November 2nd, 2009
Mozilla goes back to the beta with Firefox 3.6
Barely four months after launching Firefox 3.5, Firefox has shipped its first beta version of Firefox 3.6.
Mozilla takes release numbers seriously. As our own Stephen Shankland notes, this is not Firefox 4, nor is it Firefox 3.5.x. It’s being pushed as a minor tweak, one with no visible user interface changes.
There are two ways to look at this.
- Oh goody. Mozilla is increasing the pace at which it delivers updates and upgrades.
- Oh bother. Does this mean Firefox 3.5 is buggy and insecure?
Among the features in the new release:
- Personas, a set of “skins” for the browser surround of menus.
- Alerts on delivery of new plug-ins.
- Support for full-screen native video.
- Support for WOFF fonts.
- New support for CSS, DOM and HTML5.
If you have ever thought to yourself, “gee, I’m not a programmer, and I can barely afford my daily bread, how can I help an open source project,” here is your answer. Download this buggy code and report on what’s wrong so it can be made right.
No excuses if you’re Basque or Czech or Georgian. This beta has you covered. Yes, even if you’re Telugan, the new Firefox beta understands you. Download it now.
Oh, and feel free to complain below.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 11/02/09
