Firefox 12 Released

Finally Firefox has migrated to the “silent update” that has kept Chrome browsers updated.

Mozilla announced Firefox 12 today.  You can download it at mozilla.org.

The big changes with this update are the auto-update functionality, and the improvements mad to Developer Tools.

You can check out some other improvements such as:

• Multitouch on Android support
• Network timeouts on XMLHttpRequests
• Line breaks in tooltips!
• Many more!

If only Microsoft would allow Internet Explorer to auto update…

Tags: Firefox, mozilla, XMLHttpRequest

Firefox 10 Released

Mozilla released Firefox 10 this morning.

Firefox has converted over to the Google Chrome release numbering, so browser versions aren’t as “major” anymore, but the new browser still brings some nice enhancements.

The biggest addition (especially for us web developers) is the addition of extra built-in developer tools (very similar to Chrome’s):

• Inspect tool for CSS
• Page Inspector (also like chrome, although it has a nice whole page highlight / dehighlight so you can see exactly what you are inspecting

Some other additions are:

• Forward button hides until you go back
• WebGL suppors anti-aliasing
• CSS3 3D Transforms are present
• Full Screen API (should be better for running web applications / kiosks)
• General Bug Fixes

I think it’s worth checking out, as this version will also be part of the ESR program (Extended Support Release).  That means it won’t be updated for another 42 weeks, to allow businesses to use the browser long term.

Tags: Browser, CSS, css3, ESR, Firefox, Firefox 10, WebGL

Chrome beats Firefox in Global Usage

According to statcounter, Chrome overtook Firefox globally for the first time.

My traffic still has Firefox at 25%, Chrome at 22.6% and Safari at 28% for overall traffic (most likely due to the high number of iPhone visitors, 25% of seangw.com traffic is mobile).

Good to hear folks around the world are abandoning Internet Explorer.

Tags: Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer

Firefox 8.0 Released

Developers over at Mozilla have released Firefox 8.0, Mozilla Firefox Adds Twitter Search and New Features that Make Web Browsing Easier.

Some features in the new release are:

• We no longer see “major” releases of Firefox as meaning anything
• twitter is now included as a search option
• Load tabs on demand
• Disabling add-ons installed by 3rd party add-ons
• Added support for CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)

As far as us developers are concerned:

• input and textarea now support selectionDirection and setSelectionRange()
• Focus ring on elements using the tabindex
• insertAdjacentHTML is implemented
• Nested label event handling is fixed
• window.postMessage() will pass File and FileList objects between windows
• .contenteditable areas now back to paragraph entry mode (shift enter is <br>)
• Fixed text-decoration rendering in quirks mode
• Console now has a dir() command that will display a list of the properties of an object.

Tags: CORS, Firefox, mozilla, Twitter

Firefox: How People Use New Tabs

Over at Boriss’ Blog, an informative article was posted,  How People Use New Tabs in Firefox:

As the web evolves, so does the way people interact with the web. Firefox’s user experience and research teams have been eager to learn about our users’ browsing habits so that we can better design for our users.  Lately, Mozillians like Lilian Weng and Jono X have been running some fascinating studies using Test Pilot to determine how, when, and why Firefox users open new tabs.  I wanted to note a few key takeaways from their recent study that give us a glimpse into how our users browse (full studies are linked at the bottom of this post).

He includes this helpful graph:

Tags: Browsers, Firefox, User Experience

Firefox 7 Released: 50% reduction in memory

Mozilla released Firefox 7 yesterday to the general public.

Don’t think of Firefox 7 as a totally new browser, they are just adopting the Chrome release number system (much more frequent releases, more minor upgrades).

The biggest gain in Firefox 7 is in that it can reduce memory usage by up to 50%, along with other performance optimizations.

Relevant to developers, the updated browser now includes support for the W3C navigation timing spec API, and a new Canvas renderer that is hardware-accelerated.

Download the new Browser

Tags: Browsers, canvas, Firefox, Firefox 7, mozilla, W3C Navigation Timing

Firefox 5 Released

I had forgotten about Firefox’s promise to release browsers more rapidly (following the Chrome rapid release model).

Firefox 5 was released today.

Some exciting improvements in Firefox 5 (mostly just the CSS3 animations):

• CSS3 Animations
• Mobile Firefox supports WOFF fonts
• Security fixes (of course)
• Enhanced Canvas tag support (accepts more, and works better)
• HTTP request performance improvements
• MathML support for embellished operators

Firefox 5 feels more of a “Firefox 4.1″ from the UI perspective, but there are a lot of changes towards a more modern browser.

› Continue reading

Tags: CSS 3, css3, Firefox, Firefox 5, mozilla

Google Drops Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 Support

Happy to hear, Google has announced that as of August 1 (2011), they will no longer support:

• Firefox 3.5
• Internet Explorer 7
• Safari 3

This means that new functionality (which will probably roll out sometime this summer) may not work perfectly in those browsers.  It’s a nice move as those browsers are getting old, and the web has to set expectations as to which browsers should be supported.

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Tags: Browser, browser support, Firefox, Gmail, Google, Internet Explorer, Safari

Firefox 4 Released

The official release of Firefox 4 is today.

Slightly late to join the pack with some of the features.

Since the last major update of Firefox there have been 10 releases of Chrome.

Some of the new features have already been released in other browsers:

• Bookmark sync (Chrome even has a more thorough sync feature)
• Faster JS engine – every browser now sports a “faster” javascript engine with every release
• Partial hardware acceleration – other browsers have better hardware support
• Simplified interface – everyone has it, welcome to the club.  It just doesn’t feel as cleanly done as Chrome.

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Tags: Browsers, Chrome, Firefox

Brower Market Share: Chrome at 10.7%, IE 6 at 12.03% – Companies upgrading from IE6

ConceivablyTech has done a good job summarizing the data from NetMarketShare.

From The Third Double-Digit Browser: Chrome Blasts Past 10%:

Google’s Chrome had another successful month and ended 2010 with 10.70% market share, according to Net Applications and almost 16% according to StatCounter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continued to lose market share on a fast pace while Mozilla’s Firefox is fighting and tightly holding on to the market share it has.

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Tags: Chrome, Firefox, Google, Ie 6, ie6, IE7, IE9, Internet Explorer, mozilla, Net Applications, Safari, web developer