Mozilla has released its latest version of the popular browser, and although on the surface it looks very similar it has some very nice improvements over the previous release.

Adding a bookmark is now as simple as clicking the empty star in the address bar. Click the star again – which turns yellow to indicate a bookmarked page – and you’re presented with a new option to add tags. You can add as many comma-separated tags as necessary to each of your bookmarks.

The new system proves its worth when you come to find your bookmarks. Tags can now be typed directly into the location bar (nicknamed the “Awesome bar”) so that when you type “hotels” for example, all the bookmarks that have been tagged with that word appear in a scrollable, drop-down list.

“The Awesome Bar”  certainly has some impressive features.. as well as finding your tagged bookmarks, enter a word, ‘paros’ for example, and you’ll be presented with a drop-down list of all the sites you’ve previously visited with the word paros in the URL (i.e. www.paros-online.com) or with paros in the site’s title tag (e.g. .Taste of Paros).

The word you’re searching for is highlighted – either in the URL or the name of the site – in the drop-down list, making it easier to find the relevant site at-a-glance.

It’s an excellent way to find sites in your browsing history – far easier than digging through the History sidebar. And, after  using it for a while, the Awesome Bar quickly replaced Google as a way of finding those sites I remembered visiting a few weeks ago, but couldn’t remember the name of.

Behind the scenes, Firefox 3 offers greater security, including blacklisting sites that are known to contain spyware.

To find out more and download Firefox click here.