Mozilla's New Firefox Candidate Breaks Out Of Beta

Mozilla on Monday lifted the curtains on what it's calling the fastest version of its Firefox browser ever, the second release candidate (RC) for Firefox 3.5. The browser, Firefox 3.5 RC2, was made available for beta testing to some 800,000 users last week and is now available for downloading on the Mozilla Web site.

Mozilla is trumpeting several adjustments to its popular Firefox browser that accelerate the speed at which users can surf the Internet -- including tweaks in the release candidate that run JavaScript three times faster than the previous Firefox installment and a halving of time spent on page loads and manipulation.

The latest release candidate for Firefox comes in flavors for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Linux. The browser has several new features for the privacy crowd, including a private-browsing mode and the ability to erase all traces of visiting either a specific Web site or for several hours of recent surfing activity.

The new release candidate also jacks up the multimedia bells and whistles, integrating open-source video and audio playback into the browser itself. New navigation architecture includes location-based browsing, the ability to "undo" the closing of a window and a feature that lets users convert a tabbed window into a new, stand-alone window.

Advanced users are able to customize the browser in a number of ways, with Firefox 3.5 RC2 including some 6,000 add-ons available for download.