Firefox 3.1 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine.
Firefox 3.1b1 New Features:
- Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
- Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
- A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
- Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
- Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.
Suggested Readings:
- Firefox 3.1b1 Release Notes
- The “Firefox 3.1 For Developers” article
- Mozilla Links: Firefox 3 Beta 1 reviewed
Download Shiretoko:
- Windows: Shiretoko Beta 1 Setup.exe
- Mac OS X: Shiretoko Beta 1.dmg
- Linux: shiretoko-beta1.tar.bz2
You know, I was really excited and looking forward to this version release. Especially after all my recent work switching from my “Minefield” build to Shiretoko Alpha.
Shiretoko Alpha took care of many of my major gripes.
Alas, while the 3.1b1 build is likely much more polished than the Alpha version, I might be headed back to in shortly.
Turns out that while I was able to drag-n-drop links from Thunderbird into Shiretoko Alpha, and have them open in a tab, that isn’t happening (again) in this 3.1b1 build. And what makes it worse is that I’m running it in XP Home! Vista I would expect that behavior.
Nor can I drag links from Thunderbird and drop them into my bookmark sidebar without first opening the page up in a tab. I could do that as well in Shiretoko Alpha also.
For most folks that probably isn’t that big a deal, but as I often “wrangle” my blog links and such via emails, it’s a bit frustrating at the URL rodeo roundups!
Such is the life of those who live with Alpha/Beta versions…..it’s all about trade-offs.
@Claus, I still haven’t switched over yet. I am currently using…hmm…good question…ah here we go Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4pre) Gecko/2008101205 Firefox 3/3.0.3pre ID:2008101205. May be I am waiting for the Beta releases or I am just don’t want to make a switch over right now (or may be a little of both).
Cain’t say that I have tried to drag links from TBird into Fx. I like your comment about Vista behaviour (of course now I am going to start getting flooded with emails again accusing me of bashing Vista).
A lot of work has been put into the drag & drop functionality (a whole new API replacing the old implementation, if I’m not mistaken), that’s why it may not be stable yet…
By the way, your links above say “Alpha 2″, Guru… Beware of copy/pasting! :p
@Stifu, Whoops, I made sure I updated the link locations and changed everything else to Beta 1. Good catch.