Mozilla Foundation Announces Your New Default Browser

June 30, 2009 at 11:30 am PT

After four beta versions and nearly as many release candidates, Firefox 3.5 is finally here.

This latest version of the browser offers a number of new features. Among them: Private browsing, location-aware surfing, support for emerging HTML 5 standards such as plug-in-free video and audio playing, and better JavaScript performance. It’s that last improvement that’s most noteworthy since Mozilla claims that Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as Firefox 3, and an astonishing 10 times faster than Firefox 2.0.

Nice features, all of them, and ones that certainly reflect the goal of Firefox’s creators at the Mozilla Foundation: To upgrade the Web. “What we’re actually trying to do,” Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker said at our D7 conference in May (see video highlights below), “…is improve the Web itself….Our main goal is to make more capabilities available, and right now, the browser is the main delivery mechanism….We’re trying to be the delivery mechanism upon which others build innovations.”

And upon which Firefox builds market share. Though it is currently the world’s second-leading browser, with a 22.5 percent share of the global Web browser market, Firefox faces some formidable competition these days from Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and now Mozilla partner Google (GOOG), which is bearing down upon it with its latest “don’t-be-evil” bulldozer, Chrome.

Tagged with: Apple, audio, beta version, browser, Chrome, competition, digital, Firefox, Firefox 2.0, Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5, global, Google, HTML 5, innovation, Internet, Internet Explorer, Javascript, John Paczkowski, location-aware, market share, Microsoft, Mitchell Baker, Mozilla, Mozilla Foundation, new features, playing, plug-in-free, private browsing, release, Safari, software, standards, video, Web

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Scot Brees

Using 3.5 to view Digital Daily right now…I wouldn’t go so far as to say “twice as fast”, but it’s noticeably faster than the prior versions. Now…to go install the automatic update I just got a few minutes ago from Microsoft announcing IE8.
http://allthingsd.com/ Richard Mitnick

It is really amazing, FF 3.5 is out after this l-o-n-g run up, and Roboform, the Lazyman’s tool that I love, is not ready? That was one of the big gripes about Microsoft and Vista, that Microsoft did not make sure that 3rd party apps were ready by riding herd on and helping the vendors.

So? Now go after Mozilla?

Somehow, I doubt it.
Fred Laxton

You can install the Nightly Tester Tools add-on to override “compatibility” tests. Once it is installed, click the “override compatibility” button and you’re good to go. I did it and all my “incompatible” add-ons work just fine, as usual.