As with the last Firefox 3.1 beta, there's improvements to the private browsing mode, the performance has increased, pages render faster, pages with JavaScript code run much faster, with the new Tracemonkey engine.

Memory usage has decreased. And Firefox 3.1 beta 3 seems to know how to manage memory a little better; letting Firefox sit after intensive work seems to allow Firefox the time to drop the memory it is no longer using; bringing the memory consumption back to an average amount, around 150MB, in our case.

Another thing you might notice is Firefox 3.1 beta 3's use of operating system sounds. On Ubuntu GNU+Linux, when a user is prompted, the sound "dialog-question.wav" plays, a short drum roll, the same sound that plays when a user logs in. When a user is prompted with an error message or important notice, the sound "dialog-warning.ogg" plays, the same sound as when a user types an incorrect login.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 may also use Windows and Macintosh system sounds, but, we won't say, as we won't test it. If you want to test it, please post a comment saying whether it does, and we will confirm it here.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 has improvements in the HTML <video> and <audio> tags. The player for these tags now has a skip-able time-line, many fixed bugs, including the bug in the GNU+Linux version where the sound would stop playing after a few seconds into a video and certain audio files.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 scores a 93/100 on the Acid 3 test.


One of the things you might notice is the new "Add Tab" button,
placed at the end of the last Tab on the Tab tool bar.



Many extensions for Firefox 3.0 are already compatible with Firefox 3.1 beta 3, some include StumbleUpon, Image Zoom, Adblock Plus, Firebug(alpha), FireFTP, Menu Editor, and sure to be hundreds others.


External Links:

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Mozilla Announces Firefox 3.1 beta 3
Where to download Firefox 3.1 beta 3
Mozilla Announces Firefox 3.1 to be named 3.5
Mozilla Firefox Official Website