Firefox 3.5 due at end of June

Features private browsing, built-in video, geolocation and better performance

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17 June 2009 11:41 GMT / By Duncan Geere

The Mozilla Foundation has announced that it's going to be issuing a release candidate for the next version of Firefox, 3.5, on 19 June. It hopes to have a final version ready before the end of the month.

The new features total over 5000, Mozilla claims. The biggest among them include video built in, local storage for offline web apps, private browsing (dubbed "porn mode" by some), geolocation functionality, the previously-reported "About:me" page and improved performance.

Mozilla's also talking about what's going to happen after 3.5. The successor, codenamed "Namoroka" is planned to include Chrome's process isolation features (so if one tab dies, your whole browser doesn't crash) and a 64-bit version of Firefox for OSX.

The browser war continues to heat up with Firefox 3.5, Opera unveiling its "Unite" functionality and Chrome planning add-ons. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer hasn't seen an update since January and is being removed from operating systems sold in Europe.

Update: Microsoft has reminded us that IE8 was freed from beta status on 19 March. Okay, we take that back, then.

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