After the release of Google Chrome, web browser industry has caught fire. New updates and releases are coming on weekly basis. This time it’s Mozilla.

Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 3.1 that is available to download now. This beta release is a milestone towards Firefox 3.1 final and is intended to test new features and changes targeted for Firefox 3.1 (code name: shiretoko).

This Firefox 3.1 beta 1 comes with the following features:

• Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
• Support for new web technologies such as the and elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

This release is for testers only and is available for Win, Mac OS X and Linux OS in 36 different Languages. Before sharing the direct link to download page I would like to share the footnote posted on Mozilla Developers Blog:

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

For your ease here’s the direct Download link:

Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 1