Firefox 3.5 is Quite Impressive
July 2, 2009
I just installed Firefox 3.5 – the latest stable release of Mozilla Firefox. Some really exciting features have found their way into the latest version. A complete list of new features can be found in the official release notes. Also a list of changes and additions for web developers can be found at the Mozilla Development Center (MDC).
Subtle enhancement for end users
From a front end users perspective the changes are quite subtle but very interesting. The two noticeable features are private browsing mode and location awareness. Private browsing is nothing new and could be achieved by using add-ons but having this feature built in is nice. You can also tell the browser to forget the last 1 hour or day of surfing activities. Very nice indeed. The other exciting feature is location awareness. Allowing Firefox to share you’re location allows certain websites like Flickr to provide better content. Unfortunately my ISP (BSNL) apparently doesn’t allow my actual IP address to be visible to the outside world. So according to Flickr my location is in another state. For people who are using wireless connections I think the results will be much better. However if you’re ISP doesn’t reveal your actual IP address then location awareness will not work well. Another welcome improvement is with regards to speed – Firefox now seems a lot more zippier then before and we all like speed ups.
Goodies for web developers
From a web developers perspective I think the Firefox team have done a fantastic job! Better support for the new HTML 5 was expected. Firefox now includes support for HTML 5 <video> and <audio> tags. These tags allow you to include video and audio content without the end user requiring any plugins. Also included is the new javascript engine – TraceMonkey which is expected to speed up web applications especially the likes of Gmail and other JS based web applications. In conclusion this is a very nice release and everybody who uses Firefox must upgrade! If you don’t use Firefox – give it a shot! You might just like it.