Firefox 3.0 RC1

Today I downloaded Firefox 3.0 RC1 (release candidate 1). I have always like Firefox but it lacked a few features that I grew attached to in Safari. First, I like the ability to synchronize my Safari bookmarks with my .Mac account. Second, I really like the fact that Safari saves web pages (when I request it via CMD-S) to my hard drive as a single file. Granted, it's really a package or special folder masquerading as a single file, but the point is, it's the only file I have to worry about managing on my file system. When I save a complete web page with Firefox, it saves the .HTML file along with a folder of the same name with the images and other page elements. This is a mess to manage. I prefer the 'web archive' method used by Safari.

With Foxmarks I can synchronize my bookmarks with Firefox (not to my .Mac account, but it still provides the same end result - synchronized bookmarks between multiple machines using Firefox). That has worked well for my bookmark synchronization needs on Firefox - but with 3.0, Foxmarks is not yet supported. They are working on it according to their web site.

As for saving a complete web page to my hard drive? Alas, no joy. Firefox still saves it as an HTML file and folder.

The mozilla developers did, however, add one of my most favorite features found only in the Opera browser (until now); a real zoom feature. When I zoom (CMD-+) in on a page on the web it is usually because they fonts are too small for my tired eyes. This works well in Safari and in pre-Firefox 3 browsers. However, Opera adds the nice touch of increasing the size of the whole pages so that page elements don't break or overlap. It increases the size of the images in proportion to the text so the site displays the same, just bigger. Well, this feature is now in Firefox. This is a welcomed change. I hope this is something I will see in Safari in future releases.

I must say the guys and gals at Mozilla have done a great job on Firefox 3.0. It is almost everything I want in a web browser and I might switch to it in the future.

Take it for a spin - but realize this is still a beta, albeit a release candidate - at Mozilla.com.