What’s New In Firefox 12

Mozilla is about to release Firefox 12 Aurora, after releasing Firefox 10 Stable and Firefox 11 Beta in the last two days. It is interesting to note that Firefox 12 is already offered on the Mozilla download website, but not through the browser’s internal updater. Firefox Aurora users who do not want to wait can download the latest release from there to update the browser directly. It is not clear at this point in time why it is taken Mozilla that long to get Aurora installations to pick up the new version automatically.

The release notes, as usual, list only a handful of changes that have made it into the new version of the browser. At the top of the list is an improvement for Windows users who can now update Firefox easier thanks to one less User Account Control prompt during installation of the update.

The second new feature in this version of the browser is the new line numbering of the page source code. This is actually a pretty useful features for developers as it improves the source code’s accessibility significantly.

Developers can now also use the column-fill and text-align-last CSS properties which the Mozilla developers have implemented in the browser. In addition, experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects have been implemented.

Firefox 12 comes with smooth scrolling enabled by default. The feature aims to improve the scrolling experience in the browser. Firefox users who experience issues with smooth scrolling or who prefer to work without the feature can disable it under Firefox > Options > Advanced > General > Use Smooth Scrolling.

Aurora users should pay attention to the known issues listing as well. Some Gmail users may for instance experience scrolling issues in the main Gmail window under this particular release.

Developers should take a look at the Mozilla Hacks article on the new release which highlights development related changes in Firefox 12.

Firefox 10 Regular And ESR Released

Mozilla has uploaded the stable version of Firefox 10 to its ftp server. The company is currently in the process of distributing the release to all of its world wide mirror servers in preparation for the release later today. The release of the extended support release version marks the beginning of the end for Firefox’s 3.x branch which will be retired from support in April of this year.

The ESR release has been designed for companies, organizations and users who cannot keep up with deploying new Firefox versions every six weeks. Firefox ESR releases will follow the rapid release process, but increase only by a minor version whenever the standard version increases by a major version. Regular Firefox 10 users will be moved to Firefox 11 in six weeks time, while Firefox 10 ESR users will be moved to Firefox 10.1 instead.

The ESR release will be offered separately from the regular version of Firefox. Another important change in Firefox 10 is that add-ons are now automatically set to be compatible if they have also been compatible with Firefox 4. This ends the majority of the add-on compatibility issues that Firefox users experienced whenever a new major version of the browser was released.

The beta changelog lists the features one expects from a six week release cycle with the new hidden forward button the most notable change. Firefox 10 furthermore adds support for CSS3 3D-Transforms, anti-aliasing for WebGL, full screen APIs that can be used to build web apps that run full screen and support for the bdi element for bi-directional text isolation.

Developers can make use of the new CSS Style Inspector and IndexedDB APIs tat match the specifications more closely

The previously announced silent update option has not made it into this version of Firefox. Mozilla aims to release the new feature with Firefox 13, which is expected to launch in the beginning of June.

Firefox users can expect to see update notifications later today. Please check out our Firefox 10 What’s New guide which looked at the changes in the Firefox 10 Aurora version.

Update: Firefox 10 Stable (here) is now available at the official Mozilla website.

Update 2: Firefox 10 ESR download links are now also available. Click here to go the page.

Firefox 8 Has Been Released, Download Links Inside

If you are on the Firefox stable channel, which most users certainly are, you are currently working with version 7 of the browser. The next update for the web browser is said to go life on the Mozilla website on November 8. As always, Firefox releases are available early on Mozilla ftp servers where they can be downloaded by enthusiasts and security conscious users early.

I covered the major changes of Firefox 8 back in August when it was released to the Aurora channel which is a new release channel between the nightly releases and beta releases of the browser.

Probably the biggest new feature of Firefox 8 from a security perspective is how the web browser handles third party add-on installations. You may have encountered those while installing a security suite on your computer or other security related products. Before Firefox 8 no checks were performed when a third party software installed an add-on for the browser. Third party add-ons were installed and enabled right away and without user notification, which, from a security standpoint, left the browser wide open for local attacks.

Firefox 8 introduces other features as well. The browser gives users more control over add-ons after upgrading to a new Firefox version. Users can now disable or enable individual add-ons on first start with Firefox suggesting add-ons that may not work due to incompatibilities.

Firefox users can furthermore configure the browser to only load the selected tab on browser start, and the remaining ones once they are activated by the user. This can speed up the start significantly. The feature can be enabled under Tools > Options > General.

The browser ships with other minor improvements and changes. Included in the browser is now a Twitter search engine to search for Twitter messages from the browser’s address bar and search bar.

The browser is already available for all supported operating systems and languages on the official Mozilla FTP server. Only a handful of official mirror servers list the Firefox 8 Stable releases currently. This is certainly going to change in the next hours. Download portals like Softpedia or Major Geeks will surely have the Firefox 8 release available for download before it is distributed to all mirror servers and announced officially on the Mozilla website.

Firefox 7 users who are not in a hurry should wait until the release is officially announced by Mozilla. Their browser’s auto-updating feature will recognize the new feature and prompt for an upgrade to Firefox 8 automatically.

The beta release notes are available here. They will be converted into the final release notes once Firefox 8 has been officially announced by Mozilla.

---

© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
Add to del.icio.us, digg, facebook, reddit, twitter
Post tags: Firefox, firefox 8, firefox release, firefox-update, mozilla-firefox

Mozilla Firefox 7 Released

With the rapid release cycle and all, we are seeing more releases of the Firefox browser than before. Mozilla just pushed Firefox 7 to the official ftp server to prepare for today’s release of the browser. Firefox 7 is actually the first version of the rapid release cycle that is showing big improvements over previous versions.

You may remember that both Firefox 5 and 6 did not ship with big new features or improvements. Well, this changes with the release of Firefox 7. When you look at the new features you will notice one sticking out: Mozilla managed to improve memory usage of the Firefox web browser drastically (that’s the organization’s word). What does it mean in detail? A blog post by Nicholas Nethercoate over at Mozilla has the answers:

Firefox 7 uses less memory than Firefox 6 (and 5 and 4): often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less. In particular, Firefox 7′s memory usage will stay steady if you leave it running overnight, and it will free up more memory when you close many tabs.

Up to 50% less memory usage is a big number. Probably even more important than that is that the browser won’t feel like eating up all the RAM over time anymore, which is definitely a good thing, considering that the browser has a reputation for being memory inefficient.

The changelog lists addition features, including a new rendering backend that speeds up Canvas operations on Windows, support for text-overflow: ellipsis and the Web Timing specification and faster bookmark and password changes syncing when using Firefox Sync.

Firefox 7 is currently not available on the official homepage. It is likely that the developers are still preparing for the new release. Some mirror servers are already listing Firefox 7 for all supported operating systems and languages, while others do not. Expect a release announcement in the next 24 hours.

Firefox stable users will receive update notifications shortly in the browser to update automatically to the new version.

Beta, Aurora and Nightly users will also be pushed to a new version in the coming days. Check out Future Firefox Features, What I’m Looking Forward To for some pointers as to what you can expect in those versions.

---

© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
Add to del.icio.us, digg, facebook, reddit, twitter
Post tags: Firefox, firefox 7, firefox release, mozilla-firefox, web browser