Firefox 3.1 beta 2 arrives with private browsing
The latest and greatest beta version of Firefox 3.1 hit the web today, although Mozilla hasn’t made an official announcement just yet. Without a published change-log, it’s early to say what goodies are under the covers, however, BetaNews says that the Private Browsing mode is there as expected. Using this mode, all of your browsing history, cookies, passwords and other cached items stealthily disappear into the ether when you close down your browser. The biggest reason I’m excited for the final version Firefox 3.1 is the faster JavaScript engine, aka: TraceMonkey. It’s still there in the beta and when I turned it on in the prior version, I immediately noticed some speed improvements on certain sites. I still like those tab previews too.
If you can’t wait for the official Mozilla word on beta 2, you can get the Windows version here or the Mac version here.
Update: From my cursory look at the about:config settings, it appears that TraceMonkey is enabled by default. The whole browser feels extremely zippy. I didn’t want to remove Firefox 3 on my Mac, so I simply renamed it from "Firefox" to "Firefox 3" in my Applications folder as the beta install wanted to overwrite the current production build. For ease of use, I then renamed the new, beta instance "Firefox 3.1b2". I can’t run both at the same time, but at least I have both installed in my Applications folder. Also, the Release Notes in the browser menu point to: http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.1b2/releasenotes/ Nothing there at the moment.
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Just downloaded it, looking good so far. Why didn’t they have a keystroke assignment to enable privacy mode?
OK, so… I don’t understand the fascination with privacy mode… I can enable the same functionality in 2.5 and 3.0 with a couple checkboxes in options.
Mind you, I will definitely upgrade once they hit RC stage and all my plugins are updated, I love the new tab previews and faster rendering engines (Lord knows Javascript in 3.0 is painfully slow at times)…
“I can enable the same functionality in 2.5 and 3.0 with a couple checkboxes in options.”
In 3.0 you can erase the whole browsing history, all the cookies, the complete search history, etc.
Private Browsing is more granular. It will hide the user’s activity but only while in private browsing mode. It can erase the last hour, or today’s history, etc.