Wouldn't you know it? I installed the new Firefox beta, and took two days to explore it and write a review. During those two days, Firefox crashed three or four times on my Mac, so I dutifully reported that Firefox beta 2 was less stable than beta 1. We posted the review a couple of days ago -- and Firefox hasn't crashed on me since.

I suspect the problem may have been something having to do with initializing the software.

I'm quite impressed with the responsiveness of the Firefox team. When I did my review of FF3B1 in November, I reported on a couple of stability problems, and Firefox contacted me right away to explain the problem and report on a fix. They weren't responding to my attempt to contact them, either -- they read the article on their own and took it on themselves to respond.

And they did it again with the FF3B2 review. Unfortunately, this time they couldn't provide a fix -- mainly because the problem did not seem to be reproducible and seems to have gone away on its own.

Meanwhile, two of my favorite Firefox extensions are now compatible with the beta of the new version: 1Password is a combined password manager, and autofill utility for automatically filling out forms with preprogrammed values. It also remembers my credit-card numbers. It's about $30, and I consider it essential Mac software. And now it works with Firefox 3.

Likewise, Scrapbook is software for downloading, indexing, and filing individual Web pages and whole sites for later review. I've only been using this one a few days, but I love it already; I frequently find myself writing blog posts or articles, thinking I should link to an article or blog I read several months ago on another site, and then wasting time Googling to find the article again.