10 Reasons to Upgrade to Firefox 3

Now that the long anticipated Mozilla Firefox 3 has now been released, the big question is: Should I upgrade? Here are 10 obvious improvements to the new Firefox 3 release:

10. New Look and Feel - Firefox was smart to keep much of the same look and feel as before, but just simplified it a little bit. I found the new Internet Explorer to be over-simplified and confusing to those accustomed to this original look. The new Firefox look emphasizes the importance of the BACK button and Refresh button while cleaning up some of the important, but under-used features like the forward button.

9. One-Click Bookmarks - Like many of the current social bookmarking websites, Firefox 3 has integrated the simple, but highly identifiable star (favorite) in the location bar for instant bookmarking.

8. Smart Bookmarks - It's about time! I have a bad habit of over-bookmarking websites. Still, there are a core bunch that I visit the most. These are my favorite-FAVORITES as well as the most recently added bookmarks. Within the Bookmarks menu, both Recent and Most Viewed bookmark options now exist. Plus, they have improved the Bookmark organization window quite a bit! (It has a bit more of a Windows Explorer feel).

7. Smart Location Bar - This is not going to win me over, but it is a fun added feature. In the past, we have seen the auto-fill for URLs in the location bar. Now, they also include the page title to help decipher what these suggested links actually are.

6. Add-On Manager - This is one of my favorite new features! I do use a lot of third-party add-on features for Firefox and in the past, you needed to download them and install them manually. Now, you can browse directly within Mozilla Firefox their library of suggested and approved add-ons and integrate them instantly with a click of the button.

5. Password Manager - Yes, there was a password manager before. Remember? That annoying pop-up that always asked whether or not you wanted Firefox to save your password information? Now, they have made it a little bit less intrusive by asking you the same question in the upper status bar.

4. Download Manager - Again, this one looks very similar to what they had before, but now it is a bit more powerful. The new version of Firefox now provided Retry control as well as a history of the download link and location.

3. Zoom Function - IE7 and Opera had it; Firefox 2 did not. That was the zoom function within the browser. My father is going to be happy about this one! Now you can zoom with either a click (or CTRL++/CTRL--) to grow or shrink content only within the browser. No more needing to re-adjust your monitor resolution. (It would be nice, though, to have the Zoom features as buttons in the control panel).

2. Memory Usage - This is a big one! As computers continue to get faster and bigger in memory, software designers have become lazier and less efficient (Microsoft!). The new version of Firefox 3 is one of the most efficient browsers currently available (also twice as efficient as Internet Explorer 7). What does this mean to you? Less memory use equals quicker performance and ability to multi-task at larger scales.

1. Memory Leakage Issues Improved - One of the biggest drawbacks in the past with Mozilla Firefox were the potential memory leaks. When Firefox has a memory leak, most of your computer would freeze up and would require you to manually kill the process in the Task Manager. This didn't happen often, but when it did, it caused a lot of frustration. The new version has aimed to improve this memory leakage issue resulting in a more stable browser than before. (Though, they will still exist!)

In all, the aesthetic additions to Firefox version 3 are OK. They are improvements to help increase productivity and usability. Still, those changes are not going to affect many of us dramatically.

The real reason to upgrade to the new Mozilla Firefox 3 are its performance improvements. Less memory usage plus added stability only makes this browser the most efficient, respected, and usable one in the business today.