Mozilla have finally released the latest version of the FireFox Internet browser. After three release candidates and four beta versions, FireFox 3.5 has been graded a full version change to reflect the volume of new features and performance upgrades crammed into it.

The main download page on Mozilla.com focuses heavily on the speed of the new browser. The Tracemonkey javascript engine is indeed a performance step-change for javascript heavy sites when compared to FireFox 3. However, early online test results suggest that this is only bringing FireFox up to or around the performance level already offered by Google Chrome, Safari and Microsoft IE.
Some of the enhancements to the aptly named Awesome Bar are genuinely helpful. Particularly, the level of available customisation and the ability to use keystrokes to limit searches to your choice of bookmarks, history, titles and tags, or URL. However, for end-users most of the changes in the new browser simply represent FireFox catching up with the increasingly stiff competition in the browser market.
New privacy settings allow the user to switch on and off private browsing. This gives users the ability to mask traces of the sites they visit in the browser history and to clear traces of a particular site whilst leaving the rest of your history intact. But whilst invaluable for some, these features are already there in other browsers. So too the tear off tabs that allow the user to drag-and-drop a particular tab to create a new browsing window. Nonetheless, as the newest browser on the market, FireFox 3.5 does a good job of consolidating the best of what is available in other products.
What sets FireFox 3.5 further apart from its rivals is the first implementation of HTML5 audio and video support. This allows developers to embed rich media (Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora and WAV) into a web page, using Javascript, CSS and HTML, without the need for proprietary technologies. Assuming that the other major browsers follow suit, this will be a step change for Free Software purists involved in Web development.
This latest release has also gained a range of useful new features, which are clearly oriented at improving the browser’s performance for use with web applications. Web Worker Threads allow java scripts to take advantage of the multithreading capabilities of modern multi-core processors. Offline Support reduces the load time for frequently used Web applications, taking advantage of HTML5 offline resource caching for static content. And cross-site XMLHttpRequests (XHR) simplify the creation of mashups and cross site collaboration, enabling Web applications to access material from other servers.
Indeed, it is the new features for developers and designers that give this latest FireFox release the edge. Location aware browsing opens up a host of new possibilities using Google Location Services. The shackles of Web-friendly fonts are removed by giving designers a massive range of downloadable TrueType and OpenType fonts to chose from, whilst maintaining a consistent look across different platforms. Also, support for CSS 3 media queries enables designers to control output more tightly according to the capabilities of the device rendering the content.
Overall, FireFox continues to lead the way more through its underlying philosophy than through end-user bling: by empowering developers and designers to produce a more innovative, higher quality and, perhaps above all, Open Internet experience.