After a year of work, Mozilla has released the second beta of Firefox 3. It’s much faster than Firefox 2, and has a better graphics and layout engine.
Also, Opera 9.5 is out as an alpha, which should be less stable than a beta release. Of the two, Opera is more sophisticated, the layout engine is more advanced, and the browser is probably faster. I don’t believe it has the plugins (adblock, flashblock et al.) that Firefox has, but it still might be a better bet.
Releases follow the following pattern: alpha=>beta=>release candidate=> full stable release, ready for production use. Firefox 3 went through 8 alpha releases before finally arriving at beta 1, and the current build is beta 2. As an Alpha, Opera will crash unpredictably, for unexplained reasons, and should not be used in a “production environment”. Nevertheless, here are the download links if you want to try them:
Firefox 3
Opera 9.5
A Couple of Next Generation Browsers
Listen to The Scott Horton Show
