Happy news for the Firefox lovers. The latest version that is Firefox 3.5 is about to release soon.

So far it is assumed that the new Firefox browser will be used by more than 30% of the internauts.

The browser can set aside various other browsers now used, including paid and free versions of browsers.
The expectation is now more than it was for the former versions.

But of course the expectations can’t be wilder since the origin follows the FOSS revolution.
Take for instance, the success story of the vlc media player.

The release is so far announced to be on the end of June but the release of first and second release candidates in the same week suggests that it can be expected at least a week before the proposed dates.

Lets take a look at the developing process of the Firefox 3.5 and later check some of the exciting features built into the browser.

The promises about the release dates are given by none other than the Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Mr. Mike Beltzner.

There were more than 800,000 beta users for the Firefox who raised various queries and issues regarding the new version.

According to Beltzner, Firefox succeeded addressing all of these issues before releasing the first release candidate earlier this week.
There can’t be more issues arise for a perfect release like Firefox 3.5, that the second release candidate also released in the same week. Now it is assumed that the second release candidate itself will be the final product to be released soon. With this expectation the second release candidate has given the same name as that of the new version to be released. If no more issues are raised, the second release candidate itself will be the new browser the world is eagerly waiting for.

The Firefox 3.5 icon

Anthony Piraino from the Iconfactory is the genius behind the creation of the new Firefox icon.
The updated icon is based on the artworks done by Jon Hicks and Stephen Horlander.

The icon of course is an updated version of the old icon itself.

The old Firefox icon was developed by none other than Jon Hicks based on the sketches provided by Stephen DesRoches and the creation was under the direction of Daniel Burka and Steven Garrity. If you are one with a strong designing background you may be interested in the history of the Firefox icon development. If so, you can get the whole story at the Firefox’s creative brief.
With shadow:

Without:

Fastest Firefox to date

As I already mentioned the release of the latest Firefox version will be significantly faster than any other versions of Firefox.

Various Mozilla communities are celebrating this achievement with some cool fun filled stuff.

One such event is the video sharing by Mozilla users to spread the word about the faster Firefox development. The users are requested to upload videos of any work they can do in a faster way. Are you interested in joining the fun? Then why wait, follow the steps listed below.

1. Record a video of any of your faster works like playing a piano or making some fries.
2. Go to www.fastestfirefox.com and follow the simple instructions there to upload your video.
3. The community will be having the power to edit your work in case it is selected as a best submission. The community will combine the best videos to a single one and it will be released 1 week after the Firefox 3.5 release. If your video gets selected you will get a Firefox 3.5 T-Shirt.

Now we can move onto some of the exciting features in the Firefox 3.5. We will discuss about the most interesting 10 features here.

• Undo closed window
• Forget a particular site
• Tab tearing
• Keyboard / Awesome Bar filters
• Smarter session restore
• Private Browsing Mode
• Color profiles
• TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
• Geo-Location
• Support for Video

Undo closed window

I have faced the same problem as many of you guys out there that is the accident closing of Firefox windows. Although the earlier versions use interactive messages before closing any windows but there was no provisions for undoing any closed window. These problems is well solved in the Firefox 3.5 as there are options for retrieve the list of previously closed tabs and windows and restore them if according to the user’s choice. These options can be found at the History menu.

Forget a particular site

Some of the users want to remove details about certain domains from their browsing history. There are tools like Private browsing modes and history wipers which will be useful in this context. But the Firefox 3.5 offers a new option which enables the user to make his browsers history forget about some specific domains. This will be quite useful to those naughty kids who cat browse from their parent’s computer.

Tab tearing

Some of the readers may be familiar with the tab tearing facility in the Google chrome. The feature in a more exciting format is incorporated with the Firefox 3.5. You can grab a tab and drag it a little out to create a new window. The reverse will also work. The similar operations can be found by right clicking on the tabs if you don’t like grabbing and dragging tabs.

Keyboard / Awesome Bar filters

Firefox 3.5’s Awesome Bar / address bar fetches you lists of suggestions at lightning fast speed to complete the URL which you are typing. It becomes more exciting when it comes to the inbuilt filters for supporting this feature. Normally the list of suggestions is fetched from your bookmarks, page history and tags. The filter ‘*’ can restrict your list to the bookmarks only while ‘#’ limits it to tags.

Smarter session restore

The session restore feature is modified to somewhat a crash recovery feature in the latest version of Firefox. The user can select the tabs he want t restore in case of some crashes. This makes the user to secure himself from those sites which might have caused the crash. Usually the tabs with flash on it is the culprit in such occasions.

Private Browsing Mode

The private mode (also known as porn mode) will be of great use where security matters. For example in situations like buying gifts, any sensitive search, a quick mail check from friend’s browser, bill pavement etc you may find this private mode as a real blessing. You can enable and disable that mode according to the nature of work. As many users out there think it is not a “porn mode” but rather a mode with a lot of uses.

Color profiles

Even though various cameras and other capture devices set colors in different ways most of the browsers filter the colors so that it is optimized for quick viewing in every browser. But the case is not the same with Firefox 3.5. It implements a dynamic color profile for each picture which makes them appear in the screen in the original colours.

TraceMonkey JavaScript engine

The JavaScript engine TraceMonkey installed to Firefox 3.5 is 20 to 40 times faster than the SpiderMonkey engine installed in Firefox 3.

Geo-Location

The integrated geo-location powered by Google’s Wi-Fi triangulation and IP address information retrieves data about your locality and helps you in getting local search results. This will indeed be really helpful if you are searching for some local places or services. You can disable this feature also when you don’t want to restrict your search to your locality only.

Support for Video

The last but the most exciting feature about Firefox 3.5 is the support for video using HTML 5. The flash player is no longer needed to play your videos within a web page. The specialty about the web page coded in HTML 5 is that when you watch some video in an open source format like Ogg Vorbis or Theora, the Firefox 3.5 will consider it as the part of the page itself and will play the video without the help of some flash content. It also enables instant commenting on the videos on WebPages. This is the feature which attracted most of the beta users of the Firefox 3.5. This move can be considered as the upcoming molding of text and video into a inseparable webpage.

I can hardly wait to install a version of Firefox 3.5 into my PC and enjoy the new browsing experience. I guess the same will be the case with most of you guys too. So I think we are not late in wishing a “KUDOS” to the developing team of Firefox 3.5.

Webmaster edit
Removed the images because it seems they were taken from lifehacker.com
Need to keep a closer eye on the contributors it seems.
I apologize for the confusion