Mozilla will rush out a patch to its Firefox 3.5 browser to correct a number
of bugs that users have cited as causing them issues. The patch, if it proceeds
on schedule, will be released later in July.
The patched version will be named Firefox 3.5.1 and include a fix to the
browser’s JavaScript engine, TraceMonkey, and another to how the browser runs
in Windows XP. Mozilla has scheduled a Firefox BugDay for its community to
tackle "major 3.5 bugs" on July 7.
According to the real-time counter on the Mozilla site, over 8 million
copies of Firefox 3.5 have been downloaded worldwide since the browser’s
general release on June 30. Mozilla
had released Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 on April 27, allowing users to test-drive
the new features, including support for JSON and Web worker
threads.
Firefox 3.5 addressed many of the reliability and performance issues of its
previous versions, according
to eWEEK Labs, notably with regard to slowdowns after long sessions and
crashing. In multiple tests, Firefox 3.5 also doubled the speed of Firefox 3.0,
while coming closer to matching the speed of "performance leaders"
Safari 4 and Chrome 2.0.
The browser also features more extensive support for HTML 5, which allows it
to handle video in much the same way that a browser displays images or text—that
is to say, directly, so that video is integrated seamlessly with other Web
content. Standards support in Firefox 3.5 has also been increased, an
improvement over its previous versions.
Firefox 3.5 offers a Private Browsing mode and Location Aware browsing, the
latter of which utilizes Geolocation API to
(optionally) share the user’s location with a Website.
Although Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to dominate the enterprise
with regard to browser usage, Firefox
saw gains in its enterprise market share in 2008, increasing from 16.9
percent in July to 18.2 percent in December, while Chrome and Apple Safari
stayed relatively steady.
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Enterprise Applications News & Reviews 
