Mozilla seems to be making strides towards completing Firefox 3 before the second half of the year. Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 was released today in multiple languages, and according to Mozilla there are over 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility, providing platform and user interface enhancements, and resulting in the fastest Firefox ever.
As I commented on the blog earlier this week, Firefox 3 is on a great path for becoming the browser of choice for many. That's not to undermine other competitors like Opera and even IE, but let's just say that Firefox 3 is, or will be, a considerably better browser than Firefox 2. Besides speed, Mozilla is putting an emphasis on usability and the user interface, so three unique UIs are being developed for Windows, Mac and Linux versions so these are better integrated within the OS. Beta 5, according to the release notes, is showing further enhancements in this respect.