Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2

Et voici une nouvelle version alpha de la prochaine version de Firefox. On ne sait toujours pas laquelle, mais elle est pour l'instant numérotée 3.7 et libellée "Developper Preview". Sur cette alpha, les développeurs du navigateur ont réalisé quelques avancées dans le domaine de la gestion multi-processus des plugins, ainsi que dans le domaine du HTML5/CSS/DOM/WebGL et Javascript.

Voici d'ailleurs en résumé, toutes les nouveautés :

New Features and Changes

Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 introduces new features which can be tested by using this Mozilla Developer Preview. Many of these features are still in development, and while they will likely appear in some future version of Mozilla Firefox, some may be in earlier releases than others.

Plugins	On Windows and Linux, plugins (such as Flash and Silverlight) are now isolated from Firefox. Plugin crashes will not kill Firefox itself, and unresponsive plugins are automatically restarted.
Security	The SSL security system has been changed to fix a renegotiation flaw. For technical details, see the newsgroup posting announcing the change.
Performance	Link history lookup is now performed asynchronously on a thread. This results in less I/O during page load and improves overall browser responsiveness.
Performance	Loading the HTML5 specification no longer causes very long browser pauses. See bug 526394 for details.
JavaScript	The JavaScript engine has many improvements: string handling is improved, faster closures, and some support for fast tracing and JIT of recursive functions.
Performance	Strings are not copied between the main DOM code and web workers, improving performance for threaded JavaScript which moves large pieces of data between threads.
HTML	The placeholder attribute for <input> and <textarea> is now supported.
User Interface	The stop and reload buttons have been merged when they are adjacent on the toolbar. See bug 343396 for details.
SVG	Support for SMIL Animation in SVG. Support for animating some SVG attributes is still under development and the animateMotion element isn't supported yet.
Stability	Crash reports from plugin processes are now submitted automatically. Crash report submission can be disabled in Firefox preferences (Advanced / General / Submit crash reports).
Performance	Repainting HTML in SVG <foreignObject> is faster. See bug 541188 for details.
CSS	Support for CSS Transitions. This support is not quite complete: support for animation of transforms and gradients has not yet been implemented.
WebGL	Support for WebGL, which is disabled by default but can be enabled by changing a preference. See this blog post and this blog post for more details.
DOM	Support for the getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect methods on Range objects. See bug 396392 for details.
DOM	Support for the setCapture and releaseCapture methods on DOM elements. See bug 503943 for details.
HTML	Support for the HTML5 History.pushState() and History.replaceState() methods and the popstate event. See bug 500328 for details.
CSS	Support for the -moz-image-rect() value for background-image. See bug 113577 for more details.

We are interested in feedback on any bugs or missing capabilities in these new features. Some of the changes will affect web and platform compatibility. For detailed information about compatibility changes in Gecko 1.9.3, please read Upcoming Firefox features for developers.

Consulter les notes de version de Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2

Télécharger Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 pour Windows 2000 et +
Télécharger Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 pour MacOS X 10.5 et +
Télécharger Mozilla Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 pour Unix/Linux

La prochaine alpha de cette "version 3.7" sera verra implémentée des premières fonctions Direct2D/DirectWrite. En effet, cette fonction qui utilise la carte graphique pour le rendu des page web est déjà intégrée aux nightlies de Minefield 3.7a3pre en mettant la valeur gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled sur true.

Télécharger la dernière nightly de Minefield 3.7a3pre pour Windows, MacOS X et Linux