Yes, it is finally out! Firefox 3, the long awaited alternate browser has arrived and you can all download it from the Mozilla website for free. This open source browser is meant to replace your Internet Explorer and it has gotten a lot of support from Internet users. Well, I have to agree that Internet Explorer has it’s share of problems and Microsoft seems very reluctant to solve the bugs in their previous browsers and to add new features or to plug security holes in it. I remembered that Internet Explorer 6 was around for a long time and it had a lot of security holes which Microsoft didn’t fix at all. And when you compared to Firefox v2, it was slow and had problems rendering certain websites. Although I have to say, Internet Explorer 7 was much much better. This could be due to competition from browsers like Mozilla and Opera and that they are improving rapidly. Sometimes even faster than what the much richer Microsoft can achieve.

However, if you have been using Firefox, you should have realized that the browser itself isn’t exactly perfect. In fact, it has this stupid memory leak problem which has there for the entire version 2 and updates after updates didn’t solve it. Worse, some sites would crash the browser unexpectedly. This may or may not be the browsers fault, but still, if it works fine for Internet Explorer, I would expect it to work fine for Firefox. Anyhow, I had been using Firefox for about 2 to 3 years now and I have to admit, it’s one great browser. It is reasonably fast (definitely faster than IE6), renders webpages suitably well and it has a lot of add-ons available on the Internet. These add-ons are just like plugins and you can install them to add more functionality to your browser. Toolbars, speed enhancers and other useful tools can be easily created and added to your browser. Plus, they have some of the most beautiful themes for the browser.You can customize the look of the Firefox browser with these themes.

Anyways, I had just downloaded and installed the new Firefox 3 and I am quite impressed. It feels very zippy unlike the previous version which took some time to load up. The main reason why I don’t like to use Firefox is because it loads very slow. It can take up to 1 minute to start the browser. This is definitely an improvement which I can feel. Clicking on the menu bar on the top, you can appreciate the quick response. Unlike the memory leak problem in the previous version, where you had to wait till the browser recovers, you won’t need to wait when clicking. And now, webpage rendering is blazing fast. Dare I say, as fast as Opera? Maybe not as fast but I think if we do a face to face comparison, it could be very close. Other than that, there are some icon changes to the meu bar but nothing too drastic.

I will continue to use this browser and see whether it lives up to it’s expectations. I am sure a lot of people on the Internet is rooting for Firefox to dominate the browser market. Well, me too. Either Firefox or Opera would be just fine in my opinion.