I read an interesting article online that talks about the latest studies finding Firefox to be the safest browser available.

“Firefox users were far and away the most likely to use the latest version, with an overwhelming 83.3 percent running an updated browser on any given day. However, despite Firefox’s single click integrate auto-update functionality, 16.7 percent of Firefox users still continue access the Web with an outdated version of the browser, researchers said.

The study also revealed that the majority of Safari users (65.3) percent were likely to use the latest version of the browser between December 2007 and June 2008, after Safari version 3 became available.

Meanwhile, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)’s Internet Explorer users ranked last in terms of safe browsing. Between January 2007 and June 2008, less than half of IE users — 47.6 percent — were running the most secure browser version during the same time period.”

The other day I was in the library at the university here in Germany and I used one of the university computers. I haven’t really used the computers at the university all that much, but when I have, I’ve always used Firefox since they have it installed on all of their computers and I prefer Firefox. Since I use a PowerPC-based Mac, I don’t have access to any version of Internet Explorer except for the woefully outdated version for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. I therefore thought that while I was at the university, it would be a good time to check compatibility in Internet Explorer for several of my websites. I clicked on the dreadful little blue e in the quick launch bar and to my surprise, Internet Explorer opened and then immediately closed. I was quite confused for a second and decided to try again. I tried again and got the same result. That was certainly strange I thought, so I logged out and tried at a different computer — same result.

I was able to guess that the university had probably blocked the use of Internet Explorer on its computers, but I suppose I couldn’t really believe it. After all, it is a Microsoft product (there is supposed to be a hint of sarcasm there). So, I went and asked the guy working at the tech desk in the library if they had actually blocked it and to my pleasant surprise, he said they indeed had blocked it for safety purposes.

At my university in the United States, I don’t think this would happen — or at least I have never seen it happen. American universities seem to have a fixation for Microsoft products, whether it be Internet Explorer, Office or Outlook. The on-campus computers at my American university do not even have Firefox installed, much less block access to Internet Explorer.

Something else I have noticed about the computers at my German university is that they also use OpenOffice.org as their default office suite. While they do also have Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word is not the default application to open when you open a .doc file; Microsoft Excel is not the first to open when you click on a .xls; and Microsoft PowerPoint is not the first to open when you click on a .ppt file. Instead, they always open in OpenOffice.org by default. I find this to be quite comforting.

Using open source software seems to be an overall trend that is incredibly common here in Europe. In lectures, for example, you see students with their laptops and more often than not, they are browsing the web with Firefox and taking notes with OpenOffice.org. That applies to both Windows and Mac users. I have also noticed a lot more Linux users here than back home in the United States. A lot of the Linux users I have seen and talked to are not even the geeky, computer-whiz type (such as I) that Linux is generally associated with. They are just average users who might not even be able to distinguish the operating system from an application.

The popularity of open source software is a trend I hope will eventually carry over to the United States, although, realistically, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Unlike Europe, everything is far more commercialized in the United States and with that commercialization comes proprietary software that consumers will be willing to buy versus download their free, open source counterparts.

Today I downloaded Firefox 3 for the first time since the first beta. So far I am extremely impressed at its speed. It’s unimaginably faster at rendering images and pages and also at running JavaScript than its predecessor, Firefox 2; especially on my slow old PowerBook G4.

I had a brief stint where I used Safari again for a while because it was so much faster than Firefox 2, but that came to a quick end as Safari just doesn’t offer the features of Firefox. I would have to say that Firefox 3 is even faster than Safari which is quite impressive.

The new version also looks a lot better than the previous version, especially for Mac OS X. The new theme blends in more than the old one.

I recommend downloading it. You can find it for free for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X here:

The war between browsers has made its way onto my laptop. When I bought my first Mac several years ago, Mac OS X was brand new and the only options for browsers were Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape. I was always a Netscape user. Eventually Microsoft ceased to support Internet Explorer for the Mac. The release of Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) brought with it a replacement for Internet Explorer and a new competitor in the browser field: Apple’s Safari.

Since the release of Safari, I have been pretty adamant about it. Its integration with Apple’s OS and its speed were key features that kept me glued to it. When Netscape eventually failed and out of its ashes arose Mozilla’s Firefox, I tried Firefox and immediately fell in love with it. I used it consistently from version 1 through version 2.0.0.6. About that time, Apple released version 3 of their browser and with that release came several features I had grown used to in Firefox, so I decided to give Safari another go. I was yet again impressed with its speed and again with its tight OS integration. That was enough to cause me to switch yet again. The extensions I had gotten used to in Firefox, such as my Gmail notifier extension, I forewent and quickly realized I didn’t need them. The memory usage was far less and the nuances that bugged me in Firefox such as menus occasionally not closing when switching applications were non-existant in Safari.

After getting used to Safari again, I realized that it wasn’t compatible with some of the websites I use quite frequently. For these sites, I had to open Firefox. For months I have been switching between the two browsers, even occasionally switching back over to Firefox entirely. This gets old after a while as I keep having to reimport bookmarks between the browsers and often times I have both browsers open at the same time doubling the memory usage which is of concern to me as my computer is relatively old with only 768 MB of RAM.

Fortunately I happened to run into what seems like it will be a solution as I was browsing the internet last night. I ran into the Camino browser. Although I had known about it before and have even downloaded it and played with it, it never really occurred to me that it would solve all of the problems I have with Firefox and bring with it most of what I like about Safari. Given, the feature set is not up to what either Safari or Firefox offer, but I can get used to that. Not to mention the next major version is in its beta stages and includes many of the features of Safari that I use quite frequently.

Also made by Mozilla, the whole idea behind Camino is to provide Gecko — the rendering engine that powers Firefox — with a native Mac interface instead of Firefox’s clunky XUI which is the source of what I find to be most obnoxious about Firefox. Because of its use of Gecko, Camino is compatible with the websites I use and because of its use of a native interface, it provides an eloquent environment for browsing the web. I have now been using Camino for the past couple of days and I must say that I quite enjoy it.

You can find more about Camino and download it on their website. Camino is a free, open source program.

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Firefox_3_Beta_6]Edit: This review is for Firefox 3 Beta 1.

My first impression of Firefox 3 is quite promising. I started it up and the first thing I noticed was how much the default theme for Mac OS X has changed. The default theme had the Mac OS X unified toolbar which is the first time Firefox has had that. I can’t say exactly what it looks like in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), as I don’t have Leopard. In Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), however, it is the standard white unified toolbar. On the ‘Welcome to Firefox!’ page that you first see after upgrading, there is a link to download the prototype for the new default skin. I downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised to find that it turned Firefox into something that looks a lot like Safari in Leopard. It has a very clean interface with icons representing those found in Safari.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta without (left) and with (right) the prototype for the new Safari-like skin as shown in Tiger)

The next thing I noticed when I visited Google’s homepage will make Mac users everywhere happy. Form buttons and fields finally now match the standard Mac OS X form buttons and fields. While they have their quirks and are not exactly the same as what most Mac users are used to (for examples, instead of just highlighting, the buttons also depress), they are far better than what Firefox 2 and earlier versions had.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta sporting new buttons and forms that finally match Mac OS X)

As I dove further into the program, I found more features added to Firefox 3 other than just the aesthetic changes. Among all of the security fixes and a new version of the Gecko rendering engine that Firefox is based on, there are also new ‘toys’ or features that users can play with. One of the first things I noticed was the new “Places” menu in the bookmarks toolbar. Here you can find things such as your most frequently visited pages, recently starred pages and recently tagged pages. Starred pages and tagged pages are also new features in Firefox 3. Starring a webpage works similarly to starring an e-mail in Google’s Gmail service in that it does nothing more than give the page a mark that will allow it to stand out from the others. It doesn’t necessarily add the page to your bookmarks, but rather allows it to show up in the Starred Pages sections of the Places menu. To “star” a page, just click the new star button at the end of the address bar. Clicking the star button twice will allow you to bookmark it and also tag the page at the same time. Tagged bookmarks allows you to organize your bookmarks in a new way. Unfortunately, the only way to access your pages through tags is again through the Places menu in your bookmarks bar.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta’s new Places menu in the bookmarks toolbar)

Another new feature I noticed, although less fun to play with, was the new “Plugins” tab in the Add-ons window. This tab allows users to much more easily manage which plugins the browser has. Plugins differ from extensions in that they add functionality to the browser “under the hood”. They are also generally created by larger companies. An example of a plugin would be Apple’s QuickTime Plugin which allows you to view QuickTime videos in your browser without having to open the separate QuickTime application.

Overall, the beta version is actually very stable. Against recommendations from Mozilla, I have been using it as my standard for a while now and haven’t really run into any major problems. I would say my biggest complaint at this point would be when I try to reorganize my bookmarks. The bookmark management window seems to have gone backwards in functionality as when I try to drag a bookmark to rearrange it, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. When I finally get the bookmark to where I want it, I have to restart Firefox before the changes will be reflected in the actual bookmarks menu. That is extremely irritating and hopefully on the list of things to fix before the final version.

The beta is available in several different languages and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. If you are interested in trying it, you can find it as a free download on Mozilla’s website here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Edit: This review is for Firefox 3 Beta 1.