Mozilla has unleashed the first beta of Firefox 5 and the two most important are support for a CSS animation standard and the implementation of a channel switcher that lets users who want to live on the bleeding edge of Firefox flip between Aurora (pre-beta, but QA’d), Beta and Release versions of Firefox……….
Mozilla is sticking to its new fast-track development cycle with plans to release a beta version of Firefox 5 and it is currently in Mozilla‘s Aurora channel, but will move to beta tomorrow. Aurora is a recently created channel that now comes between nightly builds and beta in order to deliver features to users at various levels of quality and polish. Firefox 5 for Mobile is also scheduled for a beta release and contrary to some report that say that the Firefox 5 user interface is identical to that of Firefox 4, there are, in fact, some small changes. Mozilla’s Director of Community Development Asa Dotzlerdetails a few changes:
As you can see, the buttons and textfields are much crisper. The corner radius has been sharpened up a bit and the button and textfield shadows have been tightened up and pulled into the border line.
The overall effect might seem subtle but after using it for a while and then going back to Firefox 4, you can really “feel” the difference.
What’s New:
- Added support for CSS animations
- Added support for switching Firefox development channels
- The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
- Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
- Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
- Improved spell checking for some locales
- Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
Improvements Of Firefox 5 Beta for Android:
- Improved page load speed, especially on 3G networks
- Improved panning responsiveness
- Added support for the Do-Not-Track header
- Improved compatibility with SwiftKey keyboard
- Images downloaded to the Android Gallery are now immediately visible
- Improved color conversion enabling better display of images and video
- Dialog prompts better match default Android styling
- Added support for over six menu items in the Android Menu
- Resolved an error encountered when trying to load web pages without an active Internet connection
Mozilla Plans End to Firefox 3.5:
On Firefox 3.5, meanwhile, Mozilla will automatically upgrade 3.5 users to 3.6. “We don’t think self-selection will ultimately get us to the place we need to be,” Christian Legnitto, Firefox release manager, wrote in a note posted to the developer mailing list. “We will force 3.6 on 3.5 stragglers not choosing to update to Firefox 4 or 3.6.” “We feel comfortable making the major update choice for users because a) the versions are very similar and b) we’d rather lose a small amount of miffed users than leave a large amount of users vulnerable,” he continued. On the Firefox 3.5 end-of-life Web site, Mozilla said it can’t support the browser “into perpetuity.” The company said it was frustrated with efforts to get users to move away from 3.5,and is “worried too many people do not upgrade and are on vulnerable and unsupported versions of Firefox.” this point, 12 million people are on Firefox 3.5. But Mozilla said the upgrade from 3.5 to 3.6 is the “perfect storm” for automatic updating since it did not drop support for any platforms between the two versions, there is 95 percent add-on compatibility and there are virtually no UI changes.
Download Mozila Firefox 5 Beta : Here
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