Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Firefox 3.5 moves to preview phase

news
Jun 9, 20092 mins

Mozilla has fixed bugs and the JavaScript engine in Firefox 3.5 and has deemed the browser stable enough for daily use

Rather than offering a release candidate as had been expected, Mozilla this week released a preview of its upcoming Firefox 3.5 browser, adding fixes to bugs and the browser’s JavaScript engine as well as improvements for video and audio playback.

Firefox 3.5 Preview will be offered to the 800,000-plus users of FireFox 3.5 Beta, with Mozilla looking for developer testing and community feedback. Although not a release candidate, the preview is considered stable enough for daily browsing use, Mozilla said. Testing has not been completed to the point where the software could be declared a release candidate.

But a release candidate is due soon, with general availability expected later this summer. Previously, the company had anticipated a release candidate for the first week of June and general availability later this month. A Mozilla representative said the company is driven by quality rather than a timeline.

Firefox 3.5 features such highlights as video capabilities and support for private browsing, in which Web site visits are not recorded or saved to disk, said Vlad Vukicevic, tech lead for the Firefox project at Mozilla. But speed improvements are paramount, he stressed.

“The main significance [of the browser upgrade] is that Firefox 3.5 is really, really fast,” Vukicevic said.

JavaScript performance is boosted via the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

Other features of Firefox 3.5 include HTML 5-based capabilities for audio and video, offline caching, and the HTML drag-and-drop API for moving items within and between Web sites. CSS enhancements, including downloadable fonts, also are featured.

The preview offers video and audio capabilities based on the Ogg format.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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