Article by George Norman

On 27 Nov 2009

Earlier this week Firefox Director Mike Beltzner had us on needles and pins when he announced that the 4th Beta version of Firefox 3.6 would be released “late Wednesday or early Thursday if all goes well.” That meant Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 would drop on Thanksgiving Day, one week after the release of Firefox 3.6 Beta 3. Everything went according to plan and on Thanksgiving we were thankful for the release of Firefox 3.6 Beta 4.

“[On Thanksgiving] morning the Mozilla community released Firefox 3.6 Beta 4, and issued an update for all Firefox 3.6 beta users. This update contains over 100 fixes from the last Firefox 3.6 beta, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. Almost 70% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If your favorite Add-on isn’t yet compatible, you can also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter from addons.mozilla.org – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it,” announced Mike Beltzner.


Since we spent all day stuffing ourselves with food, we couldn’t report on what you can expect to get from Firefox 3.6 Beta 4. But we will today: Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 adds support for the HTML5 File API. What does this mean for the Firefox user? For example the user would be able to load local images to a web application without having to upload them to the server. The images could be edited and saved locally; then they could optionally be uploaded when they’re ready.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 also includes the following features:
- Enhanced browser stability because the manner in which 3rd party software integrates with the Firefox browser has been changed.
- The ability run scripts asynchronously and thus speed up page load times.
- New API to give add-ons access to Firefox’s geolocation features
- The Firefox components directory is locked down.
- A mechanism that prevents Firefox from crashing when dealing with incompatible software.
- Built-in support for Firefox Personas.
- The user will be alerted when a plugin needs to be updated.
- Full screen and poster frames support for open, native video.
- WOFF font format support.
- The performance of the JavaScript engine has been enhanced.
- New CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies support.

If you would like to get Firefox 3.6 Beta 4, you can download it here.
The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux users in more than 60 languages.



Tags: Mozilla, Firefox 3.6 Beta 4

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