9 Amazing New Features of Firefox 3.5!
9 Amazing New Features of Firefox 3.5!
Posted 06/25/2009 at 11:30am
| by Paul Lilly
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If all goes to plan, Mozilla will be releasing its much anticipated Firefox 3.5 browser any day now, and certainly by the end of the month. It's been a long wait for the Firefox faithful, who first got a glimpse of the oft-delayed browser in Alpha form back in July of 2008. More recently, Mozilla has rolled out a pair of Release Candidates, giving fans (and critics) a pretty good idea of what to expect when the final version goes Gold.
The most ambitious update to Firefox yet, version 3.5 delivers a ton of coding improvements and a handful additional features Mozilla hopes will help close the market share gap with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Join us as we take an in-depth look at what's new and highlight which features have us most excited about Firefox 3.5!
Private Browsing Mode
Right out of the gate, probably the most anticipated new functionality of Firefox 3.5 is the Private Browsing mode, less affectionately (or more affectionately, depending on your perspective) known as Porn Mode. Firefox joins a growing list of browsers to add a private browsing option, whereby all traces of your surfing history are eradicated once you close the browser or exit the private session.
In Firefox, selecting Start Private Browsing from the Tools menu (or pressing CTRL+Shift+P) closes all open browser windows and opens up a discrete window. You can then log into your Katie Morgan fan club account or, perhaps more wisely, browse gift ideas for your significant other while keeping it on the down-low. Once you exit Private Browsing mode, all your tracks will be erased, and whatever browser windows you previously had open will be restored, tabs and all, albeit each one will have to be reloaded. And unlike Google Chrome, you can't have both a Private and non-Private browser window open at the same time.
If you forget to enter Private Browsing mode or load up a website you later wish you hadn't, Mozilla has added a couple of different ways of how you can approach this. One way is to delete your browsing history for just the past hour or past several hours.
The other way is to go into your History, right-click the site you want to erase from memory, and select 'Forget about this site.' Rather than scour through the contents of your History, Firefox nukes all instances of the selected site, a particularly handy feature when gift shopping.
Websites Get Identified
Have a suspicious feeling about the site you're about to order from? Websites now come with an identity overview giving you quick access to a site's security certificate. Clicking the More Information button brings up even more details, such as how many times you've visited the site in the past, what cookies are being stored, and what passwords are being saved.
Retrieve Recently Closed Tabs and Windows
Clutter up your desktop with too many windows and you may find yourself haphazardly closing everything in sight, including that browser window you didn't mean to exit out of. Oops! But like an undo button, Firefox 3.5 adds the ability to reopen Recently Closed Windows via the History button, right underneath the Recently Closed Tabs section.
Video Support is Augmented
Firefox 3.5 handles video much better than any previous release, particularly with support for Open Video. In addition to the HTML 5 video tag, Firefox 3.5 ships with the Ogg Theora codec. This means that without a plugin, you can watch any video that is encoded using Ogg Theora. Theora files can be embedded directly into web pages, giving viewers all the standard controls they're used to, like volume adjustment, pause, etc. In addition, depending on the video source, you can right-click and save the video clip to your hard drive.
Even cooler is how Firefox lets you interact with videos built around the open standards. Dubbed Dynamic Content Injection, other images and videos can be inserted into specific points of a video in a sort of augmented reality fashion. Technically, the same types of tricks can be done in Flash, but it's a lot more complex and typically requires the entire page be coded in Flash.
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Philips
October 06, 2011 at 1:47pm
Thank you for featuring the good things about Firefox. These are good things. I enjoyed reading the article.
Bogdan
August 05, 2011 at 12:05am
Now mozilla firefox is at version 5 and has some really nice features and a lot of useful addons. In my oppinion is the best browser.
Best regards,
Anthony010
June 30, 2009 at 12:20pm
i just switched to the new firefox and i cant get my flash player to work. i cant login to facebook, watch youtube videos and the internet is just generally slower. i need some help. ive already tried installing it like 5 times but it never works lol
n0ctis
June 29, 2009 at 7:00pm
I just upgraded to 3.5 from 3.0.11 and I'm happy. The improvements they've made are great. However, there is one major feature that is overdue from both a functionality and asthetic perspective: search in address bar.
I shouldn't h ave to TAB or click over to another box for search. My default search engine should exist in the address bar without necessitating the installation of another add-on. It would clean up the interface just that much more.
darklightning
July 08, 2009 at 5:52pm
Just try searching in the address bar. It will run a Google "i'm feeling lucky" search. If that fails, it gives a search page.
n0ctis
June 29, 2009 at 7:00pm
I just upgraded to 3.5 from 3.0.11 and I'm happy. The improvements they've made are great. However, there is one major feature that is overdue from both a functionality and asthetic perspective: search in address bar.
I shouldn't h ave to TAB or click over to another box for search. My default search engine should exist in the address bar without necessitating the installation of another add-on. It would clean up the interface just that much more.
big_montana
June 30, 2009 at 7:12pm
All I know is that search in the awesome bar works fine for me. As I type a list of results populates and at the bottom of the list is my default search engine. I click on it and it displays the search results in the same window. Maybe you are expecting it to be the only search returned?
Scapegoat
June 26, 2009 at 11:15am
I'd like to make a note that not only can you tear a tabbed page off into another window, you can also take that torn away tab and drag it BACK into your main browser window to go back to having only one browsing window. Awesome.
Psychic51
June 25, 2009 at 8:25pm
Here's a couple of links to some of the pages MPC showed in the article.
I'm using Firefox 3.5 RC and wanted to try out the new video tricks.
Dynamic Content Injection
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
Coraline Trailer
http://tinyvid.tv/show/3uwvr4t3wi3rm
shomval
June 25, 2009 at 6:53pm
im not sure if you'd count the firefox 3.5 preview as the same thing , is it? cause they updated it for me already O.o
aziobron
June 25, 2009 at 2:38pm
i have FF 3.0.11 and i have the ability to open recently closed tabs and identify sites to the left of the address bar. how r these new features?
lumpoco
June 30, 2009 at 10:50am
I never knew you could that in version 3.0.11. I suppose many could consider Windows 7 as not being a new OS since it's suppose to be what Vista should have been. I loved using Netscape and enjoy using Firefox. I hate using IE (slow performance, crashes and freezes). Opera has gotten too bloated. They think that they are the best browser there is. Since when did a good software ever come from Europe? Enough said!
DrMD
June 25, 2009 at 1:05pm
My fav browser on all my boxes, except when needed for some backward utility companies that only accept IE to online pay, So looking forward to 3.5. "And don't worry about it. My memory can handle twenty windows, and a hundred tabs". Edited quote thanks to Under Siege.
Thanks to MaxPC Aug09 pg14 for awesome Firefox addons.
pseizure2000
June 25, 2009 at 11:29am
I would hope they'd patched up some memory leak problems that have plagued the browser for ages. I mean seriously, I know I used up a lot of tabs, but 400+ mb for keeping my browser open for a week or so is just not acceptable!
roninnder
June 25, 2009 at 12:42pm
You're right, keeping your browser open for a week is not acceptable. Why doesn't mozilla have a team of 15 people working around the clock to fix a problem that can be solved with a WEEKLY browser restart?
winmaster
June 25, 2009 at 6:56pm
Personally, I'd never go a week without rebooting my computer, let alone closing my browser. Seriously, leaving it run for that long without a restart is asking for problems.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
linkmaster6
June 25, 2009 at 12:51pm
I think it was meant to be sarcastic at least....
I hope it was...
jmyler
June 25, 2009 at 11:26am
All these netbooks and notbooks coming out to copy apple and have gestures and you don't mention that firefox 3.5 supports gestures. I think thats a pretty big one.
ETNPNYS
June 30, 2009 at 9:40am
That's not a new feature, dude... I've been using mouse gestures since 2.0... That's like saying "But Firefox has tabs now..."
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schwit
June 25, 2009 at 11:08am
I use Firefox 3.5 full time, but stories like this oversell this release. FF3.5 is better, but these 'amazing' features are either fixes to how older FF versions worked or capabilities that have been available as add-ons.
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