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Mozilla releases Firefox 3.1 alpha

by Planet Lowyat on 30/07/08 at 11:51 pm

Yes! I’m fans of Mozilla Firefox.

Mozilla has announced that the first Firefox 3.1 alpha is now available for download. This release, which is codenamed Shiretoko, includes Gecko 1.9.1 and adds a handful of new features.

Firefox 3.1 alpha 1 includes some user interface enhancements like a new graphical tab selector that shows page previews and a smarter filtering system for the Awesome Bar. This release also offers some nice improvements for web developers, such as new CSS properties and selectors. The HTML canvas element also got a boost in alpha 1 with the introduction of support for the canvas text API.

Binary builds are available for all three major platforms, but users should proceed with caution, since its an early alpha release and it’s primarily intended for testers and developers. For additional details, see the official release notes.

The first developer milestone of the next release of Firefox – code
named Shiretoko Alpha 1 – is now available for download. Shiretoko is
built on pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, which forms
the core of rich internet applications such as Firefox. Please note
that this release is intended for developers and testers only.

This Alpha of Shiretoko / Gecko 1.9.1 introduces several new features:

* Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
* Text API for the <canvas> element
* Support for using border images
* Support for JavaScript query selectors
* Several improvements to the Smart Location Bar
* A new tab switching behavior

Anyone interested in Shiretoko should read the release notes, as well
as the “Firefox 3.1 For Developers” article on the Mozilla Developer
Center before downloading. Please use the links from the following
post to download Shiretoko:

http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2008/07/28/firefox-31-…

We would appreciate hearing about any feedback you have (in
mozilla.feedback), or any bugs you may find (on bugzilla).