Mozilla Firefox 3

But there is more information at hand. Click the More Information button and you'll discover whether the site is foisting cookies on you (take a look at Google if you want a sharp shock) and, handily, whether you've saved any passwords for use on the site.

Click on the permissions tab, and it's possible to block/unblock pop-ups and cookies from that site. The Media tab, meanwhile, provides a list and thumbnails of all the images and videos on the page, and allows you to save them at the click of a button.

Mozilla has also added a malware protection to the phishing protection introduced in Firefox 2. The blacklist is stored locally and Mozilla claims it's updated every 30 minutes - it sychronises with Google's stopbadware blacklist.

Managing add-ons

Firefox 3 also brings some minor refinements to the browser's Add-ons Manager. You can search directly in the dialog box without having to visit the web page.

A small pop-up appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the browser, every time an update to one of your Extensions becomes available, which can prove a touch wearisome, but is intended to improve security. And Mozilla can also disable add-ons or other plug-ins which it believes are a security risk.

Choosing the right protocol

One new feature that both web developers and users are set to benefit from are the web application protocol handlers. Developers can now prompt Firefox 3 to open a web app - Gmail instead of Outlook, for example - instead of the default desktop software for certain tasks.

And there's native support for running web apps offline, based on the HTML 5 standard for offline caching. Like Google Gears (which has been updated for Firefox 3) this is intended to allow apps such as webmail and RSS readers to continue working even without an active net connection, such as when you head through a tunnel on the train.

At the time of writing, however, the only app that worked with Firefox 3's offline support was a Mozilla test page. Mozilla hopes Google will merge its Gears technology with the HTML 5 offline standard, but whether Google will heed Mozilla's advice is unclear.

Conclusion

What is clear, however, is that while Firefox 3 isn't exactly a radical upgrade, it does contain a healthy dose of new features that make day-to-day surfing more pleasurable.

We found that features such as The Awesome Bar and the bookmark tagging vastly reduce the amount of time you spend plunging through your browser history or attempting to dig out poorly-filed bookmarks. And that, if nothing else, is reason enough to stick with it.

Author: Barry Collins