The start of the financial year has also seen the release of Firefox 3.5. Just like the 1.5 release all those years ago, this x.5 release sees a few relatively minor additions and improvements to the trusty fox.

Other than general speed increases, the main new features of the browser are a 'Private Browsing' mode similar to those already implemented in IE and Chrome, as well as tab 'tearing' similar to the behaviour in Chrome.

So all in all it is a solid step forward and keeps pace with the good new features that have made their way into the other big browsers. I seem to have survived the usual extension/add-on delayed update merry-go-round this time: all the main extensions I use have at the very least 'developmental' releases that seem fairly stable with the new version.

The one feature that didn't make this version that is present in Chrome is the 'sandboxing' of each tab in a separate process (so that a single tab crash won't bring down the whole browser etc). A Chrome-esque tab task-manager would also be pretty cool.

Firefox 3.5 overall is a solid step forward without being too revolutionary. Also one thing that has happened since 3.0 was released, is the very cool Firefox Personas. It's sort of a cool way to skin the browser without totally changing the theme too (which suits me perfectly). I have got the very cool 'Firefox B' persona on my browser (pictured).