Mozilla has launched version 3.5 of its Firefox browser, promising vastly improved performance compared to previous versions.
Pages will load more than twice as fast as in version 3.0 and up to ten times faster than Firefox 2, Mozilla said. The speed boost is provided by an improved version of JavaScript powered by TraceMonkey.
The browser offers improved privacy controls, allowing users to easily scrub their browsing history.
Simon Mackie of the GigaOM website said the new browser feels "very fast indeed," but added that benchmarks of release candidate 1 of the browser revealed that it was not as fast as Google\'s Chrome.
Firefox has now carved out around 23% of the browsing market, most of its gains coming at the expense of Microsoft\'s Internet Explorer.
Microsoft released IE 8 in March. But in a further threat to its dominance, it has been pressured into agreeing to strip IE from EU releases of Windows 7,
Mozilla also recently launched alpha version 2 of its Windows Mobile 6-based browser, codenamed "Fennec." The new version promises improved performance, and includes a new theme, a built-in JavaScript error console and improved add-on support.