Mozilla debuts Firefox 3 Beta 1

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download, Melissa Shapiro reports via The Mozilla Blog.

Please note: Mozilla does not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
• Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart search bookmark folders, direct typing in location bar searches your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 300 memory leak fixes, and a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks.

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 1 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 20 different languages.

Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X.

More info and download links here.