Firefox 3 Beta 4 is 5x faster than IE7, 3x faster than FF2

The almost-but-not-quite-final beta of Firefox 3 (FF3 beta 4) is now available for download. The most noticeable improvement is speed. In some tests, it's three times faster than Firefox 2 (meaning the test completes in 1/3 the time), and a whopping five times faster than IE 7:

Other improvements in beta 4 include:

• Smarter location bar that tunes itself to your browsing habits. As you type in part of the URL it will offer suggestions based on where you've been before.
• Better native look-n-feel on Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux. This includes continuing work on icons, menus, native controls.
• Zoom just the text or the whole page. Zooming the text was one feature I missed from Firefox 2.
• Reduced memory usage. This is the main reason I switched to Firefox 3 for my everyday use. The old version often became unstable after a long session with many tabs open.

To see all the changes made so far in Firefox 3 read this excellent summary by Percy Cabello or see the release notes. Mozilla watchers expect one more beta before the production version is released.