Tuesday, Nov 20, 2007    Text size: 

According to Mozilla, the new version includes improved security against phishing and viruses, as well as parental-control settings that integrate with operating systems like Windows Vista. Users also will have the option to save their active tabs when they close the program and the ability to use Mac OS X's native spellchecker.

Adult industry professionals and webmasters who use Firefox told XBIZ that they prefer Firefox as a web browser because it's sturdier while being more flexible.

"It's more stable, less vulnerable to spyware, and it had tabbed browsing before Microsoft [Internet Explorer]," said Carl Borowitz, vice president of marketing for Big Sister Media.

Internet guru Brandon Shalton told XBIZ that Firefox's popularity arose from the vulnerability of Microsoft's Internet Explorer to viruses, as well as Firefox's greater speed.

"Internet Explorer is set at default to download only two images at a time," said Shalton, who founded the traffic analysis service T3Report.com. "Firefox is set for four, so since most webmasters have fast Internet access, Firefox downloads websites faster for them."

But this new version of Firefox is a beta release. Will webmasters try it out?

Some will, some won't.

NichePay CEO Nader Fasheh told XBIZ he would definitely try out the new version right away, while Shalton was more reserved.

"I'll wait for [the] stable [release]," Shalton said. "While I like bleeding edge technology, I don't like to rely on it."

To download the new beta version, visit Mozilla.org.