“I’m happy to announce the landing of Undo Close Window. This adds a menu & keyboard shortcut for reopening your previously closed windows. By default we store 3 windows (though sometimes more due to special cases involving pop-up windows),” revealed Mozilla’s Paul A. O’Shannessy. Handling recently closed windows was a project that debuted initially in Firefox 2.0 via a few APIs, but which failed to materialize. Only in Firefox 3.5 will the feature be fully implemented.

Mozilla is of course permitting end users some flexibility and control when it comes down to the new feature. In this regard, users will be able to modify the value of browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo in about:config, in order to increase the number of windows and tabs that are stored and available to be restored. One important aspect that the end users have to notice is the fact that Firefox will monitor the tabs and windows closed and will keep track of each separately. In this regard, closed tabs will restore as tabs, and closed windows can only be re-opened as windows.

“My primary reason is that windows and tabs serve a different purpose. Opening a new window vs a new tab are not the same menu item (or keyboard shortcuts), so why should reopening them be the same keystroke,” O’Shannessy added. “By putting them in the same menu and giving them the same keyboard shortcut, I would argue you’re actually increasing memory load and forcing the use of the menu. If I were to close a window, then close a tab in a different window, I can’t get the window I closed back with a single key command. I have to click the menu, and look. By keeping the two separate, there might be one extra place to look, but they are clearly labeled. There’s an extra keystroke to learn, but it correlates to open window in the same way that undo close tab correlates with new tab.”

Firefox 3.0.9 and Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Windows is available here.

Firefox 3.0.9 and Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.0.9 and Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Mac OS X is available here.

“We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu,” revealed Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance engineer at Mozilla. “If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3.”

At the same time, Firefox 3.0.9 brings to the table patches for no less than nine critical vulnerabilities. Still, out of the whole nine, only one flaw was rated as Critical, in relation to crashes associated with memory corruption. Two out of the remaining vulnerabilities are considered as posing a High level of risk to end users, with another two just Moderate, and the rest being Low-level threats.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, the successor of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, is scheduled to drop by the end of this week. On April 24, 2009, Mozilla has planned a test day for Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 and, in this regard, the next iteration of codename Shiretoko could be made available over the weekend. “Late in the week of April 20” is the only official deadline provided.

The initial announcement from Mozilla was that “we have 69 locales participating in beta 4. The number is huge, but it was the effort and patience from our localizers that was most impressive,” explained Seth Bindernagel, director of the Mozilla Localization team. “In the end 70 of our 71 localizations made it into the beta process, making this our most successful localized beta ever.”

According to Mozilla, at this point in time there are still seven blockers preventing the signing-off of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. Testers can get the latest nightly build of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 here.

Firefox 3.0.9 for Windows is available here.

Firefox 3.0.9 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.0.9 for Mac OS X is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3

“This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1,” revealed Mike Beltzner, Mozilla User Experience lead. “Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed.”

The new Beta release of Firefox 3.1 essentially paves the way for Firefox 3.5. However, Mozilla will not restart the Beta process from scratch, or from version 1. Instead, the Beta versions will continue to evolve as if they had done naturally. In this context, the upcoming development milestone of the open source browser will be Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. Mozilla estimated that Beta 4 of Firefox 3.5 would be delivered in April 2009.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Windows is available here :
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Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Mac OS X is available here.

Firefox 3.0.7 for Windows is available here :

Firefox 3.0.7 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.0.7 for Mac OS X is available here.