First Look: Firefox 3.0 Beta On My Mac

I just read in the news that Firefox 3.0 Beta was released today. I have been keeping an eye on this release for quite some time as it will contain some improvements that I, as a Mac user, have been wanting and asking for for a long time.

The foremost reason why I have been watching this release is the simple fact that pre-3.0 versions of Firefox have just been plain out ugly amongst the gorgeous Aqua façade of Mac OS X. Such things like any form widgets: buttons, textboxes, select boxes, etc. These widgets were great boxy and very Netscape 1.0ish in my opinion. This issue was due to the very fact that the version of Firefox for the Mac, did not use the native Cocoa framework to display widgets on a webpage.

I believe about a year ago, it was finally announced that Firefox 3.0 was going to be using the native Cocoa library on OS X to display any kind of page widget. This immediately made me extremely happy.

In addition to the page widgets, the application in it's entirety still looked out of place. I think this had to do with the clear division of the toolbar and the buttons below the toolbar.

For about six months now, I have been running Firefox (Minefield) 3.0a to keep an eye on any changes. It was still fairly slow and lacked some other things but it did have the native page widgets. I never liked it enough to switched it to my default browser and continued to stick with Safari--especially when Safari 3.0b came out.

Well, I just now downloaded Firefox 3.0 Beta from Mozilla's website and I must say, I am presently impressed with the work they have accomplished thus far. The page widgets look great, there is a new unified toolbar at the top, and its seems to be pretty responsive and fast.

I will attempt to use it as my default browser for as long as possible. Now that the user interface things have been added, my main comparison will be speed. I truly feel that Safari has Firefox beat on that one.