A milestone on the road to Firefox 3.6 was achieved late last week when Mozilla released the first beta of the browser. Downloaded versions will be automatically upgraded as changes are made until the final release of the browser is reached.
Among the changes in Firefox 3.6 is the ability for users to change the browser's appearance with a single click. This is known as "Personas." Mozilla says the browser will automatically alert users to out-of-date plug-ins and display videos in full screen.
The browser is based on the Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine and offers improved JavaScript operation, better overall performance  , and faster startup, Mozilla says. It includes new support for cascading style sheets, the JavaScript Document Object Model, and HTML 5.
Computerworld reported the release of Firefox 3.6 was delayed due to last-minute bugs. It said changes are more "under the hood" than things that will be obvious to users.
The identification of outdated plug-ins, the web site said, is the latest change aimed at improving browser security . Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 checked for out-of-date Adobe Flash players. Computerworld reported that manual plug-in checking was added before the beta release, which makes that function automatic. Support for some Windows 7 features was added, it said.
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