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Firefox 3.1 likely to get private surfing mode

David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 15 Sep 2008 17:56 BST

The next version of Firefox is likely to add a private surfing mode to Mozilla's popular browser.

Such functionality is already included in the beta of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and in Google Chrome, the most recent high-profile entrant into the browser wars. The Firefox community, notably developer Ehsan Akhgari, has been working on the feature since last year, but private browsing did not make it into June's release of Firefox 3.0.

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However, on 8 September, Mozilla employee Mike Connor wrote on the feature's thread that the organisation "can and will get this [feature] into 3.1 one way or another". Private-browsing mode is now included in the feature list for Firefox 3.1 as a second-level priority, although this list is still subject to change. The mode is now likely to make it into the beta versions of Firefox 3.1.

Private-browsing modes — included in Chrome as 'Incognito' and in IE8 as 'InPrivate' — allow users to surf the web without leaving any immediately apparent trace of their activities in the browser's logs. This does not, however, mean there is absolutely no trace of those activities, as internet service providers and visited websites will keep track of the activity.

Other enhancements planned for Firefox 3.1 include speed improvements in Javascript handling, the ability to drag and drop tabs between browser windows, and the addition of a video tag element that is part of the HTML 5 standard. Firefox 3.1 is currently only available as an alpha release.