Firefox 3.1 gets tab overhaul
Mozilla today released a beta version of its Firefox 3.1 browser, which sports a new tab switcher, support for open source multimedia formats and faster javascript.
The Firefox 3.1 beta 1 release includes a number of new features that have been widely speculated on.
Among these, and the most obvious, is the substantially improved tab management. Firefox 3.1 has a new tab switcher which shows image previews of the selected tabs. Using CTRL-tab shows the previews. Firefox 3.1 also allows users to drag-and-drop tabs from one Firefox window to another. Previously, users could drag and drop tabs across windows but the action merely duplicated the tab in two windows. In 3.1 dragged tabs close in the former window and open in the new one.
One of the big promises of Firefox 3.1 has been faster Javascript performance using the TraceMonkey engine. Beta 1 of Firefox 3.1 has TraceMonkey built in although users do need to enable it as it is still in development.
The other major improvement in Firefox 3.1 is the built-in support for the open source multimedia format .ogg. Ogg Vorbis is a free multimedia format for video and audio and, until now, needed a plugin to be played through a Firefox browser. Firefox 3.1 now has built in support which makes it a snap to view files in this format online.
Firefox 3.1 is a beta so most existing extensions don’t yet work with the browser. Nevertheless, Firefox 3.1 has enough new features to make it very promising.
Firefox 3.1 beta 1 can be downloaded from http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2008/10/14/firefox-31-beta-1-now-available-for-download/
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