Firefox 3 Web browser hopes for record downloads

LOS ANGELES (Xinhua): Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products, announced on Monday that it will launch a new version of the Firefox Web browser and hopes for record downloads.Firefox 3, scheduled to be launched today, features improvements in security, speed and design, according to Mozilla.With many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involving bookmarks, the new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new Places feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently but haven't bookmarked.There's also a new star button for easily adding sites to the bookmark list -- similar to what's already available on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 browser.Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn't disrupt the log-in process.Yahoo is the only Web service initially supported. To use rivals like Google Inc.'s Gmail and Microsoft's Hotmail, developers of those services will have to enable that capability first.Firefox is the No. 2 Web browser behind Internet Explorer. Mozilla has been developing Firefox 3 for nearly three years and has been publicly testing it since November for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.Mozilla is trying to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.Courtesy: The Hindu, 19 June 2008