Mozilla releases "new, faster" Firefox Beta 9

Less than a week after Firefox 8 went live, Mozilla has released Firefox Beta 9 to the Beta channel for testing. The main aim of this version of Firefox is to increase the overall speed of the browser through increasing the efficiency of JavaScript and by enabling chucking for XHR requests.

In addition to the speed increase, Firefox Beta 9 adds support for Mac OS X Lion and increased privacy settings. The additions to Mac OS X Lion support include application toolbar and icon styles, 2-finger swipe navigation and easier detection of multiple monitors. As for the privacy settings, a new option called Do Not Track has been included to instruct JavaScript that the user wishes to opt-out of behavioral tracking features.

Head over to the main Firefox Beta 9 site for the download link, available in Windows, OS X and Linux flavors.

Technology Advisory: Flash Player 10.2 Beta

Flash Player 10.2 beta has been released by Adobe and can be downloaded here.

The video above demonstrates one of the key new features to this Flash build, called Stage Video hardware acceleration. According to Adobe's website, Stage Video is

A new method for video playback in Flash Player that will allow developers to leverage complete hardware acceleration of the video rendering pipeline, enabling best-in-class playback performance. Stage Video can dramatically decrease processor usage and enables higher frame rates, reduced memory usage, and greater pixel fidelity and quality.

Other new features to this Flash Player build include:

• IE 9 hardware accelerated rendering support
• Native custom mouse cursors
• Full screen support for multiple monitors

Full details of this build can be found on Adobe's website, here.