Lunascape 5 Alpha: High-Speed All-in-One Browser (IE7 + Firefox 3 + Google Chrome)

Lunascape 5.0 Alpha Genesis provides a shortcut to jumping between Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox, without running any of the actual browsers. In all fairness, the Lunascape browser does not deliver Google Chrome Beta, Internet Explorer 8, or Firefox 3.1, but its does manage to bring to the table the next best thing, all the underlying rendering engines used by Google, Microsoft and Mozilla.

Instead of juggling multiple browsers in order to adapt to interoperability issues or to websites optimized for certain browsers, Lunascape 5.0 Alpha Genesis allows the users to seamlessly switch between the Trident, Gecko and WebKit, rendering engines for navigation tasks.

Furthermore, the Lunascape developers claim that they have beaten Chrome, Firefox 3.0.1, Opera 9.52, and Internet Explorer 7, in terms of JavaScript performance.

The following is a snapshot of the "Select Rendering Engine" panel that appears when you first install the new browser:

Lunascape 5 Alpha is for developers only and it has its problems. On the other hand, it looks very promising and I might personally shift to it when it proves to be more stable and continue to be the fastest web browser in the world.

Read Also:
Have it all: Lunascape, the browser with three engines (CNET)
Download Google Chrome, IE and Firefox Wrapped into One (Softpedia)

FoxTab: Firefox Add-on To 3D Browse Your Tabs

FoxTab provides a new fascinating and elegant method for finding and selecting a tab in the browser. FoxTab is designed to be suitable for many types of users, those with only few tabs opened and those out there who usually have tons of opened tabs to select from.

The idea behind FoxTab is to provide new visual methods for quick tab switching. It's a cross between Mac OS X's Expose, Windows Vista's Flip 3D, and the thumbnail view in Google Chrome. When you've got a lot of tabs open in Firefox, this offers a quick way to jump to the page you want without having to eyeball the name of each one.

There are 5 layouts which you can choose from:
Stack - Tabs are 3D-stacked one behind the other.
Wall - Tabs are displayed on a wall (similar to a TV store).
Grid - Tabs are aligned on a grid.
Row - Tabs are arranged horizontally.
Circle - Tabs are placed around a 3D circle.

FoxTab is an "experimental" add-on in Mozilla's directory, so you must be registered there to download it.

Read Also:
FoxTab turns your browser tabs into a spectacle (CNET News)
FoxTab Brings Innovative, Attractive Tab Switching to Firefox (Lifehacker)

Firefox Download Day 2008: To Set World Record For The Most Software Downloaded In 24 Hours

Mozilla is hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the most number of downloads of an application in a day, on the release of its Firefox 3 Web browser. There is currently no official Guinness World Record for the total number of downloads of an application in a day.

"This is the first record attempt of its kind so there is no set number. We'd really like to outdo the number of Firefox 2 downloads on its launch day, which was 1.6 million. Let's shoot for 5 million--the sky is the limit!", said Spread Firefox website.

There will be official participant certificates available for people participating in this campaign. A special form will be available on the Download Day Headquarters as soon as Firefox 3 launches and Download Day kicks off. Simply enter your name and select print for your very own certificate.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) had "fixes and improvements to platform features, to improve security, Web compatibility and stability", according to Mozilla. There are more than 175 million users of Firefox, which is available in more than 45 languages and used in more than 230 countries.

So are you in or out? As for myself, I'm in!

Read Also:
Download Day 2008 (Spread Firefox)
Will Mozilla get a world record for Firefox 3? (ZD Net)

FireFox Beta 4: Faster Browser & More Secure

On March 10, Mozilla released its latest beta version of the widely anticipated Firefox 3. Firefox 3.0 is dramatically faster than its predecessor and rivals -- the result of hundreds of performance improvements designed to make the open-source browser the best at running complex Web 2.0 applications, Mozilla Corp.'s chief developer said last week.

"We've been working on performance for a long time," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering. "Each beta of Firefox 3.0 got better. Beta 1 was better than Firefox 2.0, Beta 2 was better than Beta 1, and so on. Some of the big architectural changes [we've made] had begun paying off. Now we're at the point where we can turn the knob to get it to perform well."

Users say it's twice as fast as Safari, three times faster than IE. I have downloaded (Firefox 3 Beta 4) myself today and I tested it and I found it surprisingly even faster than (Firefox 3 Beta 2) let alone the latest version of (Firefox 2.0). Still alot of the Add-ons are not working on Beta 4 but this fact did not stop me from switching to Beta 4 ...

Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 36 languages from Mozilla's site. Firefox 3.0 is expected to be released June 2008.

Read Also:
Download Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 (Mozilla)
Mozilla speeds up Firefox (Computerworld)

Mozilla Weave: Syncs Firefox Between Multiple PCs

Mozilla is introducing Weave, a service that synchronizes your Firefox data (Bookmarks, preferences, customizations and passwords) between multiple devices (desktop, laptop, mobile). Weave is currently in its 0.1 version, so you can expect a few kinks here and there. It should look a little like Google Sync, but I hope that it will end up being better. Google's sync is nor perfect, some deleted links come back and so on. It is mostly OK however.

At the moment, Weave runs only on Firefox 3.0beta2 or higher.

Download here.

Read Also:
Introducing Weave (Mozilla Labs)
Weave syncs Firefox between multiple computers (Ubergizmo)