After much hand-wringing over the number of known bugs still remaining in Firefox 3, the software is now in the public domain and now, officially, becomes a target for critics and rallying point for fans. While this isn't a full review, some features are obvious from the get-go:

The beta downloaded and installed in about five minutes on a Windows XP notebook running an Intel Core Duo processor and 1 GB of memory. It seemlessly and painlessly migrated over bookmarks and favicons from Firefox 2, and has largely the same look and feel as the earlier Firefox. A couple of features caught the eye right away: Under "tools," there's now an error console and an option to "Clear Private Data" with one click. That lets you very quickly get rid of your browsing history, download history, saved form and search history, cache, cookies, saved passwords and authenticated sessions.

Also, the bookmark manager is now called a "Places Organizer," with an easier view and better drag-and-drop capability for URLs and folders.

Some potential problems surface quickly, however. If you use Yahoo's new mail format, for example, Firefox 3 Beta 1 appears to have a problem with it. "Yahoo! Mail experienced a login error:," is the message upon trying to access an account. The error message further explains that a "node cannot be used in a document other than the one it which it was created." If you want to use Yahoo mail, you're sent back to the "Classic" version in the Firefox beta.

Mozillazine notes, "The beta includes updates to the default theme, the new places site management features, improved security architecture, and Gecko 1.9."

According to the release notes, the beta includes malware protection, web forgery protection, anti-virus integration and is easier to use. Mozilla said its download manager makes it easier to find the files you downloaded, provides easier add-on installation and provides easier password management, in addition to a bunch of other features. More personalization includes a "Smart Places Folder" and a bookmark and history organizer.

It's too early to tell how Mozilla addresses memory leak issues, but after ten minutes with six tabs up and working, Firefox 3 Beta 1 is using about 66,000 K of memory - - but that number could change as the day goes on.

Mozilla's Firefox is currently the world's Number 2 browser to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but none of the major PC makers pre-loads it into Windows-based systems as they do with IE. Mozilla developers expect about 250 million users of Firefox 3 during the lifetime of the software. The organization acknowledges about 700 known issues remain to be fixed in Beta 1.