Christopher L. Smith, Gleaner Online Writer

The Mozilla Firefox browser, initially released in 2004, has grown over the years and now holds 19-20 per cent market share, and seems to be gaining momentum.

On June 17, Firefox version 3.0 was launched on what was dubbed 'download day 2008'. One of Mozilla Foundation's aim was to set a record for most software downloads in 24 hours. Downloads exceeded 2.9 million within the first eight hours after launch, and Mozilla's servers were largely unreachable due to the high volume of traffic.

The new version requires slightly more storage space to install than the previous release, however, the result is a sleek, well-designed browser, half the size of its main competitor.

Visually, the browser may not seem different from the previous version, but it does sport a remodelled button bar and its design integrates more seamlessly with operating systems. For instance, under Windows Vista, the browser has shading and transparency effects much like other Vista applications.

previous frustration

One of the frustrating things with Firefox 2 was that it became very non-responsive after opening a large number of new tabs. This has been addressed with the latest iteration of the software.

Firefox now retains your sessions, launching all your previously opened tabs from the last time you used the browser. The zoom feature now scales the entire page, including images and video and not just the text which would previously break the design once you zoomed in too much. There is now an intuitive address bar that actually learns from what you type, and other not-so-prominent features that do, however, enhance the browsing experience.

When you start up Firefox for the first time, you will likely notice it launching faster, and overall browsing speed is noticeably improved. Security enhancements, dramatic speed improvement, especially on Web 2.0 sites and web apps, taggable bookmarks, and a host of other features mark what has become a very stable, secure and fast Internet browser.

christopher.smith@gleanerjm.com