Second Firefox 3.1 alpha launched

08/09/2008

The second alpha version of Mozilla's Firefox 3.1 browser has been released for website design specialists and testers.

Codenamed Shiretoko, the browser is based on a pre-release version of Gecko 1.9.1, on which a number of other rich web applications are also based.

The new version of Firefox includes new features such as HTML 5 video element support, as well as the ability to drag and drop tabs between different browser windows and initial support for web worker threads.

A number of new CSS properties are also supported by the browser, while a new selector to create portions of what Mozilla called "Aero-style 'glass'" in XUL is now available.

However, the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is not included in the new browser release, although it is available for testing purposes via the Mozilla site.

Mozilla Labs recently unveiled the Ubiquity experiment, which allows Firefox users to build their own mashups without needing to have any prior knowledge of web programming.