14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla's first major update since summer of its popular web browser Firefox has just landed after several months in development and more than a couple of delays, as it has been the norm at Mozilla. Now that Firefox 3.6 is finally here, let's see what's changed since the big 3.5 release. As you'd expect, the new features list runs a little shorter than the previous version, but there are plenty of things to be excited about.
If you've been following development of Firefox 3.6, there shouldn't be any surprise, but here's a rundown of the biggest updates, straight from Mozilla:
- Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart - Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins - Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way - Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field - Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time - Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames
The lightweight theming engine Personas has been in the works for less than a year now, over at Mozilla Labs and the end result can only be labeled a success. Evidence to this is the fact that the project has been elevated from being just an add-on by integrating the functionality into the browser. Personas enables users to easily customize the look of their browser, by choosing from over 40,000 designs available in the Personas online gallery. All this can be done with just a couple of clicks and changing the theme doesn't require a browser restart.
Most of the other features on the list don't really need an explanation. An automated plug-in update system saves the users a lot of hassle and potentially keeps them safer from malicious web sites. Any improvement in JavaScript performance can only be a good thing, especially now that add-ons get to benefit from the faster TraceMonkey engine.
The last one though is interesting, as Firefox is now the first browser to support full-screen HTML5 videos. Ironically, those who would benefit the most from this, those wanting to take advantage of the newly introduced HTML5 support in both YouTube and Vimeo, are out of luck as Firefox doesn't support the h.264 video codec that both sites use.
There are several other new features which Mozilla says are aimed at developers but which, in the end, benefit the users. The biggest one is support for the HTML5 File API which enables advanced local file manipulation using standard web technologies forgoing the need for a proprietary plugin like Flash or Java. This translates into much better uploading tools coming soon to a website near you.
Firefox 3.6 also represents a shift in Mozilla's development philosophy. Borrowing more than a few pages out of Chrome's playbook, Mozilla will drop the current release schedule and start introducing new features along with the regular small updates, i.e. the upcoming 3.6.1, 3.6.2 etc., which have been historically reserved for security and stability fixes. As a result, Firefox 3.7 is now out of the picture and the next big version update will be Firefox 4.0 coming sometime late this year or yearly 2011. But, judging by Mozilla's previous track record, 4.0 may be coming in spring 2011 or even later.
Firefox 3.6 for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 for Mac OS X is available for download here. Firefox 3.6 for Linux is available for download here.