As anyone who browses the Internet knows (or, at least, should know), Internet Explorer is a pile of garbage. While version 7 is a substantial improvement over IE 6.0, both in functionality and usability, it still lacks behind the current #2 browser in the world, Mozilla Firefox. Say what you will about Firefox; yes, Opera has more features, but Firefox manages to entice users with a combination of usability, compatibility, and extendibility. Firefox 2.0 came out earlier this year, bringing a revamped interface along with a number of improved features. Six weeks later, the first build of Firefox 3.0 has hit, and the alpha gives us a good indicator of what to expect with the new version.

Codenamed “Gran Paradiso”, the new Firefox boasts a number of enhancements to make it stand out against the competition. First and foremost, we have Gecko 1.9, Mozilla’s updated rendering engine, as well as support for Cairo (an open-source graphics library), meaning that we should see improvements in both image handling and page rendering. (Hopefully, both will be faster) A new bookmarking system as well as an SQLite database to store History entries; both of these were supposed to be implemented in Firefox 2.0, but couldn’t be finished in time.

Most importantly, however, is that Firefox 2.x will be the final version of the browser to run on Windows 95, 98, Me, and NT 4.0. While most people aren’t running these older versions of Windows, those that are will be unable to run Firefox 3.0 at all. So, if you’ve got an older Windows box lying around the house that you might end up using again one day, it’s either going to be sticking with Firefox 2.x or upgrading to another operating system in order to keep up with your favorite browser. Me, I’d just jump ship over to the Linux camp, unless you like that Vista nonsense.