Wednesday, July 01, 2009

New Major Version of Firefox Now Available

Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5, a major upgrade. As far as I can tell, if you're running one of the previous version (3.0.x, say), you won't be prompted to download it, even if you have automatic notification turned on. However, you can get it by doing Help → Check for Updates. That's how I did it.

The new version downloaded (about 10 MB) and installed without drama. Except for the longer download time, it was the same as doing a patch update; i.e., once the download completed, installation began automatically, and at the conclusion of that, I was invited to restart the browser. No reboot needed. As far as I can tell, bookmarks and all other settings are preserved.

The two primary reasons to upgrade, it appears, are faster rendering and JavaScript engines (which makes bloated pages load faster) and the addition of what Mozilla calls Private Browsing Mode, which everyone else on the planet calls porn mode. Details for these and numerous other new features are in the "What's New" section of the Release Notes. The Private Browsing page and the general FAQs page may also be of interest. Some of my notes from trying out the beta version in early May could possibly be of use as well, although I expect some of the glitches have since been fixed.

If you don't already have Firefox installed, or if for some reason the Help → Check for Updates route doesn't work for you, you can download the new version at mozilla.com. As I understand it, going this route and blasting the new version on top of the old one, if you have one, will not destroy your old settings.

There does not appear to be an immediate reason to upgrade for security reasons, so if you're one of those people who likes to let new versions of software get tested by everyone else before you take the plunge, there's probably no reason not to hold off for a bit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Significant reasons to update are to take advantage of the improved javascript engine, and the new browser's support for HTML5.

These two tools pave the way for the browser to become the universal front end for a user's computing experience.

Good javascript rendering allows the browser to act more like a normal application interface when accessing content over the web.

And HTML5 means you will eventually be able to view all multimedia content without plugins (bye-bye Flash, Silverlight, Quicktime, etc).

And since a standards-compliant browser User Interface makes the underlying operating system irrelevant, I'd imagine you can go with the free, stable, secure competent one, if you'd like.

bjkeefe said...

I agree with all of your reasoning, especially the parts about open video and better JavaScript, but I didn't want to geek out the main post too much.

Thanks for adding them, though. Perfect example of how comments build on the initial offering.

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