- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
- Date added: June 17, 2008
- Total Downloads: 18,612,620
- Downloads last week: 61,305
- See full specifications
A newer version of Mozilla Firefox is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 11944 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
Read CNET senior editor Rob Vamosi's extended review of Firefox 3.
No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox 3 is full-featured, lightning fast, and an able Internet Explorer foe. Previous versions have seen Mozilla's approach to features such as tabbed browsing and extensions become extremely popular. Even though Firefox 3 lacks a killer feature, it offers significant improvements not to be missed.
Version 3 introduces a multitude of safety and usability features. The location bar drop-down menu now includes URLs from both your browsing history and your bookmarks. A new Add-Ons manager includes a built-in plug-in search engine, saving you the previous trip to the Mozilla Web site. Single-click the star icon on the right of the location bar to bookmark the current page, or double-click on it to simultaneously add and edit the bookmark entry. You can tag bookmarks, too. Other impressive new features include password confirmation before adding it to the saved passwords list, the ability to pause and resume downloads, and merged forward and backward history lists.
Firefox 3 now runs faster and, according to Mozilla, is less susceptible to hacks and other vulnerabilities. The browser now warns your system's antivirus program when you download a file, and anti-malware and anti-phishing utilities now throw up a warning page before allowing Firefox to load risky sites. The favicon reveals Web sites' ownership details and displays the security level of your connection to that site.
Developers will appreciate that Firefox 3's new graphics and text rendering code provide rendering improvements in CSS and SVG as well as improved display of fonts and complex scripts. Firefox 3--still open-source, as ever--is a browser that all users should consider making their default Web-surfing tool.
Watch the CNET video review of Mozilla Firefox:
Publisher's description
From Mozilla :Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser. Firefox includes pop-up blocking; tab-browsing; integrated Google search; simplified privacy controls; a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser; and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.
Version 3 includes a bevy of new features and changes, including a redesigned address-bar pull-down menu that includes bookmarks and history, a new add-on manager, the ability to pause and resume downloads, malware protection, a better password manager, and OS-specific themes.
What's new in this version:
Version 3.0 includes a bevy of new features and changes, including a redesigned address-bar pull-down menu that includes bookmarks and history, a new add-on manager, the ability to pause and resume downloads, malware protection, a better password manager, and OS-specific themes.
More popular Web Browsers downloads
- 84,827 downloads 1. Mozilla Firefox
- 56,438 downloads 2. Avant Browser
- 55,483 downloads 3. Internet Explorer
- 32,423 downloads 4. SlimBrowser
- 26,048 downloads 5. Google Chrome
- See all Web Browsers downloads
User reviews of Mozilla Firefox 3
- Average user rating: 4.5 stars out of 11944 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 5 of 363 user reviewsSee all 363 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
53 out of 56 people found this review helpful
Version: Mozilla Firefox 3
"How to make the best better, not worse?"
Pros: Difficult to say the least. Everything I love about the last release of v2 is gone. I found this to be no faster, yet buggy. Poor bookmarks importing, difficulties with java, crashes & no themes, I mean zero! I waited a year for my all in one toolbar, now it's gone & so are all my themes. Getting back to 2.0.0.14 was a pain in the rear. I had to kill it with Revo to. As far as secure goes, thats what I but security software for so essentially, updating to v3 has been a total waste of time for me. The download.com editors review is a joke this time. Bias as any I've ever seen and dead wrong!
Cons: If I had one wish, it would be that I never installed this browser. Thank God for Norton Ghost because it's recovery time! Imagine that.
-
53 out of 76 people found this review helpful
Version: Mozilla Firefox 3
Pros: It might be me, or it could be this release came to soon for my taste. Nothing I like as far as add ons work with this version. Not one theme, not my Lexmark toolbar, not even the splash screen. Don't get me wrong, I live Firefox but I'm gonna have to stay with 2.0.0.14 until more add one work with this version.
Cons: Hell! This even changed my IE icon to a Firefox icon. Nothing works with it yet. Uninstall & reinstall did not fix the issues. System restore didn't resolve my problem. I had to do an advanced uninstall with Revo, then reinstall the older version to get straight. Sorry, but to me, it's not time yet.
-
42 out of 61 people found this review helpful
Version: Mozilla Firefox 3
Pros: I have to say there is no such thing as a perfect browser, I use a lot of browsers and all of them have pros and cons. I have seen no major improvements in this new Firefox. However, here are some minor improvements I've seen:
It has new menus for the AddOn Manager, now you can see your plugins and a small window inside for finding new extensions. Useful, however, you still have to restart Firefox for themes and other features to work and preview. Install theme, restart Firefox, hate the theme, uninstall, restart Firefox. That's a very long process, and Opera has a feature that enables you to preview their skins without restart and asks if you want to keep it or not. I'd expect better for Firefox but I was wrong.
I can only say, the only reason why I stuck with this browser was because of its addons and extensions which are purely powerful.
Cons: The new "smart bar" on the address bar is extremely annoying and pain in the back. If I wanted to see my bookmarks, I'd go to the bookmarks folder. Other than that, the stars on the end of the URL disturbs me more than anything. There is no option to disable this either.
The new interface is almost in my opinion is a big copy of IE7 and Opera. I prefer Firefox 2's original default theme because it wasn't too much. The icons on the new default theme are extremely bright (including the yellow folders), if you use Windows XP themes, you'll have a hard time seeing, if you use the Windows Classic theme, your menu titles will not highlight and you won't see the words (black text on dark blue highlight)
And if it gets even worse, the bookmark manager is very annoying also. I have no use for the history and tags, instead it was an additional feature for more hassle. Deleting and moving folders causes Firefox to "not respond" and you can't even rename the annoying "bookmarks toolbar" anymore, which I have always done. You cannot rename the entire bookmarks folder, yet it named itself to one of my subfolders and it would not change back.
Like I stated earlier, there weren't major changes except a few tweaks here and there on the theme, which doesn't even look all that great. The memory usage just to view google.com was about 50MB RAM, meanwhile Opera used 15MB and IE7 used 19MB. Memory performances? I don't see it. It doesn't seem much faster than Firefox 2 or IE7. For speed and performance, I still consider Opera to be a lot more dominant. Firefox 3 was just another disappointment other than the new Opera's bugs.
Don't get me wrong, but I was never a Firefox fan until I tried version 2 and I loved it. It was basically perfect for my web browsing experience but now it's just a bit screwed up. I hope this is fixed soon and I hope someone or even the developers make a theme of Firefox 2 and allow it to be used on Firefox 3, otherwise I'll just stick with Firefox 2.
-
22 out of 25 people found this review helpful
Version: Mozilla Firefox 3
Pros: Nothing
Cons: Never worked.
-
24 out of 26 people found this review helpful
Version: Mozilla Firefox 3
Pros: Have used Firefox for a long time (on XP), but got a new computer with Vista (64bit) and downloaded Firefox and it worked fine, for a week or so...
Cons: ...then it crashed. Everytime I tried to start it, it said it couldn't but was sending problem to Firefox. Never heard anything back, so removed it and will wait for it to get kinks out.
- See all 363 user reviews Write review
Submit your review
Previous Versions:
