Mozilla has released the third beta version of Firefox 3.1; the Shiretoko; on Thursday. This is the fifth progress milestone of Firefox 3.1, which is the upcoming Mozilla web browser. Newer version is available for use in order to get users’ feedback, so that Mozilla can make better the quality of its web browser.

Based on the Gecko 1.9.1, beta 3 has improved the performance of Firefox in certain ways. Main enhanced features are its availability in 64 languages, better web performer, advanced Private Browsing Mode, new Trace Monkey Java script engine, native JSON support, video and audio support (no more flash player required), W3C Geo location API, SVG transformers, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, Java script query selectors and certain offline applications.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 is available to download for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Moreover, certain known issues have also been stated on Mozilla’s website, e.g. dragging a tab on to the desktop fails to create a new window; Gmail fails to respond at times; quality of audio / video may suffer owing to slow internet connection or computer etc. one can also find an FAQ part on Release Notes page.

It isn’t the final beta version of Firefox 3.1; another is expected before the full release of Firefox 3.5. Yes! Next full release will be 3.5 instead of 3.1 because of the extent of variations in 3.1 betas. “The increase in version number is proposed due to the sheer volume of work which makes Shiretoko feel like much more than a small, incremental improvement over Firefox 3.” said Mike Beltzner of Mozilla last week.

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