Firefox — 12th Anniversay
Disclaimer: Post written for other publication, so it is delayed a few days as it was pending. Original day to be published should be November 9th,2016.
12 years ago the first version of Firefox 1.0 was seeing the daylight. Its release notes brought a better tabbed browsing, bug fixes and many new languages. Along with these, a lot of excitement (you might remember the two -page ad in New York Times).
From The Mozilla Foundation blog. See a full-res version here. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Fast forward 12 years and Firefox is still one of the major players in browsers world pushing web standards, developers tools and innovation.
So what’s the latest biggest things implemented in Firefox over the last year? Some important things across all platforms are worth mentioning. Improve Private Browsing with Tracking Protection was one of big features implemented lately assuring users they are protected from third-party tracking. Get and control push notifications for websites of your choice and have cleared icons for added to homescreen pages. Also Tab Audio indication will save you time to know which tab is noisy. Services Workers, Web Push API and the Web Manifest enabled Progressive Web Apps that provide responsive, re-engageable experiences that can work on or offline. Not to forget about the Sync and the Firefox Accounts available on all platforms.
Here are some more detailed notes for all versions.
Firefox for Android
As on mobile we spend a lot of time browsing updates in different apps and get across several posts we would like to read more about but in the same time we want to finish our activity in that certain app. Firefox developed Tab Queue so you can add links in the browser and read them when you want, not immediately. Devices are easy to give to your kids to play or research. A Family Friendly Browsing experience will keep them safe. Support for voice input and a mobile login manager were added. As a developer tools improvement, Remote website debugging over WiFi is now present. And don’t forget about the streaming on bigger screens!
Firefox for iOS
Latest versions brought undo on mobile, keyboard shortcuts, easy-to-access menu with most useful tool in one place. Also you can personalize it even more by adding your favorite search engines. The awesome screen include bookmarks, history and domain autocompletition.
Other improvements were the password manager, easy to start find in page, support for 3D Touch on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, more locales, better suggested tiles and sync on exit — to be sure you did not miss a thing.
Firefox for desktop:
One of the major changes for the desktop client is definitely the implementation of Electrolysis — e10s and its shipment to some users for testing. You can also enable it yourself from preferences. For the add-ons side, their development just got easier because you can reload them from about:debugging and those that have not been verified and signed by Mozilla will not load. A better usage for HTTPS logins was added. One more way to support Let’s Encrypt in Firefox. New memory tool for inspecting the memory heap, visual tools for Layout, Styles and Animation . Reader Mode got more control of the text and on the narration function. It introduced web speech synthesis API. Improved video performance is present for users on systems that support SSSE3 without hardware acceleration and more video codecs supported. Embedded YouTube videos now play with HTML5 video if Flash is not installed. On a not so happy note, Firefox Hello has been discontinued and removed from Firefox starting with version 49. Remember when you were annoyed by the sound in a tab from huge tabs list? Worry no more. An indicator was added to tabs that play audio with one-click muting. Firefox 64-bit for Windows is now available via the Firefox download page. Screenshot commands allow user choice of pixel ratio in Developer Tools. And in Firefox Developer Edition you can access even more amazing tools for the developer in you. Control Center contains now site security and privacy controls. And not to forget about the WebRTC improvements together with some for Login Manager
These mentioned things are the work of a year. Firefox has now 12! I do invite you to download Firefox and try it out. There are way more features that i did not mentioned about and that for sure you will love. It stays relevant among bigger and money stronger competitors.
But all this, is just a small token of the bigger work Mozilla does. They created the first open browser, that brought so many innovations to the web that ended as standards and that other browsers followed.
Mozilla never stopped fighting for the user, for its privacy and rights, for its better web experience.
Thanks for creating Firefox, Mozilla!
Happy Anniversary!
