Second Firefox 3.1 beta brings major changes

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Stephen Shankland CNET News

Published: 09 Dec 2008 11:47 GMT

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Mozilla has made several changes with the second beta of Firefox 3.1, released on Monday.

The new version includes support for video and audio built into web pages; a built-in service for telling websites a user's location if users permit it; private browsing; web worker support for more powerful web-based programs; and the TraceMonkey engine for running the JavaScript programs used to build sophisticated websites. TraceMonkey was released before, but is now switched on by default.

The official announcement has more details for users, and programmers can check the developer site.

The finished 3.1 version, code-named Shiretoko, is expected to arrive in early 2009 after a third beta, Mozilla has said. It arrives during a period of hot activity for browsers. Apple is promoting its Safari browser for Windows as well as Mac OS X; Microsoft, the leader of the market, plans to release Internet Explorer 8 in 2009; and the biggest change is the arrival of Google Chrome, an open-source project that, like Safari, uses a project called WebKit for interpreting and displaying the basic HTML code used to describe web pages.

However, Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker has indicated that she is unfazed by the competition. Search-ad-related revenue from Google, the organisation behind Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation, pulled in $75m (£50m) in 2007.

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