For eager beavers who want a taste of Firefox to come, Mozilla issued a second preview release Wednesday of the browser.

The software is based on version 1.9.3 of the Gecko browser engine that underlies Firefox. The current Firefox 3.6, and an update called Lorentz, are based on 1.9.2.

The headline feature of the new preview release is the same for Lorentz, though: out-of-process plug-ins, which means that Adobe Systems Flash Player and the like run in a separate memory compartment to protect the browser overall when they crash. Mozilla hopes people will see how well it works on an OOPP testing page.

However, according to a mailing list posting by Benjamin Smedberg, who’s working on the OOPP feature, it only works on Linux and Windows systems at present. “MacOS presents some unique challenges: the traditional drawing and interaction model for plug-ins is very difficult to do across processes. We are working on Mac support for multi-process plug-ins, and hope to have a preview of this work available soon,” Smedberg said in an OOPP blog post.

The new alpha release also should cool off some hot spots that consume a lot of labor when laying out Web pages, Smedberg said, thereby improving performance.

This month, the only good way to get Skype for Symbian on a Nokia Series 60 smartphone was to download it from Skype’s Web site or a site like CNET Download.com. On Wednesday, Skype announced that its VoIP calling app is now available through Nokia’s Ovi storefront.

The free Skype app for Symbian smartphones (which really should be renamed Skype for Nokia) has the usual Skype features of placing and receiving VoIP calls and support for IM and international SMS. Beyond the basics, this build is also capable of transferring files and integrating with the phone’s camera and address book. Skype is not be available on all Nokia models.

It is little surprising that it’s taken Skype so long to get its app listed in the Ovi catalog, especially since the Ovi store came into being in just about 10 months ago. Still, new and existing users will find it easier to keep the communications app up-to-date on their phone.