The software updates to be added later this afternoon will mostly be transparent to users, but there is one change that we have been awaiting. firefox will be upgraded from the 3.0 series to the 3.6 series. The most noticeable change will probably be that tab opening behaves a little differently. According to http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/01/firefox-new-tab-behavior-to-be-updated/:
Currently, when you open a link in a new tab it is added to the end of the tab bar, and the relationship with its parent tab exists only in the user’s head. I usually have to move it closer to the original tab to avoid tab scrolling.
With the new behavior, new tabs opened from a tab will be added to the right of the parent tab, unless there is already a child tab. In this case it is added to the right of the last child tab.
New tabs opened via the new tab button, File/New Tab… menu, Ctrl + T, etc. will still be opened to the end of the tab bar, as it is not possible to know if it’s contents will be related to the current tab or not.
This new version of firefox also supports HTML5 video tags so that some video will be automatically viewable in the browser without the need of an external application. There will be no sound for browsers opened on coxeter, but if you have a personal machine with speakers configured then video and audio could work on some videos (admittedly most videos are not yet in HTML5 format yet).
Finally, if you look at the “People” page on our departmental website with this newer browser the background colour of alternate lines is different, which makes reading easier.
