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Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for testing. The second beta of the next major Firefox version offers around 900 bug fixes over Beta 1, including several feature enhancements and fixes to improve speed, stability, security and memory usage.

Perhaps the most striking change is the redesigned Location Bar autocomplete menu, which now highlights which parts of the page title and/or URL match the entered text. The Downloads window has also been improved: amongst other tweaks, it displays the domain of the source site next to each completed download. The Places feature, which organises bookmarks and browser history, has also been enhanced, offering improved searching functionality and a new Smart Bookmarks folder on the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Linux users will appreciate the improved theme, which makes Firefox look more like a native GNOME application and makes use of GTK+ icons where available. Further changes to better integrate Firefox with the look and feel of the operating systems it runs on are planned before the final release.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 can be downloaded from the Firefox beta page. The Firefox 3 Beta 2 Release Notes have more details, including information about what's new in Firefox 3 and what's been improved in this specific milestone. The Mozilla Developer News weblog's announcement of Firefox 3 Beta 2 includes links of interest to developers. Mike "schrep" Schroepfer, the Mozilla Corporation's vice-president of engineering, has written a weblog post with links to lists of bugs fixed in Firefox 3 Beta 2.

Several websites have posted reviews of the new beta. Wired News has a screenshot-laden overview of Firefox 3 Beta 2, while Ars Technica describes Firefox 3 Beta 2 as "another very impressive release". Australian site iTWire notes the user interface changes and praises the navigation improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 2: "Unlike previous attempts at predicting where you want to go," the article says, "this latest beta really does a pretty darned good job of remembering and discerning your surfing habits." Finally, Mozilla Links has a detailed review of Firefox 3 Beta 2, including a lengthy list of changes.

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Marcia Knous writes: "The Mozilla QA team is interested in building a mailing list that we will use to communicate with community members interested in helping us test release candidate and developer builds. The primary goal of this testing will be to help identify regressions or issues before the final bits are shipped. Note: This is not intended to be a general beta program. Please visit http://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Community/Betatesters_Mailing_List to find out the details of what kinds of folks we are looking for, as well as additional information concerning the list.

"Our community is a valuable resource, and we hope to build a network of trusted testers who we can count on to help us make the web experience great for all of our users."

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An open-source project aims to use Mozilla code to develop a native mail application for Mac OS X users, doing for email what Camino did for the Web browser.

Correo, which is currently at version 0.3, is to Mozilla Thunderbird as Camino is to Mozilla Firefox. While Camino is a native Mac OS X browser built around the Gecko rendering engine, Correo is a native Mac mail client powered by Mozilla mail code. Like Camino, Correo eschews XUL in favour of a native Cocoa interface and aims to integrate closely with standard Mac OS X features such as the system-wide Address Book.

The mail client is being developed by Nick Kreeger. Though Correo is not an official Mozilla project, Nick Kreeger is no stranger to Mozilla development, having contributed download manager and feed detection patches to Camino. The Correo icons were created by Jon Hicks, who also does graphics work for Camino and created the Firefox and Thunderbird logos.

Correo is currently in the early stages of development. Features planned for future releases include a plugin architecture (allowing the development of extensions for functionality such as PDA synchronisation) and a tabbed window interface.

Correo 0.3 was released earlier this month and is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. Interested users can follow Nick Kreeger's weblog for development information.

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Mac OS X users can now download an early preview of the forthcoming Camino 1.6 browser. Major new features in Camino 1.6 Alpha 1 include a scrollable tab bar, improved AppleScript support and a software update feature.

As it's alpha release, Camino 1.6 Alpha 1 may be unstable and unsuitable for day-to-day use (in particular, there are known issues with pages not appearing to load after following links and with version 2.1 of the Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime plugin). Many users will probably want to stay with Camino 1.5.4.

Like Camino 1.5, Camino 1.6 Alpha 1 supports Mac OS X 10.3 and higher. It can downloaded from the Camino preview site. More complete details about the changes in the preview can be found in the Camino 1.6 Alpha 1 Release Notes.

The Camino roadmap describes Camino 1.6 as a "smaller follow-up release to Camino 1.5". Both 1.5 and 1.6 are based on Gecko 1.8, which is the same version of the Mozilla rendering engine as the one used in Mozilla Firefox 2.

The next major upgrade of Camino, version 2.0, will be based on Gecko 1.9, making it equivalent to the forthcoming Firefox 3. Like its Firefox cousin, Camino 2.0 will require Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, making Camino 1.6 the last release to support Mac OS X 10.3. (The final Camino version for Mac OS X 10.2 was August's Camino 1.0.6; no further Camino 1.0.x releases are planned, though Firefox 2 still supports the platform.)

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A minor upgrade to Camino, the native Mac OS X Mozilla-based browser, has been released. Camino 1.5.4 upgrades to version 1.8.1.11 of the Gecko rendering engine (the same version as the latest Mozilla Firefox release), which includes several security and stability fixes. The new release also improves compatibility with some DHTML websites, enhances performance and offers better ad-blocking functionality. In addition, it integrates better with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and includes several other small bug fixes.

Users of Mac OS X 10.3 and higher can download Camino 1.5.4 from the Camino website in either an English or a multi-language version. The Camino 1.5.4 Release Notes have more information.

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