More than one year after Mozilla released Firefox 3, the company has released its Firefox 3.5 browser. Originally code named "Shiretoko", Firefox 3.5 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 web rendering platform with numerous security and bug fixes. Back in March, it was originally going to be called Firefox 3.1, but after beta 3, it became Firefox 3.5 beta 4, because developers allegedly complained that the v3.1 designation did not reflect the number of changes in the browser, in which it was at v3.0.7 at the time and was missing key components to the former v3.1. Mozilla had originally slated to release Firefox 3.5 (nee 3.1) in December of last year. However, the browser's development process was hit by numerous delays due to numerous bugs which were found in the JavaScript engine that resulted in the deadline being pushed back several times.

Here are the following key new features in Firefox 3.5:

Private Browsing Mode: This feature is one of the improved tools for controlling your private data. With the Private Browsing Mode, private browsing will not retain visited pages, form and search bar entries, passwords, download list entries, cookies and web cache files. This feature was first introduced in Internet Explorer 8 earlier this year.

TraceMonkey Javascript Engine: This new feature improves performance and stability by up to 40 times faster than its predecessor SpiderMonkey engine installed in Firefox 3. TraceMonkey adds native-code complication to Mozilla's JavaScript engine and it is based on a technique developed at UC Irvine called "trace trees" and building on code and ideas shared with the Tamarin Tracing project. The net result is a massive speed increase both in the browser chrome and webpage content.

Location Aware Browsing: Location Aware Browsing has the ability to provide web standards for geolocation. If you're consent, Firefox will gather information about nearby wireless access points and your computer's IP address. The browser will then send information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate will be shared with the requesting website. If you say that you don't consent, Firefox won't do anything.

Native JSON and web worker threads: First of all, Firefox 3.5 will have native JSON parsing that you will protect you against possible code execution and will be much faster than using JSON evaluation with a 3rd party library. Secondly, workers will provide a simple means for web content to run scripts in background threads. Once created, a worker can send messages to the spawning task by posting message to an event handler specified by the creator and a worker thread can perform tasks without interfering with the user interface.

Other improvements and new features: Improvements have been made to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering. Support has been added for new web technologies such as: HTML 5 video and audio elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML 5 offline data store for applications and SVG transforms.

There are many other new features discovered in Firefox 3.5. For more information, read the official release notes: [link]

Before you download Firefox 3.5, your computer must meet the following minimum system requirements that can be found on this page: [link]

Download Firefox 3.5 NOW: [link]

The download size of the Windows US English version of Firefox 3.5 is 7.7 MB and download sizes will vary on different operating systems and different language versions.

Notes on Support for Windows 2000/XP/Vista: Firefox 3.5 will be the last version that will support Windows 2000, early versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista RTM as Mozilla is strongly considering dropping support for these operating systems. Firefox 3.6 will be based on Gecko 1.9.2.

Dropping support for Windows 2000 after Firefox 3.5 will simplify the code for themes as Windows 2000 lacks the UxTheme API.

If you are not planning to upgrade to Firefox 3.5, Firefox 3 will continue to be supported with security and stability updates until 31 December 2009 after which the browser will no longer be publicly supported.

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