Firefox 3 moves into Alpha 6

Mountain View (CA) - Less than a month after Alpha 5 went into developers’ hands, the next version of the Firefox preview build is now available.

The browser’s SQLite engine has been updated to version 3.3.17. In addition, the coding for managing cookies has been improved to allow 5% faster execution.

Other fixes include patching a problem with the download manager, which caused display errors with large file sizes, and "various Places fixes".

"Places" is the Firefox 3 system in charge of bookmarks, history, and other stored information, designed to make it easier for users to locate sites they’ve previously visited.

In terms of new features, the new Alpha build gives users the ability to have a persistent "Restart Firefox" button on the browser window. A new kill switch dialog box is also available to close the browser if there are termination problems. Users can also customize text size on a site-by-site basis.

Firefox 3 Alpha 6 (code named Gran Paradiso) is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and can be downloaded from Mozilla’s website.