As with the last Firefox 3.5 (formerly known as 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. And a few major improvements.

Small things first. There is also an added "Recently Closed Windows" option under "History."



There are updated "Clear Recent History" functions.
To keep your browsing habits a secret, as mozilla puts it.



Firefox 3.5 beta 4 begins to download files in the background when prompted to "Save File" before you even click "Save File." If you have a file fully downloaded in the background, but haven't hit "Save File" and you hit "Cancel" the file is deleted, click "Save File" and the file is moved from the temporary location to your specified download location.

The "Awesome Bar" has a little more Windows-like style. Firefox 3.5 beta 4 now has a more consistent look and feel across platforms, excluding Mac OS X.



More noticeably. The player for the <video> and <audio> tags has been much improved. "Seeking" the time- line actually skips to specific parts of the video or audio seamlessly. Before the player would freeze very often, making the user wait for the entire video or audio to reload in order to start playing from the desired time.

Mozilla also shows off the players ability to: scale the video as it is playing, in real-time, and the ability to add decorated "Play" and "Stop" buttons, time-line, volume control, and other such decorations.



Firefox 3.5 beta 4 scores a 93/100 on the Acid 3 test.



We think Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is just about ready for public use as a stable Firefox 3.0 update. There is still the remaining problem of the "Full Screen" option in Adobe Flash that crashes Firefox 3.5. whether this is Firefox or Adobe, we don't know, but it's a remaining problem.

External Links:

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Mozilla Announces Firefox 3.5 beta 4
Where to download Firefox 3.5 beta 4
Mozilla Firefox Official Website

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