Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Final

30 June, 2009

After all the betas and release candidates the final version of Firefox 3.5 is out. The final which in changes is similar to the RC versions except for a few final tweaks and bug fixes does have a lot of new additions and important features when compared to the older 3.0.xx version. The main changes are as follows;

Private Browsing
A new JavaScript engine
Location Aware Browsing
Support for Native JSON and web worker threads
New improved Gecko layout engine

And support for new technologies such as HTML5 video support, JavaScript query selectors,some new CSS properties and SVG transforms. It also includes session managing options, filters to the AwesomeBar, and new tab features(i.e tabtearing)

Private Browsing mode in Firefox is pretty much the same as Google chrome’s Incognito mode and IE 8’s In Private Browsing but its an addition that will keep the the users from changing to other browsers. To turn on private browsing go to tools and click Private Browsing. And to learn what exactly this privacy feature does check out Mozilla’s information page on Private Browsing.

As for the JavaScript engine it uses Mozilla’s newest, called TraceMonkey which add native code-completion Mozilla’s JavaScript engine, resulting in a huge in the browser and web content.

Location Aware Browsing adds the ability to tell websites where your location is. This help the user to browse for faculties and services in your area. It must be mentioned that this feature does not in anyway compromise your privacy. This feature is optional and even though no information is sent without your permission if you wish to disable this feature permanently it can be done by following these steps:

In the URL bar, type about:config
Type geo.enabled
Double click on the geo.enabled preference

Improvements to the Gecko rendering engine has given Firefox 3.5 a huge increase in web content rendering, in simple terms web pages should load faster than the old versions. As for the other features like Native JSON,Web worker threads and support for new technologies that are important to designers and developers, a detailed information page can be found at the Mozilla developer center.

At the moment Firefox has still not been added to the main page but its available through their FTP servers. The download speed is very slow so if you have problems downloading use the mirror provided (only for 32 bit English).

You can get Firefox from their Official page once they have updated it… or use the links below…

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 (All languages-Win32)

Firefox 3.5 (Other Operating Systems)

Firefox 3.5 (EN-US) | Mirror(RS)

Release Notes