New Firefox Out Tomorrow - what's new?

6/30/2009
the following highlights come from this article.


Firefox 3.5 implements a restore feature for both tabs and windows from the History menu, which would (hopefully) also restore any text you've typed into them.

(If) you'd rather your coworker be unaware of your workday LOLcat browsing - Firefox 3.5's history browser offers a convenient "Forget this site" option, erasing your browser's memory of particular domains.

Grab a tab and drag it out a bit to create a new browser window from it. Drag windows into tabs again

What good is it to bring back all the tabs you just lost to a crash if the tab that brought everything down comes back too? Firefox's developers took a cue from the users and turned the session restore feature into more of a crash recovery tool, allowing users to select which tabs should come back. If you don't know who's the culprit, here's a hint: It's probably the one with Flash (animations) on it.

call it "Porn Mode," but this feature, already in a number of competing browsers, has uses beyond the prurient. Beyond obvious situations, like gift buying and sensitive research, logging onto a friend's browser for a quick email check or bill pay is made a lot more secure if you can get to the private mode. Likewise, anonymizing some of your searches and cookie collection on your own machine isn't a bad idea, and a private mode can do that too. You don't need it all the time, but you might be glad it's available.

On the web, most colors look the same, though, because they're filtered and optimized for quick viewing in every browser. Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.

If you type post office into a maps site, you probably don't want the headquarters of the U.S. Post Office, or post office listings from two towns over. Integrated geo-location, powered by Google's Wi-Fi triangulation and simple IP address information, looks to know roughly where you are and help you when you're looking for something local. You can disable it if you'd like, but, realistically, signing on from any IP address reveals a bit about where you are anyways. If a good number of sites pick it up, geo-location could bring to the browser what a lot of people are already enjoying on their phone.

2 comments:

shelly said...

was wondering why they haven't incorporated something cool like the New Tab King extension as the new tab experience in FF 3.5?

--shelly

uncle matt said...

it seems that the folks who organize the firefox team keep an eye out for the most popular and useful extensions and then eventually down the line incorporate them into the general firefox. so maybe some day it will be included :)