Mozilla’s Firefox 3.1 Beta 1: better, stronger, faster.

Although quoting the Six Million Dollar Man may be a bit of an exaggeration, the latest build of Mozilla’s web browser supposedly offers tasty features and even speeds up Internet access by a huge margin. Although specifically released to developers and Web designers for testing purposes, the general public is certainly welcome to download the browser at their own risk (release notes). However, curious minds will need to dig deep in order to get the beta’s full potential.

According to ComputerWorld, the most notable feature implemented into the browser is TraceMonkey, Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine. However, users won’t experience the JavaScript engine immediately after installation; it’s turned off by default. To get TraceMonkey up and running, users can type "about.config" in the address bar, enter "javascript.options.jit.content" in the Filter field and changing its setting to "True." While boasting rendering speeds up 40 times faster than Firefox 3.0, Download.com put the browser to the test using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. The results were that the current beta clocked in at 2787.6 milliseconds, twice faster than Firefox 3.0.3 which currently renders at 5446.6 ms.

The new beta also offers a few other notable additions as well. Included in the list is the support for

Currently Mozilla is shooting to release Firefox 3.1 later this year or early next year (schedule). In the meantime, the company plans to lock down Beta 2’s code on November 4 and make the beta available just before December. Mozilla will include a privacy feature into Beta 2 as well as fine-tune the Clear Private Data tool.

Although statistics show that Firefox racked in 19.5 percent of the market by the end of September, currently 31.42 percent of internet users is using Firefox according to Clicky. Calculated from data from 53365 unique web sites, Internet Explorer still reigns king at the top of the list, taking a 59.079 percent control over the market. Safari sees a meager 5.203 percent usage while Google’s controversial Chrome browser has actually caught the hearts of 1.59 percent internet surfers.

But with word that this new beta is quicker than previous Firefox releases, there’s no doubt that its statistics will rise and give Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a run for its money.