Firefox 3.0 (RC1)
Heads up: Firefox 3.0 RC1 is out. If you are running the betas or anything from the 2.x branch, I recommend trying out Firefox 3.0. It’s much, much improved. Aside from the polish that has been rubbed into the interface, the damn thing is fast.
I’m not one of those browser benchmarkers, this is just from casual use. Now that I’ve been on the 3.0 train for a while, using a 2.x build is a little painful–you don’t notice the tiny delays between page loads until they are gone…and come back.
I don’t care if it’s just a visual rendering tweak or actually a performance improvement (a better network interface, a better memory manager, more aggressive caching, etc.)–it doesn’t really matter because the fact is, I perceive it to be significantly faster.
Anyway, I think it’s safe to go ahead and get the release candidate build. It’ll upgrade you to the final copy when it eventually comes out in a few weeks.