Firefox 3 Beta 1 now available

After waiting for many an agonizing month, Firefox 3 Beta 1 is finally available. The final version of this browser is tipped to be much more mature than its predecessors, bringing faster page loads as well as a higher level of performance for Ajax-heavy sites such as GMail. Initial testing showed that the browser never went beyond the 60MB memory mark while disappearing off the CPU usage monitor when running in the background on an Intel Mac powered by Mac OS X Leopard. This is partly due to the non-running of add-ons, although that could change in the future. New features include an improved bookmark-management system known as Places, a revamped Location bar, streamlined user-interface elements and a handy new “Restart Firefox” button.