As I am writing this, Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 just came out for the Mac an It has also been recently announced that the final version will be ready for download on Tuesday, June 17. As a long-time Safari user, this marks the week that I am finally ditching Safari and will be using Firefox 3 as my primary browser.

I have always been a Safari user ever since I got my first Mac. It has an excellent user interface and is blazingly fast. Minor annoyances such as not remembering tabs on exit and the lack of option to open new windows in tabs were fixed by Saft, an excellent Safari plugin. However, I’ve been experiencing lots of lockups lately which will, of course, cause the Spinning Beachball of Death to appear. I don’t really know if the reason for this is the website I am visiting, Safari itself or Saft, all I know is it happens often enough that writing long paragraphs in textareas makes me feel uneasy. That finally made me download the latest Firefox 3 RC.

All problems I had with Firefox 2 had been fixed in the new version. The user interface now feels like it belongs to a Mac desktop and the huge drop in memory usage makes it much snappier. The new address bar is amazing as I don’t even have to remember the domain of the site that I went to but few words from the page’s title. Starring a bookmark is even more useful as I use it quite extensively in Gmail and Google Reader so the concept can easily be applied to any websites that I stumble on.

There are some habits that I had to forego which hopefully can be fixed by Add-ons. Managing tabs is not as easy as it is in Safari. Sure, you can still arrange tab orders but you cannot drag out a tab to open it in another window or combine it with tabs from other windows. Syncing bookmarks to my iPhone does not work anymore as iTunes will only sync to Safari on a Mac. A possible solution, Bookit from Everyday Software is not yet updated to work with Firefox 3. For now, bookmarking links in del.icio.us is a temporary fix.

One particularly useful add-on for those who are used to contextual “go to” link on Safari is Fetch Text URL by Jeff Chien. I’m sure you have encountered some links which are not clickable and what this add-on does is add items to your right-click menu and gives you the option to open it in a new tab, current tab or new window.

I’m sure you’ll find even more reasons to use Firefox 3 over Safari. Safari is a great browser but the new version of Firefox 3, with its significant enhancements, deserves the previous dock space even more. Either you’re already using Firefox or are planning to switch, remember that the final release of Firefox 3 is due on June 17. You can pledge your support to download it on that day and help set a Guinness World Record right here.