Web White Noise

A new version of Firefox has been released:

• The forward button is now hidden until you navigate back
• Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default
• Anti-Aliasing for WebGL is now implemented
• CSS3 3D-Transforms are now supported
• New <bdi> element for bi-directional text isolation, along with supporting CSS properties
• Full Screen APIs allow you to build a web application that runs full screen
• We’ve added IndexedDB APIs to more closely match the specification
• Inspect tool with content highlighting, includes new CSS Style Inspector
• Mac OS X only – after installing the latest Java release from Apple, Firefox may crash when closing a tab with a Java applet installed
• Some users may experience a crash when moving bookmarks

Release Notes Firefox 10

A new version of Firefox has been released:

• Fixed a rare issue where some users could find one or more of their add-ons hidden after a Firefox update (see Issue discovered with Firefox add-on upgrades)

Oh for gods sake Mozilla, the latest version of Firefox has the following changes:

• Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases
• Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems
• Bookmark and password changes now sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync
• The ‘http://’ URL prefix is now hidden by default
• Added support for text-overflow: ellipsis
• Added support for the Web Timing specification
• Enhanced support for MathML
• The WebSocket protocol has been updated from version 7 to version 8
• Added an opt-in system for users to send performance data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Firefox
• Fixed several stability issues
• Fixed several security issues

Firefox 7.0 Release Notes

Another update, more root certificate changes & a fix for .gov.uk domains:

• Removed trust exceptions for certificates issued by Staat der Nederlanden (see bug 683449 and the security advisory)
• Resolved an issue with gov.uk websites (see bug 669792)

This is a small update to remove a root certificate:

• Revoked the root certificate for DigiNotar due to fraudulent SSL certificate issuance (see bug 682927 and the security advisory)

Firefox 6 has been released with the below listed changes:

• The address bar now highlights the domain of the website you’re visiting
• Streamlined the look of the site identity block
• Added support for the latest draft version of WebSockets with a prefixed API
• Added support for EventSource / server-sent events
• Added support for window.matchMedia
• Added Scratchpad, an interactive JavaScript prototyping environment
• Added a new Web Developer menu item and moved development-related items into it
• Improved usability of the Web Console
• Improved the discoverability of Firefox Sync
• Reduced browser startup time when using Panorama
• Fixed several stability issues
• Fixed several security issues

Entire list of Changes in Firefox 6

Well that was quick.

Firefox 5 has the following new features:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• Fixed several stability issues
• MFSA 2011-28 Non-whitelisted site can trigger xpinstall
• MFSA 2011-27 XSS encoding hazard with inline SVG
• MFSA 2011-26 Multiple WebGL crashes
• MFSA 2011-25 Stealing of cross-domain images using WebGL textures
• MFSA 2011-22 Integer overflow and arbitrary code execution in Array.reduceRight()
• MFSA 2011-21 Memory corruption due to multipart/x-mixed-replace images
• MFSA 2011-20 Use-after-free vulnerability when viewing XUL document with script disabled
• MFSA 2011-19 Miscellaneous memory safety hazards (rv:3.0/1.9.2.18)

Firefox 5 Release Notes

• Enable Save Tabs on Exit for Firefox 4
• The status bar was removed in Firefox 4.0, Status-4-Evar is an add-on to put it back
• If you go to Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and the fonts are bold disable Hardware acceleration to get the fonts to display properly (Just to point out, this effects Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9)

Update – Bold Font Fix

Here is a quick fix for the above font issue, Windows 7 font fix. [REG File Mirror]

Basically at some point the font settings in Windows 7 get stuffed & they need resting back to default. You can download the reg file from Desert Tech & apply it to your system, this should fix the font issues for both Firefox & Internet Explorer 9.

Hello new version of Firefox…

Firefox 4 has some new features:

• Firefox 4 is available in over 80 languages
• Uses JägerMonkey, a new, faster JavaScript engine that is up to six times faster than Firefox 3.6
• Support for the Do Not Track (“DNT”) header that allows users to opt-out of behavioural advertising
• Firefox Sync is included by default, allowing you to securely synchronize between multiple computers and mobile devices
• Certain graphics rendering operations are now hardware-accelerated using Direct3D 9 on Windows XP, Direct3D 10 on Windows Vista and 7, and OpenGL on Mac OS (OpenGL on Linux will be supported in the future)
• Direct2D Hardware Acceleration is now on by default for Windows 7 users
• WebGL is enabled on all platforms that have a capable graphics card with updated drivers
• Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format, hardware accelerated where available
• Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users
• Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
• You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
• The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
• The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like)
• Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins
• You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu
• The default homepage design has been refreshed
• Overhaul of the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance
• Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations
• Additional polish for the Firefox Add-ons Manager
• Improved web typography using OpenType with support for ligatures, kerning and font variants
• Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions
• Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system
• HTML5 Forms API makes web based forms easier to implement and validate
• Support for the new proposed Audio Data API
• Support for HSTS security protocol allowing sites to insist that they only be loaded over SSL
• A new feature called Panorama gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped
• An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations
• Firefox now supports the HTML5 video “buffered” property
• Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation
• New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release)
• Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions
• CSS Transitions are partially supported
• Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently
• Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs
• More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction
• Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload
• CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history
• New HTML5 parser
• Support for more HTML5 form controls
• Web authors can now get touch events from Firefox users on Windows 7 machines
• A new way of representing values in JavaScript that allows Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code (used for things like graphics and animations) more efficiently

Firefox 4 Release Notes