Photos: New features in Firefox 3: Insight - Software

By Robert Vamosi, CNET News.com
June 20, 2008
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Photos-New-features-in-Firefox-3/0,139023769,339290001,00.htm

Firefox 3 aimed for 5 million downloads in the first 24 hours of its release, and smashed all expectations achieving more than 8 million downloads. This photo gallery takes you inside the new features this recording breaking browser.

After months of testing, Firefox 3 (code name Gran Paradiso) is available for download from Mozilla. With its new Gekko 1.9 engine, the browser renders pages faster and uses fewer system resources overall. As with any new browser, some add-ons created for Firefox 2 may not work, but give them time.

Firefox 3 offers faster rendering, a vastly reduced use of system resources and clever new data-mining tools for your bookmarks and browser history. Most notable is the fact that Firefox 3 includes many built-in security-related features, such as the best-of-breed antiphishing protection, making Firefox the most secure browser on the market today. If you haven't already tried Firefox, what are you waiting for? Firefox 3 remains our Editors' Choice over Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Opera.

Interface tweaks
You'll probably notice that the icons on the toolbar are different. The new Firefox interface has gone native, so buttons and icons will look and feel like they are a part of your operating system environment. There's also a full page zoom option under View. Notice that an icon appears next to the URL in the address bar (more on that in a moment).

Verified pages
Firefox 3 makes it easy to see if the page you're on is secure: just mouse over the company icon in the address bar.

Awesome Bar
One obvious change is the Smart Location Bar, also known as the 'Awesome Bar'. As you type in a URL, the Awesome Bar searches through your history and bookmarks and presents a drop-down list of recently accessed pages with that same keyword. It works even if you already know the URL. Some people have found it annoying, so there is a way to disable it requiring a small tweak to the about:config file. An Add-On further allows you to learn which of the search results you want to always be on top.

Most Visited
Firefox 3 searches and indexes your history, surfacing frequently visited pages in several ways. In addition to the Awesome Bar, there's the Most Visited button.

Starred bookmarks
One-click bookmarks. Next to the URL within the address bar is a star icon. Click it to store the page's URL as a bookmark. Click it again to choose where to store the bookmark.

Tagged bookmarks New in Firefox 3 is the capability to tag your bookmarks. This offers another level of granularity in sorting. Using the new Library feature, you can create custom bookmark searches and save them for later use.

Library and Smart Bookmarks
The Library feature allows you to search your bookmarks and surfing history by name, tag or recent visits. You can then save the search results and view them as part of your Smart Bookmarks. The Library also includes the capability to back up and restore your history and bookmarks.

Add-on enhancements
Improved within Firefox 3 are recommended Add-ons within the browser. Without going to the Firefox Add-on page, you can surf and select new Add-ons within the manager. The addons.mozilla.org site contains more than 5,000 Add-ons with ratings, recommendations, descriptions and images.

Downloads
The Download Manager is also enhanced with a new look and feel. Most important is the capability to search through active and past downloads. You can also pause and resume downloads and monitor your downloads in the main browser window. In Windows, all downloads are checked by your desktop's antivirus protection.

Blocked site
One of the most dramatic security changes within Firefox 3 is the blocked page. In Firefox 2, the browser screen would go dark and a window would open saying the page was suspected to be a forgery. No more. Firefox 3 blocks the entire page, unless you dare to ignore the warning and continue. Notice the red Border Guard icon in the upper left-hand corner (more on him later).

Community reporting
Firefox uses antiphishing information supplied by Google. Sometimes Google misses a page or blocks a page incorrectly. Firefox 3 makes it easy to send a note to either add a suspected forgery page or to report an incorrect forgery alert.

Verified pages
If a page isn't a forgery, how do you know whether the site you're visiting is using encryption or has been verified by a trusted third party? Firefox 3 makes it easy: just mouse over the company icon located to the left in the address bar. If you need further information, click on the company logo icon.

Validation: Bank of America
Clicking the icon, you see colour-coded 'Larry', Mozilla's new border guard. Here he's blue or cool. On sites that use Extended Verification Secure Sockets Layer (EV SSL), like eBay, both the company icon and Larry turn green to show that you're extra secure. If there was a problem with the site, you'd see Larry in either yellow or red.

Validation: CNET
If there's no encryption on the page or no trusted by VeriSign certificate, Larry turns gray. Sites like CNET and others that do not require encryption or third-party validation will not have the extra credentials.

Additional information
Should you want to make sure that you are on the CNET site, you can still request more information within Firefox 3 just by clicking the company icon.

Security warning
By default, Firefox 3 displays new warnings when entering and leaving encrypted web sites, but if you want to add even more warnings, you can check all the boxes.

Security warning 1
Here is the default warning we received after checking all the security messages boxes when we entered a financial site.