The first thing that will catch people’s eyes is the new Vista or Windows XP Firefox theme.  The Vista version works with Vista’s native theme correctly (this wasn’t so with the earlier betas).

The bookmark and search engine has been completely re-haul making searching in the Bookmarks or Address Bar (see figure 1) much easier.

But what caught my attention the most is the performance improvements over Firefox 2.  The memory footprint is greatly improved and everything just feels much more snappier.

And of course, the great add-ons by the Firefox community is still the best reason to use Firefox over the other browsers.

Mozilla will try to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours when Firefox 3 is released.  See Firefox Download Day 2008 for more info.

Update: Firefox 3 will be released Tuesday, June 17.

Make your add-ons work with Firefox 3: How to Disable Add-on Compatibility Checking.

1. Type about:config in the address bar.

2. Click on an empty spot and select new, then boolean.

3. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility as the preference name and select false as the value.

4. Now go install your favorite add-ons!

Figure 1.