// Home / News

Firefox 3.6 beta breaks free

By Barry Collins

Posted on 2 Nov 2009 at 15:08

Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 3.6.

The beta was originally due to ship at the end of last month, shortly before the official release of Windows 7, but was held up by a series of serious bugs.

Now Mozilla's confident enough to release the software into the hands of beta testers, although it warns that most add-ons won't yet have been updated to cope with the new version of the browser.

Firefox 3.6 includes a smattering of claimed enhancements, including improved JavaScript performance and start-up times. Firefox has seen its reputation as the lightweight, high-performance browser eroded by the arrival of Google Chrome.

Other newcomers include full-screen support for video embedded into web pages with the HTML video tag, the ability to change the appearance of the browser with a single click (via the Personas feature), and in-built alerts regarding out-of-date plugins.

Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Firefox 3.6 beta 1 can be donwloaded here.

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

User comments

Chrome?

"Firefox has seen its reputation as the lightweight, high-performance browser eroded by the arrival of Google Chrome"

IE8 starts in about a quarter of the time it takes Firefox to (seemingly) light it's fires, warm it's boilers and generate some steam. Firefox is by far and away the slowest (to start) of the four big-name browsers.

By Bassey1976 on 2 Nov 2009

On the other hand, once open, opening a new tab in Firefox is instant, but takes 3 seconds in IE. Swings and roundabouts. I only start Firefox once or twice a session, but open tabs frequently, so for me Ff is still better.

By davidsoap on 3 Nov 2009

But with Google Chrome you get the best of both worlds.. fast startup and fast tab loading, in my experience

By Dieter on 3 Nov 2009