Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 (soon to be Firefox 3.5)

[Quantum]

Beta 3 has finally been released. Slowed down by the huge effort gone in to it's new JavaScript Engine called Tracemonkey making sure it works well, reduced crashes and no performance regressions. There shall be at least a beta 4 before final release and it will be called Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, the version bump is to represent how much has gone in to this release.

You can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html


New features include:

• A much improved faster Javascript engine
• Improved tear away tabs (drag a tab off the window or in to the content and it'll make a new window)
• Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.
• Granular options for history clearing, choose last 1 hour, last day etc..
• Improvements to web worker thread support.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Many standards improvement support from CSS2, CSS3, <video> and <audio> elements from HTML5 and the drag and drop API
• Downloadable font support from @font-face in CSS3
• SVG transformations, even on standard HTML elements

Beta 2 continues from beta 1 and we now expect a beta 3.

New features include:

• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you’ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!
• New functions that make it easy to remove the history of your past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website.
• New support for web worker threads. (faster processing of multiple files at once)
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content. (much faster javascript!)
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.
• Tear away tabs (drag tabs and they turn in to a new window)

Firefox seems to have settled to 93/100 on the Acid 3 test and it looks like it's going to stay there till Firefox 3.2. Tear away tabs at the moment are too sensitive and some old tab dragging behavior is lost, this is expected to be fixed for beta 3.

You can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Mozilla has decided to make an interim step before Firefox 4 (which is going to have some massive code changes), so has created a fast paced development cycle for a Firefox 3.1. There's going to be at least 2 betas, maybe 3, but looking at a much shorter testing time than Firefox 3 as projects have been smaller and more pragmatical to get a final version out hopefully for before Christmas.

New features include:

• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to (ctrl + Tab is the short cut)
• Tab bar on by default to allow more obvious tabbing features like being able to drag a tab from 1 window to another (expect to be able to tear away a tab to it's own window in beta 2)
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search (for example if you use * before searching you just search bookmarks)
• Support for HTML5 <audio> and <video> tag, with native OGG/Theora support an open source codec with the major example of wikimedia using it
• Support for the geolocation specification, expect more on this in beta 2 which will be able to calculate your position through local wi-fi spots
• Allowing multiple bookmarks to be tagged at the same time

You can dowload here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Things to expect in beta 2:

Much faster JavaScript engine when JIT is enabled
about:sessionrestore to allow much finer control over session restore
Yet further improvement in the Acid 3 score (currently 89/100 in beta 1 with no visual errors, score 90/100 on the trunk, this could rise to 97/100 for Firefox 3.1).

[chip!]

awesome.. thanks for the heads up.

ps, do you know if they are doing portable versions for these intern versions?

[Quantum]

awesome.. thanks for the heads up.

ps, do you know if they are doing portable versions for these intern versions?

The portable version isn't created by Mozilla it's just done by that portable website. I imagine they'll re-do it given all you essentially have to do is add a 3 line JavaScript file in to the Firefox directory to make it portable (I used to do that before I heard someone made it portable), I don't remember what to write off the top of my head so I'll have a look around and see if I can make a guide, but I imagine the website will have it out soon.

P.S made an error above the shortcut to preview tabs is ctrl + tab not ctrl + t, updated it now

[Quantum]

Updated for beta 2.

[Quantum]

Updated to Beta 3.

[TheHalf™]

Yea, I acquired the Beta version post haste (that's today). Version 3.0.7 was a bit choppy and I was having difficulties with web pages heavy in Flash to load properly and quickly; that's why I installed Fasterfox on that previous version.

Also I'd like to point out that 3D websites were major choppy with the other version of Firefox, so anyone in here with this version of Firefox 3.1b3 to go over to here---->http://convivea.com/forums/index.php?topic=32.msg227#msg227 and give it a try. As always good looking Quantum.

TheHalf™

[TheHalf™]

Opps here is my first problem, as I was exiting Convivea a drop down window from the tab bar informed me that this page was prevented from reloading (an image is posted below) and as I remember all my personal options in the browser settings hasn't changed. take a look and give me some feedback.

TheHalf™

[Quantum]

Odd, I've never seen that before. Is it a problem?

Your "3D Websites" seems to be a plug-in, so I guess it's just how well the Firefox part of the plug-in is written and not really Firefox that determines if it'll be choppy or not.

[TheHalf™]

Odd, I've never seen that before. Is it a problem?

Your "3D Websites" seems to be a plug-in, so I guess it's just how well the Firefox part of the plug-in is written and not really Firefox that determines if it'll be choppy or not.

Well it can be most annoying but after some research I did noticed that the browser settings had changed after installing this beta version. Take a look at the image below and where the orange square is unchecked is where I negated the problem.

TheHalf™

[TheHalf™]

Mozilla patches a dozen Firefox vulnerabilities.

Mozilla has shipped a refresh of its flagship Firefox browser to fix a dozen documented vulnerabilities that expose users to URL spoofing, cross-site scripting, code injection and code execution attacks.

Complete story: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3193&tag=nl.e550

Now if you click on the 'check for updates' in Firefox you will see the image below.

TheHalf™

[Quantum]

TheHalf, you seem to be getting the 3.0.10 update and the 3.5 beta 4 updates mixed up. I'll make a post about the 3.5 beta 4 updates shortly.

[DrunKnJSD]

TheHalf, you seem to be getting the 3.0.10 update and the 3.5 beta 4 updates mixed up. I'll make a post about the 3.5 beta 4 updates shortly.

I prefer Firefox 3.0.10 because it's working smoothly. I don't like beta because it mostly contains  many errors & bugs!

[Bovski]

Didn't have much luck with 3.0.x or 3.5.x Both been crashing all the time.

Been using Minefield 3.6a1Pre with out any problems.

[Quantum]

Didn't have much luck with 3.0.x or 3.5.x Both been crashing all the time.

Been using Minefield 3.6a1Pre with out any problems.

Odd, you tried clean profile / safe mode / disabling all your add-ons?

Sorry, I've not done a bit update, but 3.5 beta 4 wasn't a big feature release I struggled compiling an "interesting" list, there's just a lot of polish and stability fixes. I'll try and get something done before RC1 comes out.

Also, if anyone's interested, they're looking at updating the Firefox icon slightly for this version: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/

[TheHalf™]

Firefox Beta 4 is now available for download but as of right now I'll pass it by.

Firefox Beta 4---> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

Anyone here use Google with Firefox or Google alone? I get agitated when I type in a letter and my whole page begins to show possible suggestions.

Google/Firefox---> http://www.google.com/firefox

TheHalf™