Digging Firefox 3.0b5 on the Mac

Firefox.jpg

I've been using Firefox 3.0 betas on my linux boxes because it's the first normal distribution of Firefox that works as a 32-bit app properly on my x86_64 linux workstation. I can use the 32-bit JDK plugin and that's what I really needed. Very nice. But I've still been using the 2.0 version on my Mac and my PC because I wanted to make sure that I had stability over new features because I didn't need anything in 3.0 on these platforms.

Well, today I noticed that 3.0b5 on the Mac had a really nice look-n-feel to it. So I decided What the heck? and got it. Very, very nice. I still have 2.0 on my PC as it's production stuff and I have to have it working there, but the Mac can have an occasional crash and I won't be that upset.

I've read somewhere that they expect the final 3.0 release to be in June - which seems like a long time for this being the final beta, but I guess they have a release process that includes optimizations (or not), and so it'll be 'done' when they say so. Can't complain, this is pretty nice.

Then again, with the new fixes to WebKit, I'm excited to see the next Safari as well.