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Firefox 3.6 beta set to ship next week

No shame, no gain

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Mozilla tentatively plans to release the first beta of Firefox 3.6 on 13 October.

The open source browser maker is expected to spin out the next iteration of Firefox in November, and next week’s upcoming beta is understood to be the only test build released by Mozilla before 3.6 - codenamed Namoroka and based on Gecko 1.9.2 - lands.

Firefox 3.6 won’t be a major update. Fans of the browser will have to wait until Firefox 4.0 to ship, which isn’t expected to happen until October 2010 at the earliest, to see big Google Chrome-like changes to the surfing tool.

After 3.6 rocks up, Mozilla will squirt out 3.7, which gives a doff of the cap to Microsoft’s Windows Vista/7 Aero Glass design by taking on the same translucent appearance as the OS itself.

Firefox 3.6 will come with minor tweaks that include lightweight themes, improvements to the org's TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, an optimised session restore, better page-rendering speed and a few new additions for the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) tech used in the browser.

The beta release date is only an estimate, and Mozilla’s Mike Beltzner told the Firefox team that there was “no shame” if they don’t hit the suggested deadline. ®

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Latest Comments

@ThomH

Firefox uses native theme engines wherever possible so what you see *is* native OS rendered. On Windows for example it uses the uxtheme.dll to render the scrollbars & buttons through the same code as any other app. Similar happens with GTK & OS X. It also uses things called overlays to ensure that layout of menus and dialogs conform to system norms. For example GTK & Windows put their dialog buttons in a different order. Peripheral dialogs such as file, print selectors are also native.

So the look is native but the "feel" may not be. A Firefox button might look like a regular button, but the actual click behaviour is handled by Firefox code, not the OS. Firefox has a cross-platform widget/ subsystem that sits over the native event model. Operating systems / Widget layers may have very subtle behaviours implemented into their standard controls which Firefox doesn't emulate perfectly. For example, scroll bar tracking might differ, or accessibility, or support for tablets etc. On the whole though I consider Firefox to be one of the native feeling browsers of all of them, including IE.

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Thank You.

I am SO grateful that I do NOT have to use Microscoff's Outhouse Explorer for anything, anymore...

In fact - I told the numbskulls in Microsoft many years ago - that if I want to do updates and if your browser is so good, then why do you deliberately block people using Firefox from accessing the MS update sites?

Typically - they never answered.

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So typical, slagging off Opera

I'm just sick of this, really I am - Opera is the best browser known to modern man, it's got more features that a barrel full of feature laden monkeys clutching tiny featureful gadgets in thier clever little hands.

It's faster than a speeding barrel full of monkeys raving on a sheet of old owsley special and it's about as cool as the jacket I got from my local charity shop. (It matches the colour of the beard I'm trying to grow)

It's so good, that you used to have to pay for it, or get a free version with adverts - way ahead of it's time back then, I tells ya.

It's better than Netscape 4.7 ever was!

You've seriously pissed of me and the other 9 Opera users - beware, our wrath knows no limits!

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