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Looks like the browser war is heating up after its initiation by Google Chrome and immediately followed by run-up tests put up by Firefox for comparing the speeds of Chrome and the forthcoming version of Firefox. The latest news is about Firefox 3.1 alpha 2 making its official release.

The launch is intended for testing purpose only and has added features to make sure that users get the best out of the new browser with support to various elements in an efficient way. These include the introduction of HTML5; a standard set to provide an enhanced functionality for the videos that make way across the browsers.

This offers added capabilities compared to the existing flash based players we have all across the web by letting developers to amalgamate videos with various web content; access video elements via Document Object Model (DOM) and use JavaScript to alter videos.

There are many other features as well, that include, web worker threads; a feature that enables extensive JavaScript computations to run in the background disabling the Firefox interface from hanging up for the user (that means faster operations, browsing if I am not wrong here). This initially points out at the performance acceleration brought about by the TraceMonkey Engine.

Minor features include the capability to drag and drop tabs between windows without the need for the page to reload.

Now this new version, codenamed Shiretoko Alpha 2, had been in the pipeline ever since Firefox 3 made its way to the world, but many features had been put off due to various reasons or maybe they were just holding back a few things to introduce them on the right time (ahem, Chrome?). The latest release is set to make some impact and definitely make things a bit difficult for Chrome that has just made a hatch. This is going to be exciting, which one takes the cake away?

The version is for testing purpose only and is available for download here.