Firefox 3 debuted today to a grand response – by 10:30PM EST, the popular open source browser had been downloaded 2,751,944 times.

No, we are not surprised. We’ve been using Firefox for years. And happily, may we add.

Here are some of the highlights of Firefox 3:

* Offers over 15,000 improvements, including the smart location bar, malware protection, and lots of under the hood work to boost speed and performance of the browser

* Available today in approximately 50 languages

* Two to three times faster than its predecessor

* Built on top of the powerful new Gecko 1.9 platform

* Uses less memory while it’s running

  Firefox