The Mozilla consortium, which coordinates development of the popular FireFox Web browser, this week released a beta version of FireFox 3.1.

You can find out more and download the new browser at the Mozilla Development Centre Web site.

The new version reportedly contains dozens of enhancements designed to keep FireFox up-to-date with the latest Web standards and protocols.

While you’re at it, you might also want to take a look at the beta version of Google’s new browser, Chrome. Chrome’s look and feel will be very familiar to users of Google’s GMail Webmail service.

The beta versions of both browsers are free to download and use but remember that they are still ‘works in progress’ and you may get some ‘surprises’ when using them. If you already use an earlier version of Firefox (3.0 or before), it might be best to leave that version intact and install version 3.1 beta separately, rather than simply ‘upgrading’ to 3.1 beta.