So it has been a year and a half since the last major release of the favorite browser of many- Firefox. We have gone through the different levels of Beta versions for the last couple of months, and now it has finally arrived. The Release candidate 1. There has already been a lot of buzz going on about the many improvements in this version, and here we are discussing them.

Mozilla’s implementation of JavaScript in the new version is claimed to be twice as faster compared to its predecessor. Now, we all know the magnitude of the usage of JavaScript in web content today. And in a way, that is why it makes Firefox WORK. And yes, they have introduced a Memory Cycle Collector (more on that here), which frees memory which is no more used by any modules. For example, if Firefox is kept open and idle for hours, it would no longer suck unnecessary memory- resulting in more Support from us Fanbois. Yayy!! Oh, and yes, PGO-Profile Guided Optimisations -available only for Windows at the moment, designed for significant upgrading of performance.

The Auto Complete Address Bar is way too cool. And guess what, it ain’t limited to just popular web-addresses, but also to Favorites, History and Tags. And now to the most important addition feature- PLACES.

Places is a Bookmark and History Manager. For people like us, who have cluttered Bookmark Bars and Bookmarks scattered everywhere, this is our Kryptonite. It is powered by SQL Lite, (which is also Open Source, and is a lightweight search engine with robust querying capabilities). It is where you can search your History, Tags and Bookmarks and yes, even search a particular Search as Smart Search. And in case you are wondering what Tag am I talking about for so long, Tagging is a new feature on Firefox 3. Much like what we do with blog posts , or Delicious or StumbleUpon, here we do it on our browser.

And yes, apart from all of the above mentioned points, it has got a new UI suited for your OS, an Addon Manager, a more secure Anti-Forgery Site Blocker.Phew. But yes, it has its share of bugs, and they are here in this link of the release notes. Apart from that, you’d like to read the following posts as well.

Full review of Firefox RC1.

Ostatic: A guided tour of Firefox RC1

I am an avid Firefox user. There’s absolutely no existence of the IE on my machine in terms of usage. And well, I also use Flock, which is again a Firefox based browser. And what hooked me to Firefox at the first place was the Tab Browsing facility. With time, we all got so used to it, that we ran out of control while pressing the Ctrl+T button, and the number of tabs ran to 15 and upwards. That’s when browsing between tabs raises an issue. You can of course surf through them by the old trick-using the Ctrl+Tab button. Or perhaps putting in Ctrl+<Number of Tab> to jump directly to the desired Tab. But that limits it to only 9 tabs. What if it’s more than that?Here’s the remedy.

Download the Tab Overflow Scrollbar here from the Firefox addon site. What it does is, it adds a horizontal scrollbar as shown, under the tabs, when the number of tabs exceed 9. This way you can scroll easily to find your desired tab. Easy, isn’t it? Of course, your old-Ctrl+Tab would still work. Would you like to add in some effects to it? May be a Thumbnail preview (as shown in the top image) ? Here’s the addon to it. It’s called Ctrl Tab Preview (shockingly). As the name suggests, it gives you the thumbnail preview as you press Ctrl+Tab to go to the next tab. Hold on to the Tab button to see the thumbnail, and release it to go to the next Tab.

Last Tab browsing addon: Tab Effect. This is just a fancy one, with no actual value addition, but just take my word for it, it looks damn cool! Have a look at the Pic. When you press a new tab by pressing Ctrl+T, or try to browse to a new tab by pressing Ctrl+Tab, this will show a bit of an animation, and give a kind of a cube revolving effect, as shown. This sure is pretty, but a bit heavy on resources, in addition to your already heavy Firefox (given that you have 15 or more tabs open). That’s it for now. More Firefox tips would be rolling out soon. Adios!