The hardworking writers and editors at SlipperyBrick are definite Firefox fans. However, even we will admit that our favorite web browser could use some tweaks. We were pleased to hear about the new lineup of Firefox features for version 3. We distilled the requirements document from the developer meeting held this week and came up with the most interesting and promising features.

Mandatory

• Improve the Add-On user Experience
• Simplify Add-on Installation
• Ability to install Ad-on in 3 or fewer mouse clicks (nice!)
• Add-on configuration from the main Firefox application
• Make updates availability more visible
• Possibly install Add-ons without a restart (This would be awesome!)
• Improve Bookmarks
• Built in synchronization capability (we use Foxmarks
  already)
• User notes about bookmarks
• Improved Support for Plugins (Flash, Java, Quicktime, etc)
• Better support for locating and installing plug-ins (this would be a big plus as I couldn’t get a Quicktime site, the U.S. patent office site, to work properly in Firefox.  It uses Quicktime to display images for some reason.  Apparantly, we need our patent images tied up in a buggy proprietary system. I digress…)
• Installation via MSI Package  An msi package is the default Windows installer.  This is a major roadblock for getting Firefox into the enterprise because most major companies use msi based installers to distribute software.  (I know I used to do it for several years)
• Better Print Support
• Better WYSIWYG support (Firefox can really mangle printed pages)
• Better Print Preview
• Improved Identity Management
• Support Microsoft CardSpace (a Microsoft security scheme for the intranet)
• Support OpenID (an internet service for verifying a
  user’s identity)
• Better user experience
• Easier problem reporting
• Rapid feedback from users

Highly Desirable

• Privacy mode (I’m guessing for surfing p0rn)
• Save pages as PDF (We use PDFCreator and just print to it to save a page)
• Phishing Protection (IE7 already has this)

Nice to Have

• Extended Download History
•  Unified bookmark, history and subscription manager
• Text Search of History (This sounds nice)
•  Parental Controls
• Tab Grouping
• Windows Group Policy management (for enterprise users)

Our Take

This list is impressive.  There are a lot of nice features but not anything that really stands out as a “killer” feature.  One thing I would like to see is improved memory usage and performance.  Why does Firefox take 10 seconds to start and consume 200 MB of memory?