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Firefox 3.5 has a lot to offer

T. Ramachandran

Developers claim it is significantly faster than earlier version

KOCHI: Speed is the name of the game as browsers try to outdo one another in rendering web pages faster, and developers of the latest version of Firefox claim that they have improved significantly on that front.

Version 3.5 of Firefox, with several other enhancements, has been available for free download ( http://www.mozilla.com) from June 30, and has attracted attention in cyberspace. It comes a year after the release of Firefox 3 in June 2008. “The newest version of Firefox is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and ten times as fast as Firefox 2 on complex websites,” said Mozilla, the public-benefit organisation that spearheads the development of the open source browser.

All major browser releases in recent times have highlighted the faster rendering of web pages as a key feature. Microsoft claimed it had achieved just this when it launched Internet Explorer 8 in March.

Google also highlighted speed as an area where its browser Chrome had gained a decisive edge when it finalised version 2 in May. Apple too had said that its browser Safari 4 was ‘lightning fast.’

But if users are spoilt for choice, all they need to do is check out the new features of Firefox 3.5.

One of them is location-aware browsing, which can be enabled for automatic delivery of content that is tailored to the geographical area from which the Internet is accessed. Websites that seek such information can then use it in various ways – for instance, to generate a list of restaurants specific to the user’s location.

Firefox 3.5 also offers a ‘private’ browsing mode, which makes it possible for users to visit sites without leaving any trail on the computer. It goes one step further by enabling users to remove traces of sites they had already visited with its ‘Forget that site’ feature.

It also breaks new ground by making it possible to view an open video and audio format without a plug-in – an ‘extra’ piece of software that has to be installed to open or play various kinds of files.

Firefox 3.5 supports Ogg Theora, an open video compression technology which is not widely used, and Ogg Vorbis, an open audio encoding and streaming technology. This means widely-used proprietary multimedia technologies like Adobe Flash will work only if the corresponding plug-ins are installed.

Major browsers offer tabbed browsing, making it possible to open several web pages in one browser window, and shuffle from one to the other by navigating to the corresponding tabs. Firefox 3.5 makes it possible for users to rearrange tabs within the same window or open them in a new window by dragging them out.

Kochi-based Internet marketing consultant Anand Subramanian, who spends long hours online and uses different browsers, said the faster rendering of pages with Firefox 3.5 might be noticeable for those having slow Internet connections but perhaps not as much for those using quality broadband.

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