Firefox 3.1 beta 2

[swa66]

Firefox 3.1 Beta2 was released

Quoting [developer.mozilla.org...] :

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• This beta is now available in 54 languages - get your local version and let us know if it looks right.
  
• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you’ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!
  
• New functions that make it easy to remove the history of your past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website.
  
• New support for web worker threads.
  
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content.
  
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
  
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users
  
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.
  

[Hester]

speculative parsing for faster content rendering

What exactly is that?

[JS_Harris]

A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you�ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!

Is 3.1 Beta2 ushering in the death of affiliate marketing? No cookies = no refferal fees. Does the "any trace" include cookies too?

[henry0]

Why does the downloadable exec comes from .ru
I stopped it
does yours too come from Russia?

[JS_Harris]

Not enough material to read and no feedback yet so I haven't downloaded it.

If the new version blocks affiliates by default a lot of sites will pack it in though I can't imagine Mozilla would think it's a good idea to block cookies by default. Waiting patiently to hear on the matter...

[koan]

No cookies = no refferal fees.

No cookies, no login on many sites requiring user accounts, so I doubt they disable it during the session, ideally they would just erase it all when the browser is closed.

[JS_Harris]

So long as the affiliate code sticks when the visitors changes sites...

Clearing cookies when the browser is closed already exists so it's not the "new" they're talking about(see:tools/options/private data). I wonder how many millions of dollars that little checkbox has cost affiliates.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 1:57 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2008]

[henry0]

ideally they would just erase it all when the browser is closed.

As per computerWorld it works as described above

I earlier mentioned a download.ru
I guess they offer a random d-load location to balance the downloads heavy traffic, the next one when I tried again was .de

[nealrodriguez]

the un of browsers

[GaryK]

I don't get what they mean about 2.x users being offered a free [developer.mozilla.org] upgrade? Is that some silly attempt at humor? Or perhaps a lame attempt at marketing?

[weeks]

I don't get what they mean about 2.x users being offered a free upgrade? Is that some silly attempt at humor? Or perhaps a lame attempt at marketing?

I saw that as well. Couldn't make it make sense.

[Robert Charlton]

...2.x users being offered a free upgrade...

Maybe that's the next step before they offer to pay users to upgrade. ;)

Note that the upgrade choices are "Later"/ "Never"/ "Get the new version"... and that "Never" doesn't mean never.

Is it faster?

[henry0]

You better keep your prior version (anyway this beta won't overwrite a previous version if d-loaded in another dir/)
Reason: 3.1 has almost none of the usual plugins available such as yslow etc...