Browser Wars - Chapter 2
Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 was released earlier today and incorporates a significant number of improvements that we have been commenting on as we continue to test the 'nightly builds'.
This time, it's worth a try (as usual, not on a mission-critical or your main computer).
We think Firefox fanatics will begin to embrace 3.0 with this release. Much less memory hogging and much more stable than Beta 3.
The download is here
Flock, the social network and (highly-addictive) media browser also made news over the weekend as Flock version 1.1 came out of beta on Friday with the addition on Picasaweb (Google photos) and some improvements on e-mail, feed, and video integration.
Our tests showed that you may have to offload version 1.0 or 1.1 beta first in order to activate to new features properly.
As for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, for now, the browser has been taken off our beta box and is residing on our development box only. A number of issues were identified and we're simply waiting for the next build from Microsoft. In all fairness, many of the other new products and betas launched at MIX08 are operating flawlessly.
Finally, Safari has gained a little market share (no doubt due to the iPhone) and we found the latest Windows Version Beta stable and fast. Page rendering is interesting as it almost looks like you're looking at a Mac.