THE FIRST BETA release of the much-anticipated Fire¬fox 3 browser offers several interesting enhancements over the previous ver- sion, such as new tools for storing
and accessing bookmarks, but it doesn't look much different from Firefox 2.

Most of the changes in version 3 (slated for final release in early 2008), such as stability and performance enhancements, will be under the hood and were not ap-parent in this beta.
A few nice, though not earth-shattering, additions do reveal themselves. A star icon next to the site URL allows you to add new book-marks quickly. You can also add tags to bookmarks or make easy backups of book-marks that you can then copy to other computers.
Mozilla is also working on a number of security enhancements, which again were not all available in this beta version. I was able to test a revamp of the saved-password fea¬ture, which lets you postpone saving site credentials until after you have suc-
cessfully logged in.

The final release ofthe brows-er will block known malicious sites that attempt to install Trojan horses or other mal-ware (the blacklist of such sites isn't yet in place).
Other updates include a new downloads manager that allows for resuming downloads after the browser restarts, a full-page zoom, and improvements for han-dling browser add-ons.



If you're interested in see¬ing version 3's new features for yourself, keep in mind that this beta release has known bugs. It's not well suited for everyday brows¬ing. Using it, however, makes clear that Firefox 3 will have some attractive extras but won't push the boundaries for browser upgrades.