Mozilla is in the final stages of preparing for the launch of its next-generation Firefox 3 Web browser on June 17. “After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready,” said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s director of user experience.
Mozilla is also hoping to generate a huge splash of publicity with the release of Firefox 3. “We want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours,” the open-source organization said.
Different Design Philosophies
Mozilla’s short-term goal is to grab market share from Microsoft before the software giant is ready to release its next-generation Internet Explorer 8, which is currently available in a beta version. A quick comparison between Firefox 3 and what is currently known about Internet Explorer 8 demonstrates that the two organizations have different design philosophies.
Mozilla has put a lot of effort into a design making it easier to become organized. Firefox 3 features a new auto-complete feature that allows a user to type multiple words into the browser’s ‘AwesomeBar’ to access matches gleaned from the user’s recent Web surfing history and bookmarked pages. The returned results are sorted by an algorithm that combines the frequency and ‘recency’ of the user’s Web visits.
Firefox 3 also features new bookmarking features. ‘Stars’ provides a single-click method of bookmarking a page, while a double click opens an editing box that allows the user to customize the entry. For example, the user has the ability to add a ‘Tag’ to the bookmark that contains extra information. And through the integration of ‘Smart Folders,’ Firefox 3 enables saved searches to be automatically updated whenever a user adds new bookmarks.
By contrast, Microsoft’s plans for IE8 place more emphasis on streamlining the Internet surfing experience. For example, IE8’s…