A Look at the Latest Firefox Browser

Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 is now out in the open, meaning the long-awaited final version is likely right around the corner. If past trends are any indication, the debut of Firefox 3.5 may do more than just speed up your online experience -- it may also speed up the ongoing shift within the browser market. Most notably, it could accelerate the decline of Internet Explorer as the dominant choice for computer users worldwide. Firefox 3.5 offers a whole host of new features, including private browsing, improved tab functionality, and speed increases said to make the product eight times faster than Firefox 3.0.

The last time Mozilla released a major Firefox update was just about one year ago, in June of 2008. Firefox 3.0 hit the Web in a big way, with the company's "Download Day" campaign helping snag a record-setting 8.3 million downloads within the software's first 24 hours online. Microsoft's much-touted Internet Explorer 8, in comparison, barely made a dent in its early days; in fact, its overall share began falling only three days after its release.

In the browser world, the broader trends may be the most telling, and Internet Explorer has been spiraling downward for months. For the past twelve months (May to May), IE lost 11 percent of its worldwide market share. Firefox, meanwhile, grew by twice the amount IE fell: Its market share increased by 22 percent in that same time period. Given that, and considering the huge surge seen with the previous Firefox release, it seems entirely plausible that Firefox 3.5 could move the market significantly. The recent decision to offer Windows 7 without IE in Europe could only add to the effect.

With that as a backdrop here are some of the improvements that you will see when the final product is released.

Private Browsing

Like a number of new browsers, Firefox 3.5 adds a private browsing mode to its arsenal of features. While in private browsing mode, Firefox won't remember anything--history, cookies, usernames, or passwords--from your session. When you start private browsing, Firefox closes all of the pages that you currently have open, but it saves all of your open windows so you can quickly get back to what you were doing before switching to private browsing, which is a nice touch. Unlike the Incognito mode in Google Chrome or the InPrivate Browsing mode of Internet Explorer 8 (which puts an 'InPrivate' bug in the address bar), Firefox 3.5 doesn't give any indication that you're in private browsing mode, aside from an initial on-screen message.

To provide further privacy, Firefox 3.5 can "forget" any particular site. You can open the History panel, right-click the site reference, and choose Forget This Site.

Tab Tearing

Tabs work better in Firefox 3.5 than in previous versions of the browser. Besides being able to rearrange the tab order, you can drag tabs off the toolbar and drop them either onto another Firefox window (to move the tab to that window), just as you could with Firefox 3.0. In Firefox 3.5, you can also drag a tab onto your desktop to create a new window containing that tab. Another subtle improvement to tabs is the addition of a small plus-sign (+) button on the tab bar, which makes creating a new tab a little more intuitive.

Session Restore Feature

Firefox 3.5 builds upon the previous Firefox's session-restore feature by remembering what you've entered into Web forms before you close the window. For example, suppose that you have to close the browser midway through replying to a reader comment; when you reopen Firefox and restore your previous browser session, everything that you typed into the text box will still be there. It's about time a Web browser did this. A word of caution, though: If you start typing something that you don't want someone else to see later, be sure to delete it before you close the window.

Integration Location (for Laptops)

Integrated geo-location, powered by Google's Wi-Fi triangulation and simple IP address information, looks to know roughly where you are and help you when you're looking for something local. You can disable it if you'd like, but, realistically, signing on from any IP address reveals a bit about where you are anyways. If a good number of sites pick it up, geo-location could bring to the browser what a lot of people are already enjoying on their phone. For the sake of your security and privacy, each site that wants to use your location must have your permission to do so. Firefox sends your IP address, nearby Wi-Fi networks, and a unique random ID (which expires after two weeks) to the server in order to find your whereabouts.

Keyword AwesomeBar Filters

Firefox 3's AwesomeBar/address bar offers a speedy list of suggestions to complete whatever you're typing. That's great, but that list comes from your page history, bookmarks, and tags, and can be matched by URL or name, leaving some results almost uselessly cluttered. This gets fixed with special character filters in the next Firefox. Restrict a search by typing "life *" for just your bookmarks with the words "life" in them, or just your tagged "lh" items with "lh +". Anything that really makes getting back to importantly web destinations quickly is a welcome upgrade.

Undo Closed Window

If you accidentally close a tab you'd meant to keep open, Firefox 3, at least through extensions like Tab Mix Plus, can bring it back. To clarify, Firefox can resurrect closed tabs without Tab Mix Plus (just hit Ctrl+Shift+T, for example); the extension simply adds more fine-grained control. If you accidentally kill a separate window full of tabs, though, you've been pretty much out of luck. Firefox 3.5 implements a restore feature for both tabs and windows from the History menu, which would (hopefully) also restore any text you've typed into them.

Dynamic Color

Different cameras, monitors, and capture devices grab and set colors in different ways. On the web, most colors look the same, though, because they're filtered and optimized for quick viewing in every browser. Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.

Finally

It will be interesting to see if these changes give Firefox the ability to really improve their market share. You can bet that Microsoft will be working on its next iteration of its browser in an effort to stay number one.

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