Mozilla has quietly rolled out its second beta download of the next-generation Firefox Web browser, code-named Shiretoko. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is a public preview release primarily intended for developer testing and community feedback.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is available for download in 54 languages. Though the software’s developers consider their latest public release to be stable, they said users of Firefox 3.0 should not expect all their browser plug-ins to work properly with Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.
The latest Firefox milestone is focused on testing core functionality, noted Mike Beltzner, director for Mozilla Firefox. “It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, Web compatibility, and speed,” he said.
Notable Improvements
Just like the alpha release of the Opera 10 browser, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 lets Web site designers link their pages to downloadable fonts to display Unicode characters not otherwise supported and to render sites more precisely. Additionally, the Beta 2 release now supports Canvas shadow effects.
Other notable Beta 2 improvements include the default use of a considerably faster Tracemonkey JavaScript engine, the addition of speculative parsing to the Gecko 1.9.1 layout engine to speed up content rendering, and support for new Web technologies such as the W3C Geolocation API. However, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2’s main claim to fame comes from its incorporation of slick privacy browsing.
“Private browsing is not a tool to keep you anonymous from Web sites or your ISP, or, for example, protect you from all kinds of spyware applications which use sophisticated techniques to intercept your online traffic,” said developer Ehsan Akhgari. “Private browsing is only about making sure that Firefox doesn’t store any data which can be used to trace your online activities — no more, no less.”
Stealth Mode
Up to now, Firefox users who want to cover their Web-surfing tracks have had to…