Mozilla has announced the availability of its first release candidate for Firefox 3.5. The updated Internet browser is said to be the fastest ever version of Firefox.
Released Candidate (RC) 2 is available directly from Mozilla’s website with the full version expected at the end of June. It is the second RC but the first to be released for download directly from the Mozilla site.
Page load and manipulation is said to be two times faster on Firefox 3.5 than version 3, and JavaScript runs three times faster. Video and audio playback capabilities are built-in.
Firefox 3.5 also features ‘tear off’ tabs, which enable users to move pages open in a tab to a new browser window. Location-aware browsing is said to provide users with localised search results, giving more relevant responses to queries.
Security has also been upgraded with full private browsing mode installed and users have the option to remove all traces of a specific website they have visited or to remove all references to browsing from the past few hours.
Users can also customise their Firefox experience as there are now over 6,000 add-ons to choose from. Mozilla has also added ‘personas’, which enable one-click theme changes.
However, Mozilla has said that Firefox 3.5 RC2 is intended for developer testing and community feedback, so anyone not part of its developer programme should wait for the full release before downloading it.
