Hot on the heels of 2.0, the Firefox team have posted the first Alpha release of Firefox 3.0, "Gran Paradiso". Some of the new features include the use of Cairo as the graphics library, Cocoa Widgets on Mac OS X, and improved SVG specification compliance. Builds are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Before reporting any bugs, make sure to check the Known Issues list, and happy testing!
According to French analytics company Xiti Monitor, Firefox is no longer a niche player in Europe, with 23.2% of European web surfers using the open source browser, up from 19.4% in April. More telling are some of the individual countries' figures, with Firefox holding about a third of the browser share in six countries including Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and about 40% in Finland and Slovenia. In the southern hemisphere, Australiasia is a 23.4% Firefox region, but here in North America it holds just 14.5% of the market, according to Xiti. Here at Download Squad things look a bit different, however--if Site Meter is to be believed, 48% of you use Internet Explorer, followed by 46% Firefox faithful, with Konqueror (3%), Safari (2%), and Opera (1%) bringing up the rear. Source: Wired News
