Future Firefox Features: Better Awesome Bar, HTML 5 Support
Firefox 3 is set to launch Tuesday, June 17 which is good news for Firefox lovers, but being fans of the bleeding edge we’re already looking forward to Firefox 3.1. The first alphas of 3.1 are slated to arrive in July and will work on incorporating the features that didn’t make the 3.0 cut.
Among the improvements planned for Firefox 3.1 are support for the HTML 5 <video> tag, more CSS 3 selectors, cross-site XMLHttpRequests and even more features for the “awesome bar” (the URL, history search bar).
Although additional features for Firefox 3.1 are still up in the air, here are some likely candidates: Places could be improved to integrate your download history, and bulk tagging bookmarks, as well as tag auto-complete features, are being considered for 3.1.
Other possibilities include a visual tab switching mechanism that would work somewhat like the alt-tab application switchers in most operating systems. Naturally, instead of flipping between applications or desktops, the Firefox version would switch between your various open tabs.
Note that if you’re the impatient type and would like to get such a feature without waiting for 3.1, there’s already a Firefox 3 compatible extension named Ctrl+Tab which displays a thumbnail of your opened tabs when you press Ctrl + Tab.
Given that Firefox 3.1 has a short turnaround time (the official release is slated for the end of 2008) most the new features will likely be things that didn’t quite make the cut for 3.0.
We’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date with the latest developments as the alpha builds begin to arrive. And in the mean time, be sure to grab a copy of Firefox 3.0 when it arrives next week.
[via Mozilla Links]
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