Bookmark Improvements New to Firefox 3

A new version of the Firefox browser, now available for testing mainly by developers, offers improvements on finding frequently visited Web sites and tools for running Web applications without a live Internet connection.

The Beta 1 version of Firefox 3 released this week still has problems, including the inability to run newer Web-mail programs from Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., and a final version for consumers isn't expected for several months.

But it offers a window on what's to come.

Many of its new features concern bookmarks, an area typically slow to change in the browsing world. You can now add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. And a new ''Places'' feature lets you quickly access sites you recently bookmarked or tagged and pages you visit frequently but haven't bookmarked.

There's also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list - similar to what's already available on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser.

Offline Web support - for example, letting you compose Web mail while offline to send after you're back online - is bound to come in handy as more software developers design programs to be run completely over the Internet, eliminating installation complexities.

But Web developers must add the Firefox offline functionality to their sites, so the usefulness of this feature will be limited at first.

Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn't disrupt the log-in process.

Versions for Windows, Mac and Linux computers were released Monday by Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people collectively develop free products, mostly as volunteers.