Websites that use location-aware browsing will ask where you are in order to bring you more relevant information, or to save you time while searching. Let’s say you’re looking for a pizza restaurant in your area. A website will be able to ask you to share your location so that simply searching for “pizza” will bring you the answers you need... no further information or extra typing required.

Or, if you’re mapping out directions to get somewhere, the website will know where you’re starting from so all you have to do is tell it where you want to go.

This service is totally optional – Firefox doesn’t share your location without your permission – and is done with the utmost respect for your privacy.
If you wish to disable the feature completely, please follow this set of steps:

- In the URL bar, type about:config
- Type geo.enabled
- Double click on the geo.enabled preference [this sets 'geo.enabled' to 'false']
- Location-Aware Browsing is now disabled

Firefox 3.5 performs DNS prefetching. This is a feature by which Firefox proactively performs domain name resolution on both links that the user may choose to follow as well as URLs for items referenced by the document, including images, CSS, JavaScript, and so forth.

This prefetching is performed in the background, so that the DNS is likely to already have been resolved by the time the referenced items are actually needed. This reduces latency when, for example, the user actually clicks a link.

However, the user may wish to disable prefetching. This can be done by setting the 'network.dns.disablePrefetch' preference to 'true'.

Also, by default, prefetching of embedded link hostnames is not performed on documents loaded over HTTPS. This can be changed by setting the network.dns.disablePrefetchFromHTTPS preference to false.

Something you may not realize is that Firefox has a setting that will prefetch websites and images to improve the user’s browsing experience, and it’s actually enabled by default. It will utilize your browser’s idle time to prefetch images and websites as determined by the webmasters.

If you don’t want Firefox to do this then you’ll have to manually go and disable it:

- In the Firefox Address Bar type about:config and press Enter.
- Find the option that is named network.prefetch-next and double-click on it.
- Change the value to false.

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. . by default, prefetching of embedded link hostnames is not performed on documents loaded over HTTPS. This can be changed by setting the network.dns.disablePrefetchFromHTTPS preference to false.

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We've compiled what is by no means an exhaustive list of extensions that we find do and do not work in Firefox 3.5 at launch. Add your insights to the comments--we'll be updating this post throughout the day. Mozilla also has a compatibility report that takes the 95 percent most-used add-ons and matches them to their version numbers. A quick glance will tell you if your favorites are a go.

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