, in the lower right corner, and not a normal button. The two buttons are "Get me out of here" and "Why was this site blocked". This is a good security precaution.
- Page zoom now zooms both text and images.
- Multiple text select. You can now use the Control key to select and copy multiple blocks of text on a web page.
Features I an unsure about until I try them extensively include the new "keyhole" shaped navigation control. IE7 font rendering is better than FF2, so I am also curious about how well the font rendering in FF3 will work.
Features I already like in Firefox 2 include spell-checking in Web text areas, including Blogger, and the wide range of add-ons for blogging, editing, and web development.
I do wish Firefox would support the "standard" MSIE hot keys for such things as create a hyperlink (Ctrl+K), as using Firefox in Blogger is less useful than IE at this point (except for Spell-check).
It would help if at least Firefox and Mozilla had consistent hot keys. For example, Thunderbird uses Ctrl+L to insert a hyperlink. It doesn't match MSIE, but the Ctrl+L is easy to remember (L for "link"). But Ctrl+L in Firefox accesses its "Location Bar" (what IE calls the address bar. Bummer.
- Download Firefox (FF3 will be available as of 6/17/2008)
