SirTwat

Mozilla Firefox released their 3.5 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) today, and has added several highly anticipated features to the brand.  I’m particularly looking forward to some Private Browsing *nudge *nudge

• This beta is now available in more than 70 languages – get your local version.
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 and elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

Private Browsing Mode

Private browsing mode is a big deal.  Apple’s Safari has had it for ages, but for some reason Firefox and IE are just now getting around too it.  IE released it in conjunction with their new/revamped Internet Explorer 8 (which in my opinion, is still a pile of shit).  That means that Firefox is the last major browser to get this upgrade.  For those of you who are not familiar with private browsing, it basically allows you to browse the web with absolutely no trace left on your computer.  All the temp files, cache and cookies get deleted at the end of your session.  Great for surfing porn so when your spouse checks the history it doesn’t show up, or isn’t completely deleted.  This is all good and dandy, but it might create somewhat of a god complex with some users, which is ill placed. Just because it doesn’t keep a record on your computer, doesn’t mean that your router, server, IP isn’t keeping track of what you’re doing on the web.  Keep that in mind next time you decide to participate in illegal activities online.

Tracemonkey

Tracemonkey has been around since Firefox 3.1, but it seems that they stepped it up in the newest version.  You can expect reasonable speed and performance increases.

Location Aware Browsing

Yet another slight against your privacy.  These have been around for some time, mostly using 3rd party programs, but now their integrated directly into the browser for any developer to use!  You normally saw these on the Adult Friend Finder advertisements.  Something like, “Find these single local whores in Austin, TX that want to sleep with you, after meeting you on the internet, so they can stab you in your sleep and cut off your dick to fulfill their deepest fantasy”.  The point is, they knew you were in Austin, TX.  This could be useful, because as it stands, when you type in pizza, it brings up a nation wide search of pizza restaurants.  Now, it will show local results which I’m O.K. with. Maybe.  Jury is still out on that one.

Native JSON & web worker threads

Took you fucking long enough.  I’m sure this is their response to Google’s Chrome, which revolutionized the way browsers are going to be made in the future.  Firefox is a little different.  It uses different worker processes to execute different bits of JavaScript.  The way it used to work  is load one JavaScript, wait for that one to be completed, then move on to the next one.  For a good read, and to understand more about this issue, you can refer here.  Layman’s, it’s superbadass.

HTML5

HTML5 is going to be some wicket sick shit.  HTML & the internet in general was developed way before we thought we would be sharing videos/pictures/maps, so Google maps was created as a series of “workarounds” or “hacks”.  HTML5 aims to change that by creating a development environment that allows those programs to run more efficiently in our browsers.  With the advent of Cloud Computing, HTML5 is inevitable, and much needed.  If you want more information, you can visit it’s Wiki page here.

All in all, it contains some pretty good features, but don’t make the switch yet.  There is no need too.  The benefit’s it provides aren’t quite enough to lose all of your precious plug-ins, because they aren’t compatible with 3.5 RC1 yet.

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