Linux Solutions

Mozilla, creator of the world’s second most popular browser – Firefox, has released the second beta for the upcoming Firefox 3.1 browser to testers on Monday. This new release arrives hot on the heels of the last beta, released 7 weeks ago. The browser is available in 54 languages, Firefox 3.1 beta 2 includes some major changes compared to previous versions according to Mike Beltzner, who is involved in the development of Firefox.

“It’s not even been six months since we released Firefox 3 but what we’ve noticed is that the Web continues to move really, really quickly, and so do we. So, even before the release of Firefox 3, we’d already been working on what will become the next release of Firefox and when we took stock a couple of months after the release, we realized that we’ve done a couple of really, really impressive and incredible things,” he said

Beltzner said that the biggest difference to the browser is the improvement in speed. Firefox 2 was fast, Firefox 3 was faster and 3.1 looks to have the same sort of improvement, he claims.

“We’re going to be shipping a new Javascript engine called ‘TraceMonkey’ that’s going to really improve the performance of the browser, especially for Web applications, but overall throughout the Web you should start feeling once again a browser even faster than Firefox 3. The idea was instead of waiting for a long release cycle we’d make sure we got some of these improvements into the hands of users as soon as possible,” he said excitedly.

The introduction of “Private Browsing Mode”, more affectionately known as Pr0n Mode, allows users to browse the internet without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind them.

“[Firefox beta 3.1] has a more granular set of history deletion tools. It used to be that if you wanted to clear the history of your browser it was an all-or-nothing affair. Now you can say, ‘You know what, just erase the last couple hours of browsing history,’ or even ‘I want all traces of this particular Web site erased,’” Bletzner spelled out to LinuxInsider (who get all the best interviews).

As well as TraceMonkey, Mozilla has included some other notable enhancements, Beltzner said. Web Worker Thread is a technology layer improvement that allows developers to move some of the heavy processing of their sites away from the browser, reducing the weight on the browser, and improving performance. Other changes include improved Web Rendering support, added support for Acid3 and CSS properties, as well as the completion of the HTML 5 offline specifications. Results from the previous beta have seen Mozilla remove the irritating tap-switching and preview problems, which is great to see.

How the new browser will fare against the new Internet Explorer will be interesting to see. Comparisons have already been drawn between the Pr0n Mode and IE 8’s InPrivate function. And with the beta testers in full swing by now, Mozilla need to make sure everything works perfect if they want to lure people off of the world’s worst browser – Internet Explorer. What? You didn’t expect an impartial article on a Linux blog did you?