Firefox 3 Alpha 5 released

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 Alpha 5. Keep in mind, when we say alpha, we mean this thing hasn't even earned the right to be called beta software yet, so install at your own risk. For example, when you install Firefox 3 (code named Gran Paradiso), you'll notice that clicking on your Firefox 2 icon will bring up Gran Paradiso whether you like it or not.

Gran Paradiso doesn't actually uninstall Firefox 2.0 though, so you can install Gran Paradiso and uninstall it with minimal risk. Except there's a chance you might lose some bookmarks. That's because the biggest change in the latest build is that Mozilla has added "Places," a new way of managing bookmarks, RSS subscriptions, and browser history in your sidebar.

Places first showed up in Firefox 2 Alpha 1, but has been disabled for the last few builds. It makes its triumphent return with Alpha 5, but you probably won't really notice any changes, since there's no graphical redesign to go along with the changes under the hood.

Some other updates:

• A new crash reporting system is enabled on Mac OS X and about half of Windows installations. It's not yet available for Linux.
• There's a new Javascript-based password manager.
• And some miscellaneous bug fixes in the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine.

[via WebWare]

Tags: browsertips, firefox, gecko, gran paradiso, GranParadiso, web browser, WebBrowser