I don’t think there’s any denying that Firefox 3.5 is late to the party concerning other browsers have had features (like private browsing) FF is only getting now. Regardless, here’s my real-world review on it.

Instead of getting into the super-techy details on this I’m going to concentrate on what most would care about.

Will 3.5 break add-ons?

Unfortunately yes, and a lot of them. This has been widely reported to be true, and it even broke a few of the ones I use so you can count me in as well. When I say "broke" it means "incompatible with 3.5".

Fortunately the 3.5 installer will tell you which will break before actually installing the software. So if from what you see there are add-ons you can’t live without, wait a bit before upgrading. Run the installer again in a week, have it check your plugins, and once everything checks out, then go for the install.

Is the Private Browsing feature any good?

Yes, but unfortunately it’s not very user-friendly. In all other browsers that have this feature you know you’re using it. IE 8 has a blue "InPrivate" notice in the address bar. Chrome has the detective-with-hat graphic. Firefox has nothing other than a notice in the title bar that says (Private Browsing). This is far too easy to dismiss once you leave the initial notice page. There should be something more obvious, such as a different-colored address bar, a graphic.. something.

The way in which it works is not exactly intuitive either.

Here’s the deal:

Let’s say you have three tabs open. This is very typical for Firefox users because they use multiple tabs often. You want to open a Private Browsing session, so you click Tools/Start Private Browsing. You get the notice you’re going Private, so you click OK.

*Poof*, the tabs you had open are gone. Not cool. Did they disappear? No. You can get them back by stopping the Private session via Tools/Stop Private Browsing and ta-da, then they return.

A Private session should always, repeat, always launch a new window so you don’t lose the tabs you currently have open.

If you’re saying, "Couldn’t a private session be opened as, say, a private tab with color indicating it’s a private session?" I wish. That would be a super-cool feature. But it doesn’t exist as it would require two independent sessions operating within the same browser window. This is not outside the realm of possibility as Google Chrome does technically do that sorta/kinda with separate processes for the way it does tabs, but even it launches a separate window at present for the way it does private browsing. Tabs which can be separated as private or public is nothing but pipe dream territory at this point.

Is the TraceMonkey engine any good?

TraceMonkey is the new JavaScript rendering engine in Firefox. If you use any kind of web-based email you will immediately notice a speed increase as all webmail sites use heavy scripting.

I tested this with a few site I know to be script-heavy and yes I did notice it was faster on load. I’m not going to say it was a night-and-day difference, but it was noticeable. As far as I’m concerned, any speed increase is a good one.

Did any web sites I normally use break?

Not a one. Firefox isn’t like IE where on any major version change stuff breaks on certain web sites. In fact I’ve never known FF to be like that. Quite the opposite, actually.

The deal-maker or deal-breaker is add-on compatibility

If you’re a Firefox user, this above all else will determine whether you use it or not. I personally went ahead and did it and switch to IE 8 for the stuff that broke in FF 3.5 (such as the LogMeIn add-on), so it’s not a big deal for me. Developers will also be playing catch-up in short order in the next coming weeks, so the broken add-ons will be fixed in due time.

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