You might have been wondering what happened to Firefox beta releases? In case you haven’t heard about it, there have been delays on almost each beta release that Mozilla put up.

3.5 Comes after 3.0

Mozilla has released three beta versions of their next release which was named “Firefox 3.1″ until lately. They have recently proposed that Shiretoko would be renamed to Firefox 3.5. You can catch up on details at Mozilla’s Quality Blog. So as it has been approved by Mozilla, they have released a new beta version(only a prebeta) of next release named Firefox 3.5.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 (Pre-Beta) is available at Mozilla’s quality blog. It’s a different installation which means it won’t replace your current  FF stable or beta version. Another Firefox will be installed. I have Firefox 3.0.8, Firefox 3.1 Beta and Shiretoko (Firefox 3.5 Beta 4).

Firefox needs your help!

If Mozilla doesn’t face any unexpected problems on this nightly build version, they are expecting an official beta release on April 28 before they move on to release candidates for Firefox 3.5. So in total, there will be four beta versions before RC versions. Mozilla needs your help. If you are a Firefox user and have some spare time, you can start using the latest version available and start letting Mozilla know about any bugs or problems you see with the version. This way there will be less delays.

Stay Updated

• ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-1.9.1/
• http://quality.mozilla.org

If you wish to stay updated with what’s going on with Firefox, you can get your latest firefox release by clicking on the first link above to stay updated with new features and versions. All events at Mozilla regarding Firefox releases and many more are posted at this Quality blog. You will be able to find some useful links there. You can also subscribe to this blog to stay updated.

Hooray! A New Product.  Apple has recently released the first public beta version of Safari 4.  It was made available  to developers about six months ago.  On February 24, Apple released the first beta version of Safari 4.

What’s new?

Safari has always been there with their own twist on browsing the web.  Safari 3 is still considered one of the fastest browser.  There are a lot of new features, they actually put up a list called “150 features“. They are not all new,  only is 29 of them can be considered new for Safari 4. Some of these features have already been introduced by other browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome.

Safari team has borrowed couple of ideas from Google Chrome, first thing you will notice is the new look. They move the tab bar to top just like Google Chrome.  Here are some features you will notice with Safari 4.

1. Windows Font Rendering:  Safari now use the standard rendering technique for its users. Which i think makes a lot of sense since they a lot of people who use windows use this software.
2. Tabs on Top: Just like Google Chrome, they have the tab bar on top with their own touch of course.  More tabs you have less the tab size will be.  That’s the only difference.
3. New Look :  Safari 4 for Windows doesn’t have that dark silver look. It is now more of a Windows application.
4. New JavaScript Engine: With this new release, they are introducing a new javascript engine called “Nitro”. According to Apple, it’s 8 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1.  It is quite noticeable.
5. Navigation: Almost all browsers have adopted this feature. When you open a new tab, it would show the thumbnails of most or recent visited websites.  I think it was introduced by Google Chrome.  Although, Safari is introducing this feature with its own unique way.  For instance, iTunes feature “Cover Flow” is now possible in Safari 4.
6. Developer Tools: Safari is now an ideal tool to debug, tweak or optimize a web site.

Eye Candy or Best Performance?

I’d agree if they hadn’t change the way program operates.  First of all,  It’s noticeably faster. Second of all, some of those features are useful.  I think that product is going to grab a lot of attention and a lot of people will consider switching from IE, Opera, Firefox to Safari. Last of all,  Safari’s windows integration and standard font rendering are a plus for loyal windows users.

It’s been about five months since the first alpha version of Firefox 3.1 released.  As a beta tester, I received an email about the next beta release of Firefox 3.1 (aka Shiretoko).

Firefox 3.1 (pre)beta is available to all beta testers. Well, everyone can download and check out this new beta version but it’s good to contribute. This version is only a pre-beta version which Mozilla aims to get some feedback and help from its users to fix the bugs.

So if you wish to contribute to this beta version, please head over to the “Event post” at Mozilla Quality Site and follow instructions.  You can use Litmus for testing purposes.

Also, if everything goes as it supposed go at Mozilla, they will be releasing Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 on February 18, 2009.

Download Link for Firefox 3.1 Pre-Beta 3 (aka Shiretoko):

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-1.9.1/

This event will stay opened until Friday, 13th.  So if you wish to contribute to this release, you can do it until Friday at 08.00.

As many of you know, Firefox is an open source project. Which means that users of this project can contribute.  Even though that’s pretty much the whole idea of project being open source, contribution brings problems with it.  Even the developer of Firefox make mistakes while putting together the application.

There are users that use Firefox for plenty of reasons with the help of add-ons. Functionalites are more than ever. Every day a new add-on is being released for a different purpose.

But most of add-ons out there don’t tend to work with Firefox in harmony. Since there are too many add-ons, it isn’t really possible to keep a record of all problematic extensions.

Link: Problematic Extensions

However, the list can help you determine if an add-on is causing a problem with your Firefox. There are also some useful links at that page which you follow to investigate your problems with Firefox.

It’s been over a year since Microsoft started testing Internet Explorer’s latest version.

Microsoft recently released the release candidate version of  IE 8. If you were a beta tester of IE 8, you are not going to be surprised much. If you are just learning about Internet Explorer 8, you might want to check out the web site of IE to see what it’s all about.

As I have indicated in my 2009 predictions post,  Internet Explorer will not be able grab a lot of attention with this new version.

Installation is still a major pain

I do not get this at all, I can not believe that a software developer like Microsoft is doing this.  Installation nearly takes a fifteen (15) minutes. Yes, it does. First, you download the installer and run it.  First process removes the current IE version from your system and ask you to restart your system.  If you say no, program will not load. Before the restarting is completed,  IE installation will prompt you asking to run the actual installer.  At this point, nothing else is being loaded(your desktop and etc). Since nothing else is being loaded, I thought that IE will finish the installation and start loading my system without restarting it. But after nearly ten minute installation, it restarted my machine once more and I was able to run Internet Explorer for testing purposes.

Microsoft should really figure out a better way to install its software on their another software.

Features

If you are a IE 7 users, you might like what they have done with the software.  They added some of the popular browser features like “In-Private Browsing”.  They have also added  developer tools where you can edit CSS and scripts within the browser and plenty more.  Gears can be used.

Current version of Stumbleupon is compatible with this RC version as well.