Firefox 3.5 is out. Hail Open Source.

What is that in the air? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, its your mom setting the record for the fastest fat object in the stratosphere.

As a side note, Firefox 3.5 was released yesterday. Not quite as interesting as flatulence in the upper reaches of the sky, but it does promise advances in the interweb.
Technicalities first. Built on Gecko 1.9.1 and lots of open source love, the latest run of the fox supports HTML5, Theora, and other nifty new technologies that are -still- unheard of in IE, chrome or safari. A new JScript engine, Tracemonkey, also makes its operation smoother and faster. Of course, if you aren't into hard tech, here is the same in english for you:

1) New JScript - Faster, much faster. Ten times faster than Firefox 2 and twice as FF3
2) Theora, HTML - Opening the way for viewing videos without plugins! Plus, quality improves even for playback at the same bitrate.
3) Private browsing - Ah, chrome did leave an impact. This new feature (possibly adapted from incognito mode in chrome) allows you to browse without cookies or history. Your mom will never know what you did last summer. Or this one, for that matter.
4) Available in 70 languages including 10 Indian ones! Sadly, telugu is on the list.
5) Reduced memory consumption - now better than everything except opera.
5) Downloadable fonts, offline app storage and a multitude of other tweaks that make it even better than FF3

All things do have a streak of slime. Here are the problems I found/faced with 3.5
1) A big, fat, plus symbol telling you to open a new tab. Just like in IE. Disgusting. I don't care if it is more user friendly.
2) If you have NoScript installed (you should, actually - excellent protection from clickjacking and malicious java code), some of the cookies were messed up with 3.5's enhanced protection. If you are a newbie, this could leave you without access to sites like blogspot :|
3) Wee problems with flash cookie storage

On the whole, the community (open source ftw!) has improved upon FF3 by a mile. Combined with the previous innovations of 'Recently closed tabs', the present avatar is a very strong message on standardizing web formats (and returning to regular HTML). With its ginormous add-on database, the fox seems to have a good lead in the browser race. On top of being one of the best browsers for developers, it retains much of its user friendliness and has even added to it. Go on, get it. Join the open source revolution ^_^