First Look: Firefox 3.1 beta 3

Mozilla has just released the third beta version of its latest Firefox open-source browser, showcasing some of the upcoming features expected in Firefox 3.5.

The majority of changes appear to be on the back end, but there a few new things to look out for from a user perspective, including a 'private browsing' mode and easier tab management, as well as the ability to use special characters when navigating the smart address bar.

There are also a number of changes behind the scenes for web developers and extension creators. Developers have been given a host of new tools to play with, including the ability to test a site under development with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine to see how much faster it runs.

Extension developers, meanwhile, will have a new feature allowing them to test existing add-ons to ensure compatibility with the latest version of Firefox.

Installing this beta release will not overwrite previous versions of the browser, so if you're running Firefox 2.0 or 3.0 you will have two versions installed. This is to ensure that, should the beta throw up some fatal flaw, users will still have access to a previously tested and known version.

For those early adopters also using the beta of Microsoft's Windows 7, the Enter key no longer appears to have any effect when typing in a web address, even when selecting an address from the drop down list. Similarly, Ctrl+Enter doesn't add a 'www.' and '.com' at the beginning and end of text typed into the address field.

The most significant addition to Firefox is probably the inclusion of the private browsing mode, which is turned on by selecting 'Start Private Browsing' from the Tools menu. Any already open tabs or windows will be closed when the session is initiated.

While in private browsing mode no history of visited pages will be remembered, nothing entered into a search bar or text entry field will be added to the auto-complete list and no new passwords will be saved. According to the release notes, passwords should not be automatically filled in when in private browsing mode, but they always were when we tested it.

Cookies or other temporary files will be used during the private browsing session, but will be deleted once the session is ended. Anything downloaded will be removed from the download list, but the files themselves will remain, as will any bookmarks created during the private browsing session.

You can end the private browsing session by closing all open Firefox windows, or selecting 'Stop Private Browsing' from the Tools menu. The latter will then close all existing windows and tabs, and reopen any sites that were closed when the private session was started.

Mozilla has also added a privacy option called 'Clear Recent History' which builds on the 'Clear Private Data' feature available in the current version of Firefox. This allows users to clear existing browsing, saved form and search history as well as cache, cookies, offline web site data, saved passwords and authenticated sessions.

The new version offers the same feature, but with the addition of a time factor allowing users to remove data from the past hour, two hours, four hours, that day or the entire history.

Another new end-user feature is 'tab tearing', which allows you to drag tabs off the bar to automatically open that site in a new window. This process can also be reversed, allowing a tab to be dragged from one Firefox window to another. Should the last tab in one window be moved to another, the initial window will be closed.

This is a very useful feature for those who have a lot of sites open at the same time, particularly when combined with Firefox's existing ability to reorder tabs by dragging them around the tab bar.

There are currently some issues around the tab tearing feature when dragging the tab onto the desktop; in some cases this creates a shortcut to that URL on the desktop and in others it opens the tab in a new window. There is also some debate going on in the developer forums about what the default behaviour should be.

Dragging a tab out to the desktop in our tests always opened a new window, in both Windows 7 and XP.

Mozilla has also made some changes to the smart location bar which now allows surfers to use special characters to help narrow the results returned when typing into the address bar. By adding characters such as '^', '*' or '+', search results can be restricted to the history, bookmarks or tagged pages respectively. Other special characters are set to included as development continues.

A few tweaks have been made under the hood that allow users to watch a video in the browser without needing any plug-ins or external media players and to load page content faster.

Although this is purely anecdotal evidence, we timed how long it took to load 11 sites from a variety of sources, running it three times on each version. Firefox 3.0.7 took an average of 61 seconds to load all the pages, while the new beta took an average of 54 seconds. So it certainly appears that the developers have improved page load times a little.

For those who don't want to wait and have decided to install this beta, it's worth remembering that some normal extensions and add-ons may not work. There are also a few known bugs already listed, such as the 'tab tearing' issues mentioned earlier, and when going from the private browsing mode back to normal mode, some sites that are secured with SSL will not load properly until they are restarted.

Furthermore, Google Mail will sometimes fail to respond when creating a new filter, showing advanced search options or clearing the spam folder, but refreshing the page will fix this.

We'll be doing a full review of the new browser once all the kinks have been ironed out and it becomes generally available as Firefox 3.5.