Mozilla has made Firefox 3.6 beta 4 available for download. The new version makes over 100 fixes from the last beta, which include many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users.

Almost 70% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta.

The Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features for users to evaluate:
* (New in this version) Support for the HTML5 File API
* A change to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
* The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
* A mechanism to prevent incompatible software from crashing Firefox.
* Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
* Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
* Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
* Support for the WOFF font format.
* Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
* Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Download here

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Today is Mozilla Firefox’s 5th birthday. The project by Mozilla was launched on November 5th 2004, with Firefox 1.0 this became a hit among users and developers alike.

5 years later and Firefox boasts over 330 million users, thousands of plug-ins, and a busy developer community. It holds a quarter of the browser market.

Christopher Blizzard over at hacks.mozilla.org has some idea about the future. Sums it up in 3 words, privacy, video, and mobile. From the blog post:

“Over the next five years everyone can expect that the browser should take part in a few new areas – to act as the user agent it should be. Issues around data, privacy and identity loom large. You will see the values of Mozilla’s public benefit mission reflected in our product choices in these areas to make users safer and help them understand what it means to share data with web sites.

Expect to see big changes in the video space. HTML5-based video and open video codecs are starting to appear on the web as web developers make individual choices to support a standards-based, royalty-free approach. Expect to see changes in the expectations around the licensing of codecs.

And over the next five years mobile will play an increasingly important role in our lives, and in the future of the web. The decisions of users, carriers, governments and the people who build phones will have far-reaching effects on this new extension to the Internet and how people will access information for decades to come.”

“Light the World with Firefox”,  Find out more at www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/en-US/.

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