The second Beta development milestone of Firefox 3.1, codenamed Shiretoko, is now available for download.
While it had already started working on Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, Mozilla managed at the end of the past week to deliver the Beta 2 bits of the next iteration of its open source browser. Labeled a public preview release, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is designed to enhance web compatibility and speed, as well as take performance to the next level. A taste of Beta 3 is already up for grabs, with Mozilla having debuted work on the next development milestone while it was still wrapping up the Beta 2 build. Following Beta 3, Firefox 3.1 will move into release Candidate (RC) stage.
If until the Beta 2 release Mozilla failed to bring the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine into the limelight, this is no longer the case. TraceMonkey is now turned on by default in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, and users no longer have to dig into the browser's configuration in order to enjoy superior JavaScript performance. In addition, the improvements in TraceMonkey have been accompanied by the evolution of the Gecko layout engine, also with the focus on performance.
On the track of Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla now introduces Private Browsing Mode, kicking the privacy capabilities of the open source browser to the next level. Via the Clear Recent History options, users can be extremely selective about what Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 will remember of their browsing session. Available in 54 localized versions, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 comes to the table with boosted support for
