Firefox 3.1 Beta

[7thSeal]

It seems Firefox will be releasing 3.1 Alpha version in July and moving to beta by August. Final version looks to be targeted first quarter of 2009 (possibly last quarter of this year).

Link

Mozilla listed some of the improvements it hopes to slot into Firefox 3.1, including changes to the revamped bookmarking that debuted in 3.0 and modifications to the new amped-up location bar.

[framaris]

Firefox 3.1 schedule: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3.1/Schedule

Open source audio and video codec support: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozil...rd-91432.shtml

[Koroush Ghazi]

Arstechnica has released this article which looks at Firefox 3.1's new Javascript engine - apparently it's even faster than the Chrome Browser's V8 Javascript engine:




These optimizations are in the latest nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 Alpha if anyone wants to try them. At the moment there is no set release date for Firefox 3.1 final - framaris has posted the current schedule link above.

[sproaty]

Shame they only compared these 2, I think a comparison with the current FireFox3 would put things into perspective better.

[Whizzer]

Agreed, though the JavaScript doesn't define the speed of a browser by itself. There's no doubt more to it than that. Firefox 3.1 likely won't be the holy grail all tech savvy web users would like to see, but now that there's 5 browsers vying for the biggest piece of the pie, I think browsers will get better and better (and also more and more bloated with privacy invading features).

[macel]

Just a word of "warning" for those who are looking forward to pitting the new Firefox alpha 2 against Chrome & V8, the upcoming Firefox alpha release does not come with the TraceMonkey patches. TraceMonkey started to land after they had already split the alpha2 for QA.

While javascript performance is not all there is, it is a significant part of the infamous web 2.0. Both Mozilla and Google (also Apple with their SquirrelFish) see web apps as a huge thing and javascript/ajax performance is crucial for their future.

[l0k0]

It appears Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is available for public download.

Lifehacker has an informative article about their first impressions. Looks like a nice improvement, despite the fact that some features aren't incorporated in yet, but nothing revolutionary or anything.

Upon further searching, I found this. The second to last file on the page with the October 14th time stamp should be what you are looking for, although I haven't tried it yet myself.

[7thSeal]

I dug up some more information on it. Link

From what I've read the beta version is making some headway speed wise.

Using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test, Firefox 3.1 beta 1 completed the test in 2787.6 milliseconds--about twice as fast as the current stable release, Firefox 3.0.3, which clocked in at 5446.6 ms.

Looking forward to the final release.

[framaris]

Firefox 3.1 will add a private browsing feature: http://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2008-11...owsing-firefox

Private Browsing aims to help you make sure that your web browsing activities don't leave any trace on your own computer. It is very important to note that Private Browsing is not a tool to keep you anonymous from websites or your ISP, or for example protect you from all kinds of spyware applications which use sophisticated techniques to intercept your online traffic. Private Browsing is only about making sure that Firefox doesn't store any data which can be used to trace your online activities, no more, no less.

It is looking like this is aimed for porn users ....

[framaris]

Like in Chrome and Safari, Firefox 3.1 will have tab tearing function, though this is not really useful to me but it seems to be an answer for ppls that liked it in other browser.
http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10098552-12.html