It's always been a pleasure for us to be involved in the Mozilla Firefox project —€” we did the design and implementation of the official theme for Firefox 2 —€” so we feel the excitement pretty keenly when they start preparing a new release. The Mozco engine is humming along and you better start prepping your Firefox themed party treats, because Firefox 3 is almost here!

We didn't have a chance to work on this release, but we're really looking forward to a whole bunch of the new features. There's a great rundown on Mozilla Links' A Deeper Look at Firefox 3 (even if they did call our work "washed out" :), which is well worth the read if your browser blood runs red. Some of our favourites:

• The Proto native theme for Mac OS will finally give Firefox a truly platform native feel on our favourite operating system
• A number of changes to the toolbar and tabstrip which make a lot of sense from the perspective of optimizing the browser experience (the Go button is gone! Let the rejoicing begin!)
• Places, which will bring some sanity to our extensive bookmarks collections
• Blocking JavaScript from resizing windows without permission (and various other nefarious message control tactics — take that marketeers!)
• Our good friend Madhava's awesome work on the Add Ons manager which brings browsing and installation of Add Ons right into the browser chrome. It's about time!
• Our other good friend Johnathan's equally awesome work around security, site verification, and anti-phishing measures, summed up in Larry the Security Guy.

Beta 3 is out right now if you want to grab it and start playing. We're told that over 40% of popular Add Ons have been updated to work in it, but we're still holding out for a new version of Firebug before we make the switch entirely. I've got to go dig up my recipe for Foxy Cupcakes and find the punch bowl before the big fete, so you run along now and remember: don't hurt the web!