All platforms: Mozilla has just pushed out Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 to their servers, marking the first major step toward the official 3.1 release. They haven't yet officially announced the beta release, so the What's New page is a 404 as of this writing. Luckily we've already covered a lot of the features you can expect, so hit the jump for a closer look at what Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 brings to the table.


Faster JavaScript


We've shown you just how fast Firefox 3.1 is compared to other browsers, and most of that is due to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Despite the fact that TraceMonkey comes built into 3.1, you still have to know how to enable it to take advantage. Here's how it works:

Open about:config in your browser. Paste javascript.options.jit.content into the filter. Double-click the remaining preference to set the boolean to true .

Location Awareness

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Firefox 3.1 will introduce geolocation to the mix, streamlining the process required to get information from web sites based on your location. In the current release of Firefox, you needed to install the previously mentioned Geode extension to get this functionality, but it comes baked into 3.1.

Improved Ctrl-Tab 3D interface


We told you months ago that Firefox 3.1 would have a fancy new 3D tab-switching interface, but now it's here and it looks great.

What's Missing

From what I can tell so far, this beta release does not yet include Private Browsing mode or the smarter session restore, but it's an exciting start. If you give it a try, share your experience with the new features in the comments.


Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 [Mozilla]