Mozilla will release the beta version of Firefox 3.1 on August 19th, according to ZDNet. The site stress, however, that this date remains flexible and is an "estimate".

Expected new features in Firefox 3.1 include native support for the open-source Ogg Vorbis audio codec and the Ogg Theora video codec, according to a draft list posted to the wiki. The inclusion of the open-source formats accompanies support for HTML5 in the browser, which will mean Firefox 3.1 will work with audio and video html tags.

"The backend has been committed to the main Mozilla source code and is enabled by default," wrote developer Chris Double in his blog. "This original commit is a work in progress. There are unimplemented bits, bugs, etc that need to be sorted out. But it's a start towards using a common codec across all platforms and will improve as we get towards the 3.1 release."