Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

First Tests Are Coming Soon

For now, Mozilla will start the program with a survey that aims to get a better understanding of who is joining the Test Pilot community. The first actual tests should arrive soon after this first survey is complete.

Mozilla stresses that it will take its users' privacy seriously. Participants have to opt-in and data will be stored in anonymous form. Only aggregate test data will be made available to the public.

Overall, this looks like a great project. Usability studies tend to be slow and costly, yet with Test Pilot, Mozilla will be able to quickly enlist feedback about new design ideas from its large community of users.

While IE still dominates the browser market - with 55% of people using some version - all combined versions of Firefox occupy 32% and have been steadily gaining ground. Released at the end of June, version 3.5 of Firefox has quickly climbed the charts. IE 8, on the other hand - which was first released in beta more than a year earlier, with a full release in March 2009 - now holds a similar 20% of the market to that of Firefox 3.5's 22%.

It would seem that a majority of Firefox 3.5 users were already using 3.0 and upgraded, as the 20% drop in 3.0 use almost directly correlates to the 22% increase in 3.5.

For now, Mozilla will start the program with a survey that aims to get a better understanding of who is joining the Test Pilot community. The first actual tests should arrive soon after this first survey is complete.

Mozilla stresses that it will take its users' privacy seriously. Participants have to opt-in and data will be stored in anonymous form. Only aggregate test data will be made available to the public.

Overall, this looks like a great project. Usability studies tend to be slow and costly, yet with Test Pilot, Mozilla will be able to quickly enlist feedback about new design ideas from its large community of users.

Firefox just isn't dazzling us the way it used to. In fact, in some cases, it's as if the browser is playing a game of catch-up instead. With new features like Private Browsing and TraceMonkey, an engine that speeds up web applications, Firefox isn't exactly blowing us away - they're simply introducing features that put them on par with Google Chrome and even, gasp, IE.

One of the most notable of the new additions to Firefox 3.5 is the Private Browsing feature. Often jokingly (or perhaps not) called "porn mode," this special browsing mode keeps all traces of your web activity off your computer, including everything from browser history to passwords to search bar entries and more.

Although we're certainly happy to see Firefox add this now-standard web browser feature, it's the first time we can remember Firefox copying something from Internet Explorer and not the other way around. For the browser that brought us a revolution of tabbed browsing and extensions, copying IE seems like a sad state of affairs. IE8 has offered private browsing since March of this year, Chrome had it from day one - back in 2008, and Safari had it before both of those. What took Firefox so long?

At the very least, can we hope that Firefox does private browsing better somehow? Well, it does let you individually remove sites from your history via a new "Forget About This Site" option in case you forgot to "go private." But then again, erasing your browsing history accomplishes this task, too. In 3.5, you can also specify time ranges of history to clear - anywhere from the past hour to the past day. That's a nice little added tweak, but nothing ground-shaking. In the end, private browsing is more of a "me-too" feature than anything extraordinary.

Speed: TraceMonkey

Under the hood, Firefox 3.5 is introducing a new engine called TraceMonkey, which is said to result in a "massive speed increase both in the browser chrome and web page content." Specifically, this improvement affects programs written in JavaScript, as many rich internet applications (RIAs) are today. Historically, web apps running in JavaScript haven't been able to match the speed with which native software runs on the PC, but TraceMonkey brings that gap much closer together.

However, although Firefox 3.5 is faster - a lot faster, in fact - it's not the fastest browser out there. A SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test (courtesy of PCPro) shows that it's currently being beaten by both Google Chrome and Safari 4.0.

Location-Aware Browsing

Finally, location-aware browsing - a feature that is innovative! In Firefox 3.5, the browser can tell web sites where you're physically located in the world so you can find relevant information more quickly. In other words, if you're searching for a nearby restaurant, you can simply search for "sushi" and the search will return localized results. However, this all depends on whether or not the web site in question is a "location-aware" site. If it is, it will ask you if you want to share your location. It's too bad there's not an all or nothing switch for this feature, though. Instead, you're prompted to allow the feature to be switched on whenever you visit a location-aware site for the first time.

Still, this one's a point for Firefox.

HTML 5 Support & Other Geeky Stuff

HTML5, the next version of markup language used to build web sites, won't be ratified into a standard for another year, but Firefox 3.5 is already supporting many of its capabilities. For example, the new browser will support audio and video embeds without the need for the Flash plugin.

Also supported are offline data storage, support for native JSON, the <canvas> element for drawing vector graphics and animations, and new CSS options that let designers create text with shadows and draw border images.

However, although the offline data storage feature of HTML5 will eventually lead to a standardized way for web applications to work offline (that is, when you're without a net connection), it already has a competitor: Google Gears. Gears, now an open-source technology, is currently used for the same purpose as HTML5 when it comes to offline data storage. And unlike HTML5, Gears works in older browsers too.

Finally, there is the addition of "web workers," a way for web content to run resource-intensive scripts in the background, a feature that will make the browser feel faster while also helping improve stability. But will it "feel" as fast as Chrome? Well, it might, especially when you take into consideration the memory usage issues of Chrome.

Conclusion

Overall, the latest upgrade to Firefox is definitely worthwhile and filled with improvements that will please its users. With its new features, speed increases for web apps, and support for standards, 3.5 represents a major upgrade, not a minor release.

Firefox continues to dominate the other "alternative" web browsers at 22.5% marketshare compared to Safari's 8.43%, Chrome's 1.80%, and others who haven't even reached 1.0% yet (stats via Net Applications). However, this time around, a few of Firefox's "upgrades" aren't entirely new to us as web browser connoisseurs. The browser is late to offer private browsing and although speedier, it's not the speediest anymore.

All that being said, Firefox is still the one to beat when it comes to IE alternatives. But with all these new contenders cutting into its marketshare, it may never topple IE from its throne after all.