The next generation

It's been a long time since I dismissed Mozilla Firefox 0.93 as "Netscape on steroids" and then changed my mind after using it for a week. I've been using it ever since then, and it's just kept getting better.

Firefox 3 was released yesterday, picking up 8 million downloads in its first 24 hours. I haven't upgraded yet, though, because some of the extensions I rely on aren't yet compatible. (I'm talking to you, Organize Status Bar! How do you expect me to keep my status bar organized without you?) But some people have been using the pre-release versions extensively, and they've fallen in love with the fun new features.

Chief among these is the Smart Location Bar, nicknamed the AwesomeBar. Remember when Firefox had the smart idea of including the titles of recently visited pages along with their URLs as you started to type in the address bar? Well, maybe Firefox didn't invent that feature, but it's the first browser I ever saw that did it. Anyway, for Firefox 3, they've taken the idea a whole step or two further. Now, when you want to find a recently visited web page with the address bar, you don't have to try to remember the beginning of the URL. You can type any part of the URL or the web page's title. If you've bookmarked the page and described your bookmark with certain tags, you could enter the tags. And if you've associated a unique keyword with your bookmark, you can just enter the keyword, and you'll be there. As you type in the AwesomeBar, the list of URLs is sorted based on how frequently and how recently you've visited each page. They call it frecency, and the algorithm's thresholds are tweakable (via about:config) in case you don't find them to your liking.

I've heard early adopters say that they couldn't think of going back to Firefox 2 and not having the Awesomebar. It makes your browser cache much more important since it's easier to go back pages you've previously visited. If you've cleared your cache, Firefox can't suggest any matching web pages for you (other than the ones you've bookmarked). So the default length of time to keep web pages cached has increased from 9 days to 90. I imagine that having such a large cache could slow down the browser, so I'll probably set the number to around 30 days and not delete the cache every week. But we'll see. I haven't even upgraded yet.

Other outward improvements: the default theme now fits in with whatever operating system or window manager you're using. There are separate themes for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, GNOME, and... I guess KDE, although I haven't seen any screenshots of that one. Little no-brainer things, too: now, when you enter a password for the first time, Firefox will wait until after you successfully (or unsuccessfully) log in before asking if you want to save the password. Also, one-click bookmarking. In addition to visible improvements, they've made a lot of changes on the inside. For example, they seem to have fixed a lot of bugs that were causing Firefox to hog much more memory than it needed. And then there are the things the average person probably doesn't care about, like passing the Acid2 test. (It even does pretty okay on Acid3.) All very cool stuff.

And so, Browser War II continues, with Firefox continuing to chip away at Internet Explorer's market share. Microsoft is working hard on IE 8, which adheres surprisingly well to web standards. And just like they did when Firefox 2 was released, the IE team has sent Mozilla a cake to congratulate them on releasing Firefox 3. (It's the least they folks could do; without Firefox, they wouldn't have a job!)

So, here's a guide to new features in Firefox 3, and — if you're ready — you can download Firefox 3. For those of you who are interested in Browser War I and the genesis of the Mozilla project, be sure to check out Code Rush, a documentary that covered the Netscape developers as they freed the source code of Netscape Navigator and waited for the world to pitch in.

And now, some other links and stuff:

Have you ever wanted to rent a dog? Who hasn't? Well, now you can.

Here Top 25 Most Visited Tourist Destinations in America. I've been to four of them. Anyone want to guess which ones?

Extract the datelines from 72,000 wire-service news stories spanning four years, and you can make a map of Where News Breaks.