Geek Tested:

Mozilla Prepares Firefox 3.5 for Possible Tuesday Release

Posted 06/28/09 at 11:52:46 AM by Justin Kerr

Firefox 3.5

Betanews claims to have confirmed the official release date of Firefox 3.5, and if correct, it could be as early as Tuesday June 30th. Once out of beta, everyone will have the opportunity to test out a stable version of Firefox’s new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Early tests of the public beta have been impressive, and have pegged TraceMonkey performance at over 200 per cent faster than the previous version, Firefox 3.0.11. These same tests showed both Safari 4 and the Chrome 3 leaving Firefox 3.5 in the dust, but it’s a bit early to jump to conclusions until we can compare the released version of all three browsers side by side. Until then, check out our in-depth preview of the Firefox 3.5 RC.

Mozilla is also hoping that Firefox 3.5 will help them champion the open HTML5 standard, and start putting a dent in proprietary video technologies such as Adobe Flash or Windows Media. HTML5 has seen a lot of support from third party browser developers lately, and could prove to be a very capable and flexible alternative. “Somebody has to take a stand” said Mozilla senior platform engineer Damon Sicore. "Somebody has to put open video on the Web. It's important that these formats are unencumbered. We feel that it's something that's in our mission that we have to do to keep them moving forward, in keeping the Web open."

Have you been playing with the Beta or RC version of Firefox 3.5, or do you like to wait for the final release?

COMMENTS:11

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I have been using the Beta
Submitted by Caskey.100 on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 12:01pm

I have been using the Beta and RC as my main browser on both Win 7 and XP and I have to say that as with all Mozilla releases it is very well polished nad r5uns great no matter what the PC is running. I really like the addition of being able to tear tabs off of one browser windows and making it into another window, this is a feautre I like to use when working on a machine with multiple monitors as it can make it easier to do homework projects and other stuff.

I haven't noticed any kind of change in speed, it has gotten to the point that any speed increase wouldn't be noticed by the human eye anymore.

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Obviously you don't pay
Submitted by hackman2007 on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 11:47am

Obviously you aren't paying attention to browser news.

Internet Explorer 8 is just as customizable as Firefox.

Google Chrome is fast approaching the day when we will be able to run extensions that are similar to Firefox, in other words customizable.

Opera intends to have as many features that users find useful included in the browser by default so no further tweaks are necessary.

I'm excited to try out the 3.5 release.

With the appropriate tweaks all of the browsers (with exception of Safari for Windows) can be tweaked for speed.

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Wow
Submitted by schmitty6633 on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 1:10pm

Obviously you havn't tried either. IE8 is no where near the customizability of Firefox. All in all : IE8 sucks in all regards compared to Firefox

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Actually I have. What can
Submitted by hackman2007 on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 1:42pm

Actually I have.

What can IE8 do that Firefox cannot?

While I do admit that Firefox has a ton more random selection of add-ons and such, there is still quite a bit for IE8. For example, if you go to IE Addons (http://www.ieaddons.com/en/), you will see a ton of various add-ons for that browser. There are numerous other things you can do to customize IE too.

Themes are a different story. IE is not open source like Firefox so we don't get access to themes.

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For example, if you go to IE
Submitted by compro01 on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 10:48am

For example, if you go to IE Addons (http://www.ieaddons.com/en/), you will see a ton of various add-ons for that browser.

with numerous absenses such as adblock, tabmix plus, linkification, leetkey, skipscreen, and chatzilla.

no ability to control how many tabs to keep available for unclosing (at least none i can find), no canadian english spellchecker (or any spellchecker i can find).

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Have you done any searching
Submitted by hackman2007 on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 11:21am

Of course not everything is available, especially considering I haven't heard of about half of the add-ons you presented. But for IE, see below:

AdBlock Plus Equivalent: http://adblockie.codeplex.com/
Spell Checker: IE Spell
Leetkey: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/leet (why would you want an add-on for that)
Chatzilla: Just use a regular IRC program

Before you guys start dissing browsers, please use them first. Look for tweaks instead of saying there are none.

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God dammit, why is MAXPC
Submitted by D.E. on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 10:12am

God dammit, why is MAXPC just spamming about Firefox 3.5. We get it, its a moderately big leap in numbers. No need to fo 4 articles for Firefox 3.5 Announced! and then another 12 for possible features for it. Christ, how seriously do you guys take browser wars? They aren't all *that* important to technology as there really is no 'wrong' choice in the browser market.

Firefox is customizable

IE8 feeds people

Chrome is the speed demon

Opera is still as Indie as ever

and Safari is 20% more pretencious

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No really though, there is
Submitted by D.E. on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 9:05pm

No really though, there is very little that this new version of Firefox has introduced that its competators haven't done for months now. Tabbed browsing that can be torn and reattached and other tricks? Really? Sorry but it isn't enough for me to reinstall Firefox on my box.

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Really?
Submitted by Justin.Kerr on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 11:38am

If you focus on the "Chrome" or "Experience", I would agree browsers arn't changing much.

But to say that the browser wars are insignificant is to ignore all the advances they are making under the hood. They are fast approaching operating system levels of complexity, and I for one, am facinated by each new version.

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