Subramani: I have switched to FF a couple of months back and I'm pretty happy. Firstly, I don't see FF getting crashed. In addition, it has lot of accessibility related features.
Having said that, as per my experience, Firefox and NVDA is a good combination that supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). Srinivasu -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Subramani L Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 6:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AI] geek's preview inside latest version, firefox 3.5! Hai: How's the change like for those wanting to switch from IE to Firefox? Subramani -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of ruchir falodiya Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 5:03 PM To: accessindia Subject: [AI] geek's preview inside latest version, firefox 3.5! hello, fellow accessindians! i'm once again back with yet another hottest trend of geek world, "firefox 3.5 is out!!" Almost exactly a year after the last release, the latest version of Firefox , the world's second most used browser, arrived few days ago in over 70 languages , and it's already spreading like wildfire to users around the globe. Firefox 3.5 has some notable improvements over its predecessor, though many of them, such as support for native JSON and web worker threads, are geared toward developers. Still Firefox 3.5 is well worth the upgrade for the many improvements and additions that will directly affect your web browsing experience. Below is a list of the top 5 new features in Firefox 3.5. 1. New JavaScript Engine: TraceMonkey Perhaps the most hyped new feature in Firefox 3.5 is the addition of its brand new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey. The new engine promises performance improvements when running heavy JavaScript web applications and pages, such as Google Docs or Meebo. JavaScript speed is hugely important as more and more people are relying on web apps to get things done. Benchmarks from Technologizer and PCPro show that with TraceMonkey, Firefox 3.5 remains a viable option for web application users. Though not the fastest browser on the market - that title generally falls with Google's Chrome or Apple's Safari , depending on how the test is performed - the speed differences are minute at this point. And Firefox 3.5's JavaScript performance is greater than twice as fast as the previous version of the browser. TraceMonkey definitely brings Firefox up to speed in the area of JavaScript performance. 2. Location Aware Browsing One of the neatest new things in Firefox 3.5 is its support for location aware browsing. Essentially, you can grant Firefox the permission to figure out where you are based on your IP address and nearby wireless access points, which the browser can then relay to web sites in order to provide you with a more personalized browsing experience. A national pizza chain, for example, could offer you coupons for your local franchise based on your location, or a new site could deliver you the latest information from your neighborhood. For a real life example, check out Flickr Flickr 's map page , which uses the new geolocation tools in Firefox 3.5 to determine your location and then show your photos from other people in your area. Though it sounds potentially Orwellian, location aware browsing is fairly benign when it comes to your privacy. Firefox only shares your location with sites you've approved to have access to it, and their default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, deletes the random client identifier assigned to you after two weeks. Firefox doesn't provide any information about the web sites you're visiting or your cookies to requesting sites or to Google. Still, the feature can be turned off. 3. Support for HTML 5 and Downloadable Fonts A lot of the new stuff in Firefox 3.5 is support for new web technologies that only web developers will really geek out on. But some of those new technologies, like HTML 5 and the CSS @font-face rule, will have a noticeable positive effect for users. HTML 5, for example, includes audio and video elements that allow developers to embed media directly into HTML pages in a similar way that can now be achieved with browser plugins like Flash. Currently, Firefox 3.5 supports HTML 5 audio and video with Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV formats. Firefox 3.5 also offers support for the canvas element in HTML 5 that lets developers create scriptable bitmap images - or in other words: animations. The CSS @font-face rule, meanwhile, lets designers link fonts to web pages using CSS. That means that web designers can create pages that go beyond the limited "web-safe" fonts, which opens up the possibility of web page designs that use any font, regardless of whether it is installed on the viewer's system. 4. Fun with Tabs and Windows Since Firefox 3.0, users have been able to recover recently closed tabs by pressing ctrl+shift+T. But that implementation was fairly limited - it only opened the last closed tab, and it didn't apply to accidentally closed windows. Firefox 3.5 adds two new items to the History menu: Recently Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows. They do just what they sound like they'd do: they let users choose from a list of recently closed tabs or windows and reopen them. Another new tab related feature of Firefox 3.5 is tab tearing, which also exists in Google Chrome . Tab tearing lets you rip a tab out of the current window into its own dedicated window - it sort of works in reverse as well, if you move the last tab in a window back into a collection of tabs, the window disappears. You can't merge a window with multiple tabs into another, though, unless you do it one tab at a time. 5. Private Browsing One of the few areas where Firefox is playing catch up is private browsing. It's a new feature in Firefox 3.5, though it has already been available in Chrome, Safari, and even Internet Explorer In private browsing mode, Firefox doesn't save your browsing, search, download, or web form histories, or your cookies, or temporary Internet files. Remember, though, that private browsing doesn't mean anonymous browsing - your ISP might still have a record of where you've been, and if you log into any sites, they might still have a record of who you are and when you were there. When you first start private browsing mode, Firefox hides all open tabs and saves them for later. It's a little scary to see all your tabs disappear the first time you use it - I didn't read the warning Firefox gives, so nearly panicked thinking that Firefox had restarted and I'd somehow lost all my open tabs (which contained a lot of research for this post). Firefox 3.5 also includes a bit of retroactive private browsing as well, in the form of the new "Forget About This Site" history command, which tells Firefox to erase that site from your browser history. It doesn't accomplish much, but it makes it easy to erase a specific site from your history without having to erase the entire thing. Firefox also offers Google Chrome-esque history management options by allowing you to set a time range when you clear history items like your browsing, download, and form history, or your cache or cookies. You can choose to only erase new information saved from the last hour, two hours, four, or full day of browsing, or erase everything. accessibility: we can't expect to have accessibility issues from a project that is 1 of the biggest supporter of equal opportunity for all, and played a key role in development of NVDA still, for jaws for windows and win eyes users, i've been using firefox 3.5 for over 4 days now, and if you have already been using firefox for quite a long, you won't feel much difference with keyboard shortcuts, though to use new features, could take a bit of more time. so, the conclusion here is, yes, it is worth upgrading, yes, it still supports web visum, and other add-ons, yes, the difference in the speed can be felt, although not very noticeable, and if you've ask me, there is no better user-friendly and more accessible browser then firefox, including internet explorer. if you've already been using firefox 3.0 or above, going to help menu> check for updates will upgrade you to the latest built. and if you are not yet familiarized with the world's number 1 open source free browser, go get it from www.mozilla.com -- As long as forever, I will stay by your side, I'll be your companion, Your friend and your guide!!! www.ruchir89.wordpress.com To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. 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