Mozilla released the first Firefox 3.1 preview

Mozilla Corp has just released the first official preview version of the "next generation fire fox" Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1. This is also the first Firefox 3.1 preview to launch a large community of users instead of just the Software experts like before.

The codename 'Shiretoko', Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 was actually 'born' a few days late because Mozilla finally spotted a bug in the version specifically for Mac OS X.

'Shiretoko' has been significantly improved on the ability to support web standards of Gecko Replay Engine (Gecko Layout Engine), better supporting the object API function. , image editor, Smart Location Bar, new browsing card feature .

In Firefox Apha 1 version, users can press the Ctrl-Tab shortcut to switch between the current card (Tab) and the card that was accessed immediately before the current card. Now each card is added a thumbnail image of the website being displayed to help users identify websites faster.

'Shiretoko' is also the first version of Firefox to integrate the latest Gecko browser engine version 1.9.1. However, this Gecko version is currently under development. Therefore, Mozilla's experts recommend the new Gecko version, some incompatible websites will not be displayed as designed.

Normally Mozilla usually releases several preview versions of Alpha before moving on to a series of Beta tests. Finish with Release Candidate - that is, a complete version of the lead feature waiting for testing to detect residual errors. For example, Firefox 3.0 has a total of 8 alpha, 5 beta and 3 Release Candidate versions before the final release.

But with Firefox 3.1, Mozilla aims to accelerate development. It is expected that next month it will release the first beta version of Firefox 3.1 and the official version later this year or early next year.

Interested users can download the version of Firefox 3.1 for Windows here, for Mac OS X here and Linux here.