I have used Firefox as my main browser since the original 0.2 or 0.3 release, back when I was still using Windows and then my move to Linux. I thought it was the greatest browser of all time, simply put. However, after I moved over to the Mac, things changed. Mac software is a bit different than open-source software and I wanted more than Firefox could give me. Yes, it’s open-source and cross platform, but being cross-platform isn’t the experience I want from Mac software.

So, I’ve tried every browser known to man for Mac. What I’ve come to discover is I generally like the Webkit renderer more than the gecko-based Firefox derivatives. Webkit has always produced cleaner, crisper pages with less CSS issues (probably a result of my poor styling and coding) than Firefox could ever do. I’ve been using Camino for several months now and enjoy the browser greatly, even though it is gecko powered. For those that don’t know, Camino is a Mac built version of Firefox. It uses the same renderer for the pages, but the interface and much of the code is all built on a Mac in XCode, in turn meaning that Camino automatically uses several nice Cocoa features, like spell-checking, dictionary, and tons more, seamlessly integrating with your other Mac applications. Firefox doesn’t do that.

Firefox 3 is scheduled to be released in May 2007 and the first alpha builds are already out. There are some nice features in the works, but the single biggest one is the addition of a graphics library and more Mac native features. Until Firefox 3, Firefox had been using the old QuickDraw framework on the Mac. Of importance is that this was pre-OS X software and is officially deprecated in Leopard. So, with Firefox 3, an open-source framework called Cairo will be used for the Windows and Linux builds, while the Mac builds will have access to the Core Image based Quartz, the same library that Webkit uses for its graphics rendering. Basically, stuff will look like it should under Firefox 3, for the first time. In fact, with the help of the new graphics library, Firefox 3 finally passes the Acid 2 Test. The Acid 2 Test is a test developed by the W3C to test if a browser can handle web standards. Currently the only two that I know of that don’t pass this test are Firefox and IE.

So, I downloaded Firefox 3 Nightly and played with it for a bit. The rendering is much better. It handles fonts much, much better than before, producing the crisp, clear text that I so love with Webkit based browsers. It also handles SVG graphics much better as well as finally tackling some nasty, long-standing CSS bugs.

Overall, Firefox 3 will be a nice release and I’m excited because Camino should benefit from the new rendering updates as well.

Found via | Ars Technica
Download Nightly Build Here
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