FireFox 3.5 Released Today

The new and improved FireFox, the one we’ve all been waiting for, finally came out of the gate today.

There’s ton of new feature which promise to make this the best FireFox ever.

New features for end users:

Location aware browsing

If you choose, you may allow Firefox 3.5 to share information about your current location with web sites.  Firefox 3.5 can use information about the network you’re connected to to share your location. Of course, it asks for your permission before doing so, to ensure your privacy.

Open audio and video support

Firefox 3.5 supports embedded video and audio using the open Ogg format, as well as WAV for audio. No plugins, no confusing error messages about needing to install something or other that turns out not to be available on your platform anyway.

Local data storage

Web applications can now use Web Storage’s local storage capabilities to store data on your computer.  This is great for anything from site preferences to more complex data.

Private Browsing

Need to use someone else’s computer? Switch on Private Browsing mode and nothing will be recorded about your session, including cookies, history, and any other potentially private information.

Better privacy controls

The Privacy preference pane has been completely redesigned to offer users more control over their private information. Users can choose to retain or discard anything including history information, cookies, downloads, and form field information.  In addition, users can specify whether or not to include history and/or bookmarks in the location bar’s automated suggestions, so you can keep private web addresses from popping up unexpectedly while typing in the location bar.

Faster JavaScript performance

JavaScript, the “J” in “AJAX,” is sped up dramatically in Firefox 3.5 with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.  Web applications are much faster than in Firefox 3.

Faster page rendering

Web content draws faster in Firefox 3.5, thanks to technologies such as “speculative parsing.” Your users don’t need to know what it means, other than “it makes things draw faster.”

Download at: FileHippo

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