Firefox 3 for Mac Makes Me Feel Better

Along with something in excess of 10 million other people, I downloaded the newly released Firefox 3 last night on my OS X box. (I'll upgrade my Windows XP installation down the road.)

I was immediately struck by how much more comfortable FF3 felt than FF2 ever has. At first, I couldn't figure out why. Then I noticed the buttons and other UI elements are Aqua-fied so that the browser now has a much more Mac-like feel. That is very cool and for some reason, it tickles me.

FF3 does seem faster and I do like the new intelligent browsing from what I've seen so far. The location box has been turned into a search object so that as I start typing a URL I'm not only seeing a list of URLs that start with those characters, but also recently visited pages that match the criteria. For example, if I type "mai", FF3 brings up my gmail link. Over time, this will probably change the way I browse, though it may cause problems for site owners whose users may not be as readily able to identify them from ever-complexifying lists.

Overall, first impression is very good.