Firefox 3.5 Is Now Available

Speed.

There’s a new JavaScript engine. It’s called TraceMonkey. Cute name, and an important step forward, but the main payoff here is increased browsing speed. Mozilla says that Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3.

Better Video

Up until now, your browser couldn’t play video on its own. That’s why you always needed a Flash plugin or soemthing. The new Firefox plays video within the browser itself–which means Web producers can do more with the video, such as include links within the video itself, manipulate the image while you’re viewing it, or have it react to incoming data.

Privacy Controls

Porn watchers, rejoice! Ok, more people than that can appreciate this, but we all know what “privacy controls” often means. Like Safari and IE8, Firefox 3.5 now has a private-browsing mode that keeps no trace of sites you visit while its enabled. Mozilla’s taken it a step further, though, with its new Forget This Site feature. With that, you can click a button and everything from that site–cookies, page history, cached pages, passwords–gets cast to the four winds.

Location Aware Browsing

What has made many mobile apps so compelling is their ability to marry your geographic information with the rest of the Internet. Firefox 3.5 does a similar thing on your computer at home (or when you’re on the road). Web sites can determine your location and then, like a smartphone, serve up relevant info about where you are.

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