It's finally here!

Today is Download Day for Mozilla's newest version of it's flagship internet browser and with over 1.5 million pledges around the world, today is the day for you to set the Guinness World Record for the Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours!

More than 1¹₂ years after the release of Firefox 2 and almost 2 years of development, several bug fixs and feature improvements, Mozilla has released its highly anticipated Firefox 3 browser. Originally code named as "Grand Paradiso" and based on the Gecko 1.9 web rendering platform, Firefox 3 makes a wide range of improvements with more than 15,000 updates, including major rearchitecting to provide improved performance, stability, sustainability, security, rendering correctness and code simplication.

Here are the following key new features that every internet user will love:

SECURITY

One-Click Site Info: With the one-click site info feature, you can see who owns the site and the check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. The site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company that you're connected to when a site has Extended Validation SSL certificates.

Malware Detection: Unlike the previous version of Firefox where it only blocks websites that could try to steal your personal information, Firefox 3 blocks websites that will try to install malicious programmes on your computer without your knowledge.

Web Forgery Protection: With the new web forgery protection page feature, the content of pages suspected as web forgeries are no longer shown.

Add-ons and Plugin Version Check: Firefox automatically checks and add-on and plugin versions. Any older and/or insecure versions of add-ons/plugins will be disabled.

Vista Parental Controls: If you use Windows Vista, Firefox 3 will respect the Vista system-wide parental control setting designed to disable file downloads.

EASE OF USE

Easier Password Management: You can save passwords after a successful login with a new information bar that replaces the old password dialog.

Simplified Add-on Installation: It is now possible to install extensions from third-party websites with the use of fewer mouse clicks thanks to the removal of the add-ons whitelist that existed in previous versions of Firefox.

New Download Manager and Resume Downloading feature: With the revised download manager, it makes a lot much easier to located files that you downloaded. You can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files continue to download. If you have the urge to restart your browser or reset your network connection, you can also resume downloads and continue from where you left off.

Full Page Zooming: From the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new page zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout text and images or just the text size as a option. Whenever you return to the site, your settings will be remembered.

Tab Scrolling, Quickmenu and Saving Tabs on Exit: With the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu, tabs are much easier to locate. Firefox will also prompt users to save tabs when they close their browser.

PERSONALISATION

Places Organiser: - A new infrastructure for viewing, organising and searching through bookmarks, history and other information about web pages with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. You can create and restore full backups as much as possible.

Star Button and Smart Bookmarks Folder: With the star button, you can quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; filing and tagging them is done with a second click. Also, with the smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar, you can quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages as well as your more frequently visited pages.

Web-based Protocol Handlers: Web applications can now be users instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other websites.

The Add-ons Manager: With the Add-ons Manager, you can download and install a Firefox customisation from thousands of add-ons available from the Mozilla community website. A list of recommended add-ons will be displayed once you first use it.

Easy to Use Download Actions: A new application preferences pane provides a better user interface for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

OTHER FEATURES

Platform Improvement: The following new features include new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9. This new feature provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVC as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.

Firefox 3 can adjust images with embedded colour files. And lastly, with the offline support feature, it will enable web applications to provide offline functionality.

Performance: Improvements to JavaScript engine as well as the profile guided optimisations makes a continual improvement in performance overall. Compared with Firefox 2 and previous versions of Firefox, web applications will run twice as fast. Secondly, with Firefox 3, several new technologies will be used to reduce the amount of memory used by the browser in a current browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by a automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator that reduces fragmentation. Tuning the caching strategies and fixing memory leaks pave way for improvement in browser usage and performance in this matter. And lastly, a transactionally secure database will prevent data loss in a event of a system crash by storing a user's bookmarks, history, cookie and preferences.

And there are many new features discovered in Firefox 3. For complete information, read the complete release notes: [link]

Download Firefox 3 NOW and help make the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS!: [link]

Before you download Firefox 3, your computer must meet the following minimum system requirements that can be found on this page: [link]

The download size of the Windows US English version of Firefox 3 is 7.8 MB and download sizes will vary on different operating systems.

NOTE: Because of the new coding for the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine as well as Microsoft's termination of support for Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition on 11 July 2006, these older versions of Windows are no longer supported. Firefox 2 will continue to be supported with security and stability upgrades until 17 December 2008.

Firefox, the award winning web browser from Mozilla is faster, more secure and fully customisable! SPREAD THE WORD!