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Mozilla releases final Firefox 3.5 beta

Minor bit of spit, polish applied

Mozilla pushed a fourth beta of Firefox 3.5, formerly known as Firefox 3.1, out the door yesterday.

The oft-delayed next version of the open source browser is expected to arrive at some point in the first half of this year, it had originally been pencilled in to rock up in December 2008.

However, a series of problems brought on by show-stopping bugs in Mozilla's new JavaScript engine TraceMonkey meant the organisation was forced to push back its release date and change the browser's name to reflect the huge amount of changes it's undergone in beta.

So Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 should be the final beta of the browser ahead of its release at some point in the next few months.

It comes loaded with performance, web compatibility and speed improvements, according to Mozilla.

"This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.5," said the firm.

Features include better tools for controlling private data, including a porn one-handed browsing Private Browsing mode, improved stability with TraceMonkey and the ability to provide "Location Aware Browsing" using web standards for geolocation.

But going by Mozilla's announcement there's nothing majorly different in the latest beta. Instead it contains final minor tweaks ahead of the release candidate version of Firefox 3.5.

Mozilla has the full rundown about the download, which is available now for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, here. ®

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