Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is a version of the Firefox
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
released in June 2009, adding a variety of new features to Firefox. Version 3.5 was touted as being twice as fast as 3.0 (due its TraceMonkey
JavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
engine and rendering improvements). It includes private browsing, has tear-off tabs, and uses the
GeckoGecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....
1.9.1 engine.
It was codenamed
Shiretokocovers most of the Shiretoko Peninsula at the northeastern tip of the island of Hokkaidō, Japan.The word "Shiretoko" is derived form an Ainu word "sir etok", meaning "end of the Earth"....
during development, and was initially numbered Firefox 3.1 before Mozilla developers decided to change the version to 3.5, to reflect the inclusion of a significantly greater scope of changes than were originally planned.
Current estimates of Firefox 3.5's global market share are around 15-20% and rose rapidly in July 2009 as users migrated from Firefox 3.0 although since the latter part of January 2010 it started to decline as users migrate to Firefox 3.6. Also, between mid-December 2009 and February 2010, Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser (when counting individual browser versions) according to
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, and is one of the top 3 browser versions according to
Net ApplicationsNet Applications is a web analytics firm. The company is commonly known in the web browser development and technology news communities for its global market share statistics.-Net Applications History:...
. Both milestones involved passing
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, which previously held the #1 and #3 spots in popularity according to StatCounter and Net Applications, respectively.
Due to the January 2010, well-publicized vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, the German, French, and Australian governments had publicly issued warnings to Internet Explorer users to use alternative browsers, at least until a fix for the security hole was made. The first browser they recommended was Mozilla Firefox, followed by
Google ChromeGoogle Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
.
Development
Even before the release of Firefox 3.0 on June 17, 2008, Firefox 3.1 was in development under the codename "Shiretoko". It was planned to include new interface features such as tab previews, tag auto-completion, HTML 5
