On Tuesday, Mozilla released the brand spankin' new Firefox 3.5 upgrade, keeping the browser race alive and well.

And Firefox devotees, rejoice! It's chock-full of new features and improvements.

Here are a few:

- Faster loading time. Mozilla claims FF 3.5 is twice as fast as FF 3.0. Take that with the appropriate skepticism, but the new version certainly feels a little speedier. Though perhaps not as fast as Chrome or Safari.

- Private Browsing. Like its competitors, Firefox now offers a helpful stealth mode, in which the user leaves no trace of the sites he's visited. Also called "I Don't Look At Porn, I Swear" browsing.

- Forget About This Site. Firefox offers this new spec, which allows users to erase all history of an individual site rather than clearing all your browsing history in one fell swoop.

- Tab tearing. If your browser window's getting a little too tab-heavy, you can drag away tabs to create separate windows. And vice versa.

- Awesome Bar. Firefox's URL address bar was already pretty smart, but 3.5 has beefed it up a bit. When you type any given word into the bar, Firefox will recall all page history, tags and bookmarks in your library.

With the upgrade, however, users can filter results. For instance, if you type in "journalstar *" the bar will bring up bookmarks only. If you type in "journalstar +" the bar will bring up tags only.

- The Future of Web Video. Firefox 3.5's most revolutionary feature is its support of open video and audio formats. Open source video formats in HTML 5-coded pages are displayed as regular Web page content.

What does that mean for you? No more video plug-ins to download. The video just plays.

Once in a while, when he gets around to it, Micah Mertes offers hacks, tips, apps and advice on making your life a little easier. Have any questions, concerns or comments about Well-Oiled Living? E-mail him at mmertes@journalstar.com.