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Firefox 3.5 is here. There is a lot of buzz on the Internet about Firefox today for the official launch of version 3.5.
Firefox is a web browser that runs on various operating systems (including Windows, Mac and Linux) and is available completely Free.
I've been running the pre-release versions for a while now and I'm impressed by the improvements in the browser. Today sees the launch of the official version 3.5 bringing the browser up-to-date and ready to handle the next generation of web needs.
The Javascript engine has been rewritten to be up to twice as fast as previous versions. Sites that are dependant upon Javascript include social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter) and web applications such as gmail. If you are using these you will see a noticeable increase in performance.
Firefox continues as the safest web browser. The open source, open review community focus encourages vulnerabilities to be identified at an early stage and to have them fixed early.
The Firefox team are constantly monitoring threats and releasing new Firefox updates to stay one step ahead. Operating in an open source world means anyone can help find and fix any weak spots.
More information on Firefox security
Firefox now includes a video player within the browser. This will certainly be useful for Linux users where getting the right plug-ins can be a little tricky, but even Windows users benefit by not having to download and install plug-ins for the browser.
Firefox is ahead of the competition when it comes to tabbed browsing. Not only can the tabs be easily reordered by drag-and-drop, but now they can be ripped out of the page to create a new browser. You can even drag the tab into another browser window, and if it's the last window it will close that browser.
You really need to try it to see how it works. In the future you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Private browsing has been made easier with the help of a private browsing mode. Firefox will forget about (and delete any cached files) any sites visited whilst private browsing.
Can't think about where you'd use this, how about the following less sinister reasons?:
Personas allow you to give your browser a virtual custom paint job.
How to create your own Firefox Personas
Firefox is free open source software. This means that not only does it not cost anything (Free as in beer), you are free to obtain the source code and modify or improve as you wish (free as in speech).
More about Open Source and Free Software.
Thousands of add-ons provide additional functionality to make work more efficient or just more fun. These include a Facebook sidebar, Xmarks bookmark synchronisation tool (keep different browsers bookmarks in sync) and lots more.
Firefox is based on the web protocol standards and will work with almost every site. There are still a few sites that are broken and only work with certain browsers, but with lots of people switching to alternative browsers they need to fix their sites soon.
There's even a useful link on Firefox 3.5 so you can submit sites that don't work to have them fixed.
Download the browser and give it a go. It's free so there is nothing to lose.
