Firefox 5 Beta 2 Released

May 24, 2011 · by John Ponio

As part of Mozilla’s new rapid-release plan for Firefox, they’ve released the Firefox 5 beta 2. As always, there’s what’s new (which will be copied below) and a complete changelog are available. Sadly for those of you who, like me, find Firefox 4 ugly, Firefox 5 looks the same. Horribly basic tests show that it looks to be exactly as fast as Chrome (I loaded a few pages at the same time and saw which page loaded faster, and they loaded almost exactly at the same time). If you’re interested in helping Mozilla out, make sure to download the beta here. Also, there’s a download for “Aurora.” Aurora, if you haven’t heard, is basically a pre-beta version of Firefox. You get all of the updates as they come out, instead of waiting for beta updates.

What’s new in Firefox 5 Beta 2:

Added support for CSS animations
Added support for switching Firefox development channels
The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
Improved spell checking for some locales
Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
Added support for CSS animations
Added support for switching Firefox development channels
The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
Improved spell checking for some locales
Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users