Private browsing mode has been included in the latest nightly release for Firefox 3.1 beta. This is a feature which didn’t quite make it into Firefox 3.

Private browsing allows you to browse the web “anonymously”. No cookies, cache, history, temporary files, or saved passwords will be stored while in private mode.

To turn on private browsing, go to Tools –> Private Browsing. You can download the latest nightly Firefox 3.1 beta build here.

Computerworld has posted an article comparing Firefox’s 3.1 beta to the latest Chrome beta.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols put both of these browser through the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test. Not surprising the results were very stunning with Firefox 3.1 beta taking it out.

Of interesting note is that Firefox 3.1 beta is almost 25 times faster when rendering JavaScript compared to Internet Explorer 7.

You can read the article in full and get all the details.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 Acid3 Results

After testing Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 on the Acid3 test, the new browser scores an impressive 89/100. This compares to other browsers as follows:

• Firefox 3 scores 71/100
• Opera 9.6 scores 85/100
• IE7 scores a dismal 12/100
• IE8 Beta 2 scores 21/100
• Safari 3.1.2 scores 75/100
• Safari 4 Beta 100/100

This is a great improvement and a step to being fully standards compliant. Mozilla still have some work to go to get to that magic 100 mark, but things are heading in the right direction.

Mozilla has just released Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 to the web. The new browser includes numerous improvements including:

• Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

You can download the Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 from the Firefox beta page. Currently the beta is available in over 35 languages.

I hope to put the browser through a few tests to see how it benchmarks in both Acid3 and JavaScript tests shortly. Stay tuned…