The Mozilla developers have finally released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 after releasing two release candidates for the beta previously. Firefox 3.6 will be the next installment after the Firefox 3.5x branch and is still slated for a early 2010 release. The Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is build on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine opposed to Firefox 3.5 which is based on Gecko 1.9.1. The developers have added several new features and improvements to the Internet browser including:
- Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
- Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
- Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
- Support for the WOFF font format.
- Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
- Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.
The most noticeable feature in Firefox 3.6 up to this point is the performance increase. New web technologies are great for web developers but websites that make use of them are still rare. The addition of Personas support – which brings the option to change the basic appearance of Firefox without restarting the web browser – raised questions by some users who preferred that it would remain an add-on that could be installed by the Firefox users who wanted the functionality. Now everyone, even those that never make use of the appearance changing features, are stuck with yet another module in Firefox.
Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is available for direct download at the Mozilla website. Users who are tempted to try the latest version of the web browser should keep in mind that most add-ons will not work right out of the box. Installing an add-on like the Nightly Tester Tools is recommended to force compatibility.
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Hoi Martin your link to the firefox add-on Nightly Tester Tools in your article “How to enable all extensions in Firefox 2.0″ ,is not valid any more. The only valid (firefox) link that i could find is, Nightly Tester Tools Lite 0.2.2 (https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/1391) is this the right one?
Paulus your link is not the right one. Take this
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543
Concerning ‘Personas’ I am of those who would prefer having kept it as an extension.
As for this 3.6 Beta1, there is a dedicated extension, ‘Add-on Compatibility Reporter 0.1′ which seems most appropriate :
QUOTE:
“After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you’re using. If you notice that one of your add-ons doesn’t seem to be working the same way it did in previous versions of the application, just open the Add-ons Manager and click Compatibility next to that add-on to send a report to Mozilla.
Even if your add-ons all work fine, if they’re marked incompatible, please let us know that they work fine by submitting a success report so we can encourage the add-on developer to update their compatibility information.
We’ll collect all of the reports and let add-on developers know what users are having problems with, or if their add-ons seem to work just fine in future versions of the product.
If you encounter problems and want to disable your incompatible add-ons again, uninstalling the Add-on Compatibility Reporter should revert to your previous compatibility checking settings.”
‘Add-on Compatibility Reporter’ is available at : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/15003
I’ve downloaded Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 and will test it with this ‘Add-on Compatibility Reporter’ extension.