Initial thoughts on Firefox 3.0a1 alpha Gran Paradiso

A few ZDNet readers have asked me for my thoughts on Firefox 3.0a1 alpha (Gran Paradiso) that was made available for testing purposes.

I downloaded it and installed it into XP Pro inside a VMware virtual PC (500MB RAM, 8GB hard drive) this morning and here are some initial thoughts:

• No problems installing it
• Stability seems on par with Firefox 2.0
• Speed seems on par with Firefox 2.0
• Memory leak (bug/feature) still seems to be present (during normal browsing memory usage went from about 30MB to 130MB and then only went down to 75MB when web pages were closed, and them over the period of an hour the memory usage climbed to 95MB)
• Interface is almost identical to that of Firefox 2.0
• The browser passes the Acid 2 test with flying colors

In conclusion, it looks and feels a lot like Firefox 2.0.  I hope that as the project progresses that it will become faster and more lightweight browser.  I also hope to see the back of the memory leak that's plaguing Firefox 2.0.

The release notes for Gran Paradiso also have the following notes which might be of interest to some readers:

• Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME are no longer supported platforms
• OS X 10.2 is no longer supported, and OS X 10.3.9 or higher is recommended

So Firefox 3.0 will represent the end of the line for a number of operating systems (which probably need to be put to rest anyway, especially Windows 95, 98 and ME). 

What would you loke to see from Firefox 3.0?