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"We're really proud of Firefox 3 and it just shows what a committed, energized global community can do when they work together," said John Lilly, CEO at Mozilla.

Demand for the new browser has been beyond Mozilla's expectations, with reports suggesting that the company's servers were unable to deal with the 14,000 people downloading the software per minute - representing 13 gigabits of data every second

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- causing Mozilla.com to be knocked offline for almost two hours.

The new "awesome bar" allows the browser to learn users' habits, adapting to preferences and offering better fitting matches over time. One-click bookmarking and tagging make it easy to remember, search and organise web sites, while the new full-page zoom displays any part of a web page - up close and readable - in seconds.

Firefox 3 is built on the new Gecko 1.9 platform, which Mozilla reckons makes it a safer, easier to use and more personal product. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the web.

Firefox 3 also lets users customise their browser with over 5,000 add-ons, which allow users to manage tasks like participating in online auctions, uploading digital photos, seeing the weather forecasts, and listening to music, all from the convenience of the browser. Mozilla claims the browser now also uses less memory while it's running.