July 1st, 2009 at 5:44 pm

Mozilla releases Firefox 3.5

Today, Mozilla Corporation has released a new and better version of world’s most popular open source Web browser Firefox. This version of Firefox is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in more than 70 different languages. It is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform. According to Mozilla engineers the latest Firefox 3.5 is more than 2 times faster than Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2. Within 24 hours of this release, more than five millions copies are already downloaded from the official website of Firefox. United States is leading with more than 1.1 million copies. Other major download centers are UK (170,000), Germany (540,000) and France (225,000).

Some of the salient features of Firefox 3.5 are –

Speed — It is more than 2 times faster than previous version of Firefox. Going from IE to Firefox is like trading in your minivan for a sports car.
Support for Private Browsing — Now you can Surf the Web without leaving a single trace. It has introduced Private Browsing feature which when activated, users can surf any site at all with no trace remaining when they are finished: no cookies, no temp files, no forms information and no search information.
Support for new Web Technologies — Downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage.
Instant Web Site ID — If you are Want to be extra sure about a site’s legitimacy before making the payment then just you need to click on a site favicon for an instant identity overview. You can also check up on suspicious sites, avoid Web forgeries and make sure a site is what it claims to be.
Anti-Malware — Firefox protects you from viruses, worms, trojan horses and spyware. If you accidentally access an attack site, it will warn you away from the site and tell you why it isn’t safe to use.

Clear Recent History — You can clear all your private data or just your activity over the past few hours with a few quick clicks. You have full control over what to delete, and then your info is gone for good-on your own computer or the one at your local library.
Location-Aware Browsing — Now Firefox can tell websites where you’re located so you can find info that’s more relevant and more useful (for example, getting directions or finding restaurants near you).
Session Restore — You can restart the browser without losing your place after you install an add-on or software update. And, if Firefox or your computer unexpectedly closes, you don’t have to spend time recovering data or retracing your steps through the Web. If you’re in the middle of typing an email, you’ll pick up where you left off, even down to the last word you typed. Session Restore instantly brings back your windows and tabs, restoring text you entered and any in-progress downloads.
Over 6,000 ways to customize Firefox 3.5 — You can enhance the functionality of this browser by using 6000 different free plugins.
Firefox Awesome Bar — It provides a quick way to get to the sites you love, even the ones with addresses you only vaguely remember. Type in term into location bar and the autocomplete function includes possible matching sites from your browsing history, as well as sites you’ve bookmarked and tagged in a drop down.
Tags — You can label a site with names or categories that are meaningful to you. For example, you can label the site rediff.com with the “news” tag as well as the “cricket” tag, plus give indiatimes.com the “news” tag, too. When you enter “news” into the location bar, both sites will be shown as results. A single site can have multiple tags, and there’s no limit to the number of tags you can create. You may not remember the exact name of a site, but with a tag, you’ll be able to find it in a way that makes sense to you.
Open Video and Audio — Firefox has become the first browser to support open video and audio formats, allowing practically limitless new ways for sites to display rich content. The open formats also allow modern web pages to display media without requiring a plug-in or a proprietary software download.