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Firefox 3.1 Alpha "Shiretoko" Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-compile-on dept.

Just as you were getting used to 3.0, those Mozilla guys have announced 3.1's Alpha release. FTA "Built on the pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, Shiretoko includes a variety of new features. Called an 'early developer milestone,' the release includes bug fixes, improved Web standards support, Text API for the Canvas Element, support for border images and JavaScript query selectors, and improvements to the tab-switching function and the Smart Location Bar." You can download it if you dare.

6 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Awesome bar disable? by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I actually love it, being able to type just an 's' to go to slashdot, or an 'x' to go to xkcd. But I know you're just trolling so whatever.

    --
    Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
  2. Re:Awesome bar disable? by negRo_slim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope so, the Awesome bar was the only reason why I switched back to Firefox 2. I really don't understand how they could do something so wrong.

    I thought the same thing, now I enjoy being able to access most of my sites with little more than a key press or two.

    --
    On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
  3. Re:Awesome bar disable? by jd142 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Once I learned how to use it properly, I've grown to like it.

    What do people hate about it? I'm genuinely curious.

  4. Re:Awesome bar disable? by jomas1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know why you are being presented maps.google.com when you enter an "s". Personally I love this feature. Now if I want to go to the University of Houston's website I can start typing "Houston" rather than remember something conter-intuitive like https://www.ed2go.com/ (which is the UofH homepage)

    For me Firefox is now bookmarking every site I visit and allowing me to search for these sites by keywords in the url or title of the webpage. This is much more useful than manually keeping a list of bookmarks that become useless as soon as there are too many to view without scrolling.

    --
    http://nyamenation.org/
  5. The Numbers by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For anyone curious how things compare, here are the numbers for Acid 3 compliance and sunspider javascript speed for Firefox and Safari on OS X on my laptop. For Acid 3, higher is better. For Sunspider, lower is better.

    Firefox 3.0

    • Acid 3 - 67/100
    • Sunspider - 4330

    Firefox 3.1 Alpha

    • Acid 3 - 83/100
    • Sunspider - 3426

    Safari 3.1.2

    • Acid 3 - 77/100
    • Sunspider - 7516

    Safari 3.1.2 with nightly Webkit

    • Acid 3 - 98/100
    • Sunspider - 2174
  6. Re:Awesome bar disable? by Haeleth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If they'd simply called it 'enhanced address bar', made it optional but default, and described it as 'awesome' there wouldn't have been this massive resistance to it.

    They did. The feature in question is called the Smart Location Bar. "Awesomebar" is just a nickname.