Mozilla on Thursday released the third beta version of Firefox 3.1, aka Shiretoko, one of the frontrunners in the current race to improve Web browsers.
According to the Firefox 3.1b3 release notes, the new version includes better “Web worker” multitasking abilities, a faster Gecko rendering engine for showing Web pages, and upgrades to the TraceMonkey engine for faster, more stable execution of Web sites’ JavaScript programs. (Follow these links to download Firefox 3.1b3 for Windows and Mac OS X.) More on details in this link http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10195372-2.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Hmmm …if one is reasonably content with Firefox “as is” what is the “wow factor” of the upcoming 3.1 release.
Can you please give some further value to the subject line … you have discussed 3.1 … can you point us to the wonders awaiting us in 3.5 ? The article referred to is rather opaque on useful information and seems rather like an over-excited PR release (which, sadly, passes so often for reporting in today’s media and seems to be accepted as current journalistic practice … in other words the article is a “come on” and gives no useful new information to this forum).
Just by the way … I am a Firefox user and supporter.
Well, Firefox 3.1 will be Firefox 3.5. Most likely. Due to significant changes they are planning to bump up the version number for 0.5 instead just 0.1. This already happened before and actually makes sense now.
Mozilla has added optimization using "Trace Trees" to SpiderMonkey. Due to be released in the second quarter of 2009, Firefox 3.5 is slated to include this new optimization technique which offers "performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster in some cases"[2]
I really don’t see any problems regarding version numbers.
avast! has also jumped from 4.1 to 4.5 directly. Number of new changes simply justify the higher number change. This is something usual in the software world.
Hotmail is a site written by Microsoft for Microsoft and (although they always promise they will adhere to standards … eventually … the day may yet come). I simply decided long ago to use the IEView add-on for Thunderbird to make Hotmail open with IE.
I like the browser I use for most functions … I suspect the small community of Opera users like their browser too and their is a growing dedicated user group for Google’s browser and its variations. I also like competition among the browsers; I think it can only be good for for the user community. Now if we can all recognize that none of them is perfection and avoid the silly “using xxx browser is your problem” in this neighborhood.
I use Iron for an alternate browser in case I have a “silly problem” with Opera. ;D
I listen to various radio stations around the USA by means of the internet. One format that many stations use to stream their content played just find in Opera. They have changed it somehow that now it wont play in Opera. Iron plays it for me. An example: http://www.wjbo.com/cc-common/ondemand/player.html?world=st
Iron plays it for me. An example: