The Firefox guys at Mozilla have released the 2nd beta for Firefox 3.1. "The public beta of Mozilla's first Web browser to incorporate a private browsing mode, is being made available to the general public today, although as before, the organization has yet to make it official." This build also includes the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, and for web content, it's enabled by default. If you want to enable it for XUL/chrome as well, go to about:config, search for 'jit' and set the XUL/chrome option to 'true'.
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Member since:
2007-11-06
Download link missing from post (you'd think it is something important...):
Linux - http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.1b2&os=linux&=en-US
Windows - http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.1b2&os=win&=en-US
Osx - http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.1b2&os=osx&=en-US
Edited 2008-12-08 21:14 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:2006-09-19
XUL ("chrome") JIT is prone to crashes because of extensions; much work is still being done on it, but don't expect it for 3.1 ...and don't complain if, after turning it on, Firefox crashes and you (or whoever does it) have two dozen exotic extensions.
OTOH BetaNews has jumped the gun again, since the builds named 3.1beta2 are just the first test builds for localizations (which are not built daily, so they have to be tested before getting released) and not the final beta builds, which are still to be announced.
Member since:2006-09-19
...and the official release can be tracked here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_3.1b2
There it actually seems that the build should be final, even though they might not be on all the mirrors, yet.
Edited 2008-12-08 22:13 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-06
I just downloaded Firefox 3.1 beta 2 and on the first welcome screen it says "Watch a video in your browser without needing any plugins or external media players." So me being the curious spud that I am decided to give it a shot. I was able to get the video to work. My question is how does the video work? Will Firefox 3.1 now include codecs like ogg or is it using some type of bittorrent to stream it to the player?
On a side note, it gets 92/100 for acid3 test.
Member since:2005-08-29
try http://www.tn.com.ar if you get a real-time stream on Linux, I'm interested; otherwise, no.
Member since:2006-07-12
I get a live stream with firefox 2.018 in BeOS using the VLC plugin on that page, works great. But firefox3 isnt available for BeOS or haiku yet so i cant test that.
BTW: what is the point of elimminating the need for plugins? I thought customization and simplicity to port was one of the strong points of gecko nad other mozilla products?
Maybe im wrong but shouldnt this make it harder to port the stuff.
Member since:2006-09-25
BTW: what is the point of elimminating the need for plugins? I thought customization and simplicity to port was one of the strong points of gecko nad other mozilla products?
Maybe im wrong but shouldnt this make it harder to port the stuff.
The point is to provide an easy way for people to add video and audio to their sites, with a defined JavaScript API allow them to build their own video controllers.
The video element is in the midst of being standardised and other browsers are implementing it.
Member since:2006-09-25
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Member since:2005-07-01
Theroa
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/07/theora-video-backend-for-firef...
We all adore Theora
Member since:2006-04-10
Member since:
2007-08-20
Awww... they removed the new, MRU-order tab switching! 
In Beta1, ctrl+tab would cycle between tabs in most-recently-used order. So if you're repeatedly switching between two tabs, you only need press ctrl+tab once each time regardless of where the tabs are positioned in the tab bar. But "based on feedback from users" [release notes] they removed it in Beta2. Now it's back to moving linearly through the tab bar.
I preferred the new behaviour - which matches alt+tab. Guess I'll have to install Ctrl-Tab extension after all.
Tip: disable extensions.checkCompatibility in about:config before upgrading to prevent Firefox from disabling your 'incompatible' extensions (Adblock, flashblock work fine on Beta2 despite the warning).
Edited 2008-12-08 23:22 UTC
Member since:2008-08-19
I preferred the new behaviour - which matches alt+tab. Guess I'll have to install Ctrl-Tab extension after all.
Not surprising, really - even if some people prefer the new behaviour, it has to be a fairly big improvement to win over the majority that don't like it when things change unexpectedly. And in this case, the majority doesn't seem to be convinced.
Member since:2007-12-16
I preferred the new behaviour - which matches alt+tab. Guess I'll have to install Ctrl-Tab extension after all.
Not surprising, really - even if some people prefer the new behaviour, it has to be a fairly big improvement to win over the majority that don't like it when things change unexpectedly. And in this case, the majority doesn't seem to be convinced. "
I myself hate it (the new style), since I can't really know in which order the tabs are going to be selected, so Ctrl+Tab switching then becomes slower to use for me.
It might be OK for a big number of randomly ordered tabs, but Firefox anyways already supports manual positioning, so I don't see anything good in it. If one needs to cycle between same two tabs, there always exists the Ctrl+Shift+Tab for backwards cycling.
Edited 2008-12-09 10:45 UTC
Member since:2005-07-01
Member since:2006-04-10
Member since:
2006-01-08
I was pretty excited about the new tracemonkey javascript engine when it was first announced. It looked to be a big improvement in the synthetic benchmarks they showed. And a big step in catching up to Google Chrome in speed.
But testing Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 with the jsBalls fight timedemo ( http://www.jsballs.com/benchmark.html ) it seems slower than Firefox 3. Safari 3.2 and Opera 10 alpha 1 both were much faster than their predecessors in this benchmark, I was hoping Firefox would keep pace.
Edited 2008-12-09 00:52 UTC
Member since:2005-10-10
I'm not seeing any speed increase at all, in fact it's much slower than v3.0. Am I missing something?
I tried this site: http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/ to test both and 3.1 just choked?
Member since:2006-01-08
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2005-10-10
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Running a 64-bit browser on a 64-bit system means you don't need 32-bit libraries installed just for your browser.
Besides, now that Adobe has released a 64-bit flash plugin for Linux, is there any reason to not use 64-bit browser? Java, sure, but that is not too common anymore via regular browsing. Were there any other 32-bit only holdouts?
Member since:2005-07-24
Nobody seems to do this, but there is really something to be said for installing a 32 bit distro and running it under a 64 bit kernel. This combines the nice flat memory model of 64 bit in kernel space with the memory efficiency of 32 bit in user space. You miss out on having the extra x86_64 registers available to the user space code, but save significantly on memory. And, of course, the whole 32/64 bit browser plugin issue is side-stepped, along with any duplication of 32/64 bit libraries.
Edited 2008-12-09 16:33 UTC
Member since:
2008-10-26
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:
2006-07-14
Google maps was broken in 3.1 beta 1. But it works now in the second beta. I also experienced several crashes in the previous beta, which have yet to occur. So it looks like my bug reporting has payed off. Google Chrome is still faster on more limited hardware, but on my current core two duo two gig desktop I prefer having the firefox extensions available.
Member since:
2005-07-07
