User experience

• Easier password management. An information bar at the top of the browser window now appears to allow you to save passwords after a successful login.
• Simplified add-on installation. You can now install extensions from third-party download sites in fewer clicks, thanks to the removal of the add-on download site whitelist.
• New Download Manager. The download manager makes it easier to locate your downloaded files.
• Resumable downloads. You can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
• Full page zoom. From the View menu and using keyboard shortcuts, you can now zoom in and out on the content of entire pages -- this scales not just the text but the layout and images as well.
• Tab scrolling and quickmenu. Tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu features.
• Save what you were doing. Firefox 3 prompts you to see if you'd like to save your current tabs when you exit Firefox.
• Optimized Open in Tabs behavior. Opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs instead of replacing the existing ones.
• Easier to resize location and search bars. You can now easily resize the location and search bars using a simple resize handle between them.
• Text selection improvements. You can now select multiple ranges of text using the Control (Command on Macintosh) key. Double-clicking and dragging now selects in "word-by-word" mode. Triple-clicking selects an entire paragraph.
• Find toolbar. The Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
• Plugin management. Users can now disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
• Integration with Windows Vista. Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.
• Integration with Mac OS X. Firefox now uses the Mac OS X spell checker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
• Star button. The new star button in the location bar lets you quickly add a new bookmark with a single click. A second click lets you file and tag your new bookmark.
• Tags. You can now associate keywords with your bookmarks to easily sort them by topic.
• Location bar and auto-complete. Type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history and bookmarks. Favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where the results are coming from.
• Smart Bookmarks folder. Firefox's new Smart Bookmarks folder offers quick access to your recently bookmarked and tagged places, as well as pages you visit frequently.
• Bookmarks and History Organizer. The new unified bookmarks and history organizer lets you easily search your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders for saving your frequent searches.
• Web-based protocol handlers. Web applications, such as your favorite web mail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is provided for other protocols as well. (Note that web applications do have to register themselves with Firefox before this will work.)
• Easy to use Download Actions. A new Applications preferences pane provides an improved user interface for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.
• Improved look and feel. Graphics and font handling have been improved to make web sites look better on your screen, including sharper text rendering and better support for fonts with ligatures and complex scripts. In addition, Mac and Linux (Gnome) users will find that Firefox feels more like a native application for their platform than ever, with a new, native, look and feel.
• Color management support. By setting the gfx.color_management.enabled preference in [about:config], you can ask Firefox to use the color profiles embedded in images to adjust the colors to match your computer's display.
• Offline support. Web applications can take advantage of new features to support being used even when you don't have an Internet connection.

IE Market Share

Security and privacy

• One-click site information. Want to know more about the site you're visiting? Click the site's icon in the location bar to see who owns it. Identify information is prominently displayed and easier than ever to understand.
• Malware protection. Firefox 3 warns you if you arrive at a web site that is known to install viruses, spyware, trojans, or other dangerous software (known as malware). You can see what the warning looks like by clicking here.
• Web forgery protection enhanced. Now when you visit a page that's suspected of being a forgery, you're shown a special page instead of the contents of the page with a warning. Click here to see what it looks like.
• Easier to understand SSL errors. The errors presented when an invalid SSL certificate is encountered have been clarified to make it easier to understand what the problem is.
• Out-of-date add-on protection. Firefox 3 now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and disables older, insecure versions.
• Secure add-on updates. Add-on update security has been improved by disallowing add-ons that use an insecure update mechanism.
• Anti-virus integration. Firefox 3 now informs anti-virus software when executable files are downloaded.
• Windows Vista parental controls support. Firefox 3 supports the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.

Performance

• Reliability. Firefox 3 now stores bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences in a transactionally secure database format. This means your data is protected against loss even if your system crashes.
• Speed. Firefox 3 has gotten a performance boost by completely replacing the part of the software that handles drawing to your screen, as well as to how page layout work is handled.
• Memory use reduced. Firefox 3 is more memory efficient than ever, with over 300 memory "leak" bugs fixed and new features to help automatically locate and dispose of leaked memory blocks.

The 28-page Global IT 2008 Market Outlook report released today by the Cambridge, Mass.-based company, predicts that U.S. business purchases of IT goods and services will grow by 2.8%, down from an expected 4.6% growth rate that Forrester predicted in December. The December number was a reduction from Forrester's original 2008 IT goods and services spending estimate made last October, when the company predicted 8% spending growth for the nation's businesses.

2008 Global IT Spending By Sector

• Software investment will do better than average. Forrester projects that global purchases of software products will grow by eight percent in 2008, down slightly from 11 percent last year, but still strong.
• Communications equipment investment will grow below the average. This sector will see 3 percent growth in 2008, down from much stronger growth of 12 percent in 2007.
• Computer equipment investment will see a similar slowdown in growth. Forrester foresees the growth in purchases of personal computers, servers, storage devices, and peripheral markets shifting down from 12 percent growth in 2007 to 4 percent this year.
• IT consulting and outsourcing services will expand. While demand for IT consulting and integration services will weaken, demand for IT outsourcing will increase by 9 percent this year.

2008 Global IT Spending By Region

• Europe grows slowly but steadily. In Western and Central Europe, growth will be 5 percent in 2008, following 15 percent growth the previous year, which was due largely to the dollar's drop against the Euro. Measured in Euros, 2008 growth will be 3 percent.
• Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa will see much stronger growth. The total market in this region is about one-sixth the size of the Western and Central European market with just $74 billion in IT purchases of goods and services in 2008. However, in oil and gas producing countries where the economy is stronger ? such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Nigeria ? IT purchases will grow at 12 percent in 2008, slightly lower than in 2007.
• Asia Pacific grows strongly in 2008, but not as well as 2007. Overall IT purchases in the Asia Pacific market will grow at 9 percent in 2008 (measured in dollars). That impressive growth rate is actually a slowdown from the 15 percent growth rate in 2007.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is top of mind with many businesses as they eagerly anticipate the increased development flexibility it bring, as well as its promise to speed business innovation.

However, much less discussed is the importance of IT operations for SOA success. In order to fully capitalize on the promise of SOA, IT operations must take a leadership role and team with enterprise architects before they design an SOA environment. Together, they can dramatically improve the IT environment?s effectiveness, security and manageability. When SOA-based applications are modeled, designed, assembled and tested with the SOA service management best practices throughout the lifecycle, companies can avoid operational service ?surprises? that bring costs up and drive quality down.

The crucial issues that IT operations should address before making the leap to a more dynamic, SOA-based environment:

•  Designing SOA-based services to improve service quality and reduce costs
• Incorporating security, compliance and audit controls
• Addressing monitoring of the end-to-end SOA deployment, including this new set of composite applications with service-to-service dependencies
• Addressing reporting on services in a business context or in terms of SLAs
• Ensuring that the right virtualization infrastructure is in place to support SOA
• Ensuring that the environment has the flexibility to adapt and track changes in case trending shows it?s in trouble
  

A separate report showing a modest revival in manufacturing at the beginning of 2008 took some sting out of the jobs loss but financial market participants were betting the Federal Reserve will have to keep cutting interest rates.

A series of contrasting reports whipsawed financial markets, leaving stock prices basically unchanged in early afternoon trading and bond prices mixed. The dollar recovered earlier losses to show modest gains against the euro.

Uncertainty about U.S. economic prospects was widespread.

The economy is very weak. It's on the edge of recession but the data are mixed enough so that you can't say a recession has begun, said the chief economist for PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. It is hanging by a thread but it has not been cut yet.

President George W. Bush acknowledged to a Kansas City, Missouri, audience there were troubling signs, serious signs that the economy is weakening and said Congress should speed up work on fiscal measures to get tax rebates to consumers.

Some 17,000 jobs were cut last month, sharply contrary to Wall Street analysts forecasts that 80,000 would be created. Decembers new-job total was revised up to 82,000 from 18,000 but October and November gains were revised lower.

At midmorning, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity rose to 50.7 in January from 48.4 in December, a sign of expansion. Consumer sentiment also rose, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan Survey, though not as much as had been forecast.

Search engine vendor

Helping Ask.com cause was the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington-based think tank that in a highly unusual move sent a letter Wednesday to the FTC urging it to quickly review and dismiss the complaint as unfounded (download PDF). In its letter, the CDT said that Ask.com had proactively addressed or is in the process of addressing the concerns previously raised by the petitioners that are within [its] control.

There were 1,122 new bids filed in the second of two rounds that was held in the afternoon. The total value of all provisional bid winners jumped 15% from the morning bidding round, when $2.4 billion was offered.

A total of 1,099 licenses can be bid upon, although only 902 had received bids by the end of the day.

All the bids are filed anonymously and bidders are prohibited from publicly discussing their bids in an effort to reduce anticompetitive behavior, the FCC said.

The policy of relying on market forces that the Bush administration claimed for seven years would propel broad access is irresponsible and insufficient, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), said in a statement on the CAP's Web site.

The result of administration neglect, industry intransigence and the incompetence of the Federal Communications Commission ... has left the American people and most policymakers with no clear idea where broad services are deployed in the U.S.