I eagerly downloaded Firefox 3 this morning. I had stayed away from all the beta and RC releases of it, which is the first time that I had stayed away from a FF beta, and I have to say now that I’m glad. The difference in speed of rendering pages between FF2 and FF3 is stunning. The new version is so, so much snappier. So far I’ve only installed it on my Vista laptop in work, but I really can’t wait to get home and try it out on my mac. If you’re a Firefox user, this is one upgrade that I really, really urge you make right now! And if you don’t already use Firefox, now is the moment to change.

Also, if you’re a photographer, of an avid viewer of photos on the web, aside from the speed boost that you notice, probably the most exciting feature of FF3 is the ability to recognise ICC colour profiles. Assuming you have your monitor correctly setup, this should make viewing photos far better, as the profiles will leave you viewing exactly what the photographer intended colour wise, as opposed to what Firefox thought was the best fit. Unfortunately, ICC profiling is not enabled by default in FF3, and you do have to change the config, but, if you follow the steps over on Rob Galbraith’s post you will see it’s really pretty trivial.