Firefox 3.5 Beta 3 is out
Posted by Percy Cabello on March 16th, 2009 • Tags:
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Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5 Beta 3, the third public development release of the next major upgrade of Mozilla’s web browser. Because the decision to increase the version number from 3.1 to 3.5 to reflect the significant number of new features and improvements came very late in this beta cycle, the installers are labeled as Firefox 3.1 Beta 3.

There are a few new and improved features in this third beta:

  • A new option to easily delete all traces of visiting a certain web site: in the Library, right click on a History item and select Forget About This Site.
  • Some minor but very welcome improvements to the themes. On Windows Vista, the ugly gray label backgrounds in some dialogs are finally gone.
  • The new tab button is now placed next to the last tab instead of the far right of the tab bar, making it more discoverable.
  • Native support for JSON, a widely used data format that will ease the task of loading data to web applications.
  • Minor retouches to the native audio and video playback controls.
  • Improvements to the TraceMonkey JavaScript optimizer and Gecko, the rendering engine.

For the complete details on what’s new in Firefox 3.5, check my previous review of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.

There will be a fourth beta sporting the new version number, 3.5, and will most likely include a few additions labeled as sprints for Firefox 3.5 like a summary of your browsing habits called about:me, tab matches in the awesome bar, better error pages for common network errors, smarter behavior when bookmarking a site so that it defaults to the last edited field, the ability to clear history by time ranges (in beta 3 it’s only possible for periods ending in the present), and a few others.

You can get Firefox 3.5 Beta 3, available for Linux, Windows and Mac, in 64 languages, from Firefox beta download page.

Comments
Jens said on March 16, 2009, 8:40 pm:

Only the installers? Everything I read up until now said that beta3 would be FF 3.1 beta3! So when was _this_ changed?

Nick Thomas said on March 16, 2009, 9:57 pm:

The sequence really is
3.1b2 –> 3.1b3 –> 3.5b4 –> …
I think it’s confusing to say 3.5b3, eg the first comment.

Matson said on March 17, 2009, 8:38 am:

Then why just call label it as fx3.5?

J. McNair said on March 17, 2009, 9:49 am:

Thanks for the heads up, tried it on the home PC. Tracemonkey is fast. Like, Google Chrome/Safari 4 fast. Enabled it on Chrome and Content using about:config and got no strange crashes or errors in 2 hours of “power browsing”.

Once again, Mozilla gives me reasons not to switch. Kudos to them for also endeavouring to give users very FINE control over their personal data.

Still, I really hope the feature sprints result in a stable, usable and functional Fx 3.5.0. Fx 3 was very ambitious but came together nicely, I hope they haven’t overreached with Fx 3.5.

Chris said on March 17, 2009, 11:32 am:

Is TraceMonkey enabled in Beta 3, or do I need to go the old route and enable it through about:config? I’d really appreciate if anyone could set this straight, because no one has written about it. Thanks!

Jens said on March 17, 2009, 11:34 am:

Just look into about:config what the default setting is?

Mozilla lanza Firefox 3.5 beta 4 | FrikiLife said on March 17, 2009, 6:59 pm:

[...] incluido nuevas características entre ellas una optimización del motor JavaScript TraceMonkey y Gecko, el motor de renderizado. Para descargar esta nueva beta podemos dirigirnos a este link. [...]

Percy Cabello said on March 18, 2009, 8:25 pm:

Chris, it’s been enabled since Beta 2 at least.

Garret said on March 22, 2009, 5:50 pm:

what about integration of location and search bar and the smart location bar still shows results from bookmarks and history. FF3.5 don’t have the feature like ie8 like if one tab fails then it will take away the whole browser! The gui must be updated as well!
what do you think???