Mozilla Responds with Privacy mode for Firefox 3.1

"Mozilla will respond to Google's Chrome and Microsoft's IE8 with its own private-browsing, or 'porn' mode in Firefox, according to notes posted on its Web site, and is on track to deliver one in 3.1, the version that will likely go beta next month."

 

Sometimes called the "porn mode" because of its most obvious use, browser privacy modes limit or entirely eliminate what the application records of its travels across the Internet. Typically, URLs are not recorded in the browser history, cookies are not saved and other evidence is purged from the computer at the end of the session.

Firefox lead developer Mike Connor spelled out what the browser's privacy mode would encompass:

"[It should] ensure that users can't be tracked when doing 'private' things," said Connor in an e-mail to another Mozilla developer.

Google's Chrome was clearly on the minds of some Mozilla developers when discussing the private-browsing mode addition to Firefox. "Recent development with Chrome will likely make finally getting private-browsing mode shipped a priority for 3.1," said Alex Faaborg, a Mozilla user experience designer, two days after Chrome debuted.

Both Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 include private-browsing tools. The former names its feature "Incognito," while Microsoft uses "InPrivate" as the umbrella term for IE8's tools.

Apple Inc.'s Safari browser also boasts a private-browsing mode.

Connor was set on getting out the new version of Firefox out as fast as possible (by the end of this month) "We can and will get this into 3.1 one way or another," he said.

Like many of the features planned for Firefox 3.1, the private-browsing mode was originally for Firefox 3.0, the major upgrade that shipped in June but it was pulled out several months ago during Version 3.0's development.

"I don't think that we should count on this feature making it into Firefox 3," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director for Firefox, in a Bugzilla posting on Jan. 23. Beltzner then listed several reasons, among them the fact that other more urgent issues needed to be considered to keep the browser up to date.

Last month, after Microsoft announced that IE8 Beta 2 would include InPrivate, Beltzner said that a Firefox extension called "Stealther" got the same job done for Firefox. "[It] basically emulates InPrivate for Firefox users," he said. It's almost the same as the Microsoft feature, except it doesn't require users to open a new window.