Firefox 3.1 to Gain "Porn Mode," After All

Faced with the knowledge that the recently introduced browsers Chrome (in its beta form) and IE8 (in its beta 2 form) both have some form of "Privacy Mode," Mozilla has backtracked on Privacy Mode, which had been out for Firefox 3.1. The upcoming release will indeed support Privacy Mode, popularly known as "Porn Mode."

In a note from this week's weekly status meeting, Mozilla said:

"Private Browsing Mode: Ehsan [Akhgari] went and implemented Connor's functional spec bug 248970 -- way to go! Now back on track for beta date."

Cryptic, but it means that bug 248970 has been addressed, and that entry in Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug tracking system, is about Private Browsing. Interestingly, since the 9/9 weekly meeting, there have been 2 other entries to that bug, meaning that the feature isn't bug-free just yet.

The feature is supposed to:

• Discard all cookies acquired during the session.
• Not record sites visited to the browser's history.
• Not autofill passwords, and not prompt the user to save passwords.
• Remove all downloads done during the session from the browser's download manager.

Besides the two beta browsers we mentioned earlier, Apple's Safari already supports Private Browsing. These developments meant that among the major browsers, Firefox was the odd man out.