Firefox 3.5 for Ajax Developers

Firefox 3.5 was just released to the world and most tend to agree that this version is the fastest version of Firefox. The browser has made some small changes on tabs and automatic search, made some changes on the tools and options while increasing the increased the speed of the browser.

Popular websites and online applications can load faster in this new version. Hopefully, this trend of Firefox will continue. Although it’s not as fast as Google Chrome when it comes to loading, the browser has certainly improved online processing.

But the best update of Firefox 3.5 is its revamped coding for developers. As an Ajax developer, you should be excited the way Mozilla has focused on JavaScript and its relative tools. It’s sufficed to say that the new version is now friendlier to JavaScript and Ajax based applications. JavaScript and Ajax are already fully compatible with Firefox but the additional features will certainly change the way the online applications are created.

HTML 5 and CSS

Before tackling the updates in JavaScript and Ajax, let’s take a look first on HTML 5 and CSS. These two programming languages have received significant boost from the new version of Firefox. HTML 5 can now be developed for offline access and HTML 5 was also used to read most audio and video formats. Basically, your browser is now an audio and video player. For CSS, various functions such as fonts and media query were added.

These additions only mean one thing: Firefox is now poised to improve user experience of various audio and video formats right in the browser.

DOM Features

The new DOM features for Firefox push the cloud computing technology from the browser. Local storage commands, multi-threading option and smarter selectors are now available in Firefox 3.5. But the most impressive feature of DOM is the geolocation where developers should be able to build APIs that provide GPS-like features.

JavaScript and JSON

The updates in JavaScript are very simple but highly significant. The TraceMonkey feature of JavaScript in Mozilla has been updated so that it could provide speedier responses. This was made possible by limiting the number of processes required before TraceMonkey could be fully implemented.

The API developed with TraceMonkey enables speedier processing in the browser since it focuses on operational callback instead of a slower (and requires another step) branch callback.

For the first time, JSON will no longer be just another data format supported by JavaScript and could be implemented in Firefox. JSON will now be native to Firefox which means JSON will be recognized by browsers faster. The results of course, will be faster processing.

JSON is the data format highly compatible to JavaScript and the resulting applications with the combination of JavaScript and JSON is notably faster. With the recognition of JSON, developers will no longer have to rely on XML, HTTP or simply TXT alone just to ensure ease of processing in Firefox.

The new version of Firefox has certainly improved the developing process for Ajax and JavaScript. New DOM Features, better TraceMonkey and native support for JSON will certainly change the way developers build online applications for Firefox 3.5.