TechJournal

Firefox 3 was released earlier this year and earned Mozilla a Guiness World Record for the most downloads in 24 hours.   Like every release of the browser, Firefox does not fail to deliver fast and reliable rendering.  Even with Google Chrome and Internet Explorer or Safari, Firefox is still the crowd darling especially for developers and power users.

Today, Mozilla announced the next step in the Firefox story.  They are releasing the first beta version of the Firefox 3.1 browser.  The release is a public preview intended for developer testing and community feedback.  Mozilla says that the Firefox 3.1 beta 1 includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility and speed.

Mozilla also listed a few things they specifically wanted feedback for.  These are:

• Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
• Support for new web technologies such as the and elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Moreover, for developers, Firefox 3.1 comes with the new Geode geolocation API.  Geode allows developers to create applications that can locate the position of the browser using the web connection without GPS.  These geolocation applications are useful for local searches and other location-necessary programs.  An overview of Firefox 3.1 features can be found here.

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