It might be a little later than they were expecting, but Mozilla is today releasing Firefox 3, Beta 1 to the public. It is available for download.

Here are some of the highlights for Firefox 3:

• Gecko 1.9 rendering engine
• Enhanced security features to fight malware and phishing
• New download manager
• Vista Aero support
• Better integration with Mac OS X
• Bookmark tagging and simplified management of your bookmarks
• “Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged”.

The release notes go into far more detail on the changes. It will be interesting to see how improved the memory management is because I had had Firefox beef up to unbelievable amounts in system memory.

I have not yet had a chance to test it, but will do so soon. A look at CNET’s article about the new browser indicates that the browser is worthy of it’s “beta” status. So, bear in mind, this is a testing browser, freely available to anyone. Don’t expect it to be perfect.