hacks.mozilla.org

Firefox 3.6b1 is now available for download. As usual, this is a beta release so the usual warnings about eating your data and burning your house down apply.

If you download and run this beta you will get updates as we make them available – once every 1-2 weeks or so. To keep up with things as they land in the betas, please follow us on the @mozhacks twitter account.

Many add-ons have not been updated for 3.6. To help us test if add-ons are compatible consider installing the Add-on compatibility reporter. It will let you run add-ons that are listed as incompatible and gives you the chance to report if add-ons appear to be working OK. This is our first attempt at crowdsourcing compatibility and if you’re feeling adventurous you should try it out.

Here’s what’s new and notable in 3.6 Beta vs. Firefox 3.5 that might be of interest to web developers:

• We now support file-based Drag and Drop so you can Drag and Drop files from your desktop in the browser. Mixed with the File API (mentioned below) this can make for a very powerful set of features for people building photo and video uploaders or anything else that wants to import data.
• @font-face now supports the WOFF format.
• We support multiple background images for background-image.
• You can now specify the background size via -moz-background-size
• We now specify a very powerful pointer-events property that lets you control whether a particular element can receive events.
• You can now specify an algorithm to render images via the image-rendering CSS property.
• Poster images now work for video elements.
• Support for a new geolocation feature that will return an approximate address for your location.
• Support for orientation events.
• …and a lot of other great stuff. For the full list, have a look at the Firefox 3.6 for developers page which has everything on it.

Here’s the list of things that we will support by 3.6 final, but aren’t in this beta:

• Support for CSS gradients is in this beta, but we’re changing it due to negative feedback on the current syntax.
• We will support the <input type=”file” multiple> so you can upload more than one file from the same file upload control.
• We have support in 3.6 for a new version of the File API draft spec but that spec is out of date and our docs aren’t complete. There’s an IDL entry for the FileRequest object, but it’s likely to be renamed to FileReader based on feedback. We’ll try to keep people updated as we release updated betas.