Firefox 3.5 RC 2 Released
June 20th saw the release of the Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 by Mozilla.Claimed by Mozilla to be a much faster browser than the Firefox 3,the Firefox 3.5 also has a host of new features that were absent in Firefox 3.Firefox has always been a browser liked by people wanting to browse with a more than basic looking browser as the IE or the Chrome.The browsing speed of Firefox also has been one of the reasons why this free software has been a threat to IE.
One major feature found on the Firefox 3.5 RC2 is private browsing.It works pretty much similar to the “incognito” mode of the Google Chrome, as it remembers nothing from cookies,history or sessions.The difference between Chrome and Firefox’s private browsing is that Firefox closes all the open windows
currently open.But no need to worry as Firefox does remember the windows closed and once you close the private browsing ad restart the browser,it will get back to what you were doing before you went “private” browsing.One disappointing feature in this was that we will have to restart the browser once you exit the “private” browsing mode.Automatically restarting the browser on exiting the “private” browsing mode would have been a welcome addition to the Firefox 3.5 Perhaps that would be something that Mozilla will do when the Firefox 3.5 is released. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+P gets yo into private browsing mode.
Another new feature is forgetting websites.Open up the history panel and right click on any web site you have loaded and you will find an option “Forget about this website”.A snapshot of the feature is provided below.
However sub domains of the sites are not forgotten which could make the whole task of making the browsing forgetting a site a bit tedious.
The tabs also works better enabling easy dragging of the tabs.Also you can drop a tab onto your desktop to open a new browser window.
Coupled with all these new features and other features comes Mozilla’s promise that the browser will be 8 times faster when accessing JavaScript enabled web pages than the Firefox 3.0 and an overall performance of twice as fast as the Firefox 3.0.
Also,Mozilla claims to have fixed a lot of bugs that were found on the Firefox 3.0 version. Overall, the Firefox 3.5 promises to be a good browser if anything is to be derived from the RC2.Mozilla has been primarily responsible for the steady decline in the number of IE users over the years.IE had commanded more than 90% of the market share before Mozilla Firefox made its entry.
The market share as on May 2009 stands at:
IE: 65.50% Firefox: 22.51% Safari:8.43% Chrome: 1.80% Others: 1.76% Source: MarketShare.hitslink
If the current trends are going to continue,by 2012,IE will no longer be the dominant player among the browsers.Remember that when Firefox 3.0 was launched,it had set a Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software within the first 24 hours of its release.Will Firefox 3.5 break that record?Well,if it does,the days of the IE domination are numbered.
Download Firefox 3.5 RC2 from Mozilla’s official site
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