Mozilla recently released a new beta version of Firefox 3. If you haven’t been using it I highly recommend downloading a copy. I’ve been using Firefox 3 a few months now and there are 2 features I couldn’t imagine living without.

The first is the revamped address bar. Most address bars boast an auto-complete function (e.g. start typing http://www.ea… and it will fill in the rest). But Firefox 3’s address bar allows you to type in any word from the url and it will give you a list of choices, balanced between sites you frequently go to and the sites you most recently visited. So for example if, after reading this post, you simply type “beta” into the address bar, this page will almost certainly be one of your choices. It makes finding that web page you were at yesterday, but can’t remember than name of, really, really easy.

The second is that – upon request – Firefox will remember all the sites you are viewing when you shut it down. That way, when you load it back up – say, the next morning – all the tabs and sites you had open will reappear. I no longer to a bookmark a bunch of sites when I’m shutting down my computer. Super convenient.

On a seperate but parallel note, Apple recently released its Safari browser for the PC and has been bragging about how it is faster than Firefox. This is true, if you are using Firefox 2! According to an independent industry observer, Firefox 3 is actually faster than Safari.