Thread: Mozilla Firefox 3.5

The browser wars continue to rage and Mozilla's latest version of Firefox introduces a slew of new features and improvements to increase the stakes.

Probably the most noticeable addition in Firefox 3.5 is the inclusion of Private Mode, a feature already available in most of today's popular browsers - it's called Incognito in Google Chrome and In Private Browsing in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8. The feature allows users to surf the internet with a greater degree of anonymity as no local data from the session, including history, cache files, form data, passwords or searches, is kept on the machine.

Private Mode can be activated from the Tools menu. It closes all existing windows and begins the new Private session with a clean slate. Once the Private Mode is stopped the previous session and all its tabs are automatically restored. While this removes any confusion about what is running under Private Mode and what is not, it can be frustrating if you need any information from a previous window when entering Private Mode.

Users also now have a lot more control over data that has already been stored locally, as it is now possible to clear recent history from the past hour, two hours, four hours or day, as well as erasing all history as earlier. Similarly, from the history library users can also opt to 'forget about this site' and remove all reference to a particular site. It should be noted that sub-domains are not affected, so 'forgetting' about Google Maps, for example, won't affect anything from Gmail.

One of Firefox's most useful features is the ability to easily recover recently closed tabs, helping to fix those moments when you accidentally close a tab you still need. There are a slew of other smaller tweaks that have been included in Firefox 3.5, over 5,000 if you include minute changes such as altering the text in a dialogue box to make it clearer. For instance, the browser's awesome bar, which provides suggestions as users type into the address bar based on history and bookmarks, can now also be refined with the inclusion of different command keys.