Mozilla is moving fast and if we go back in time we can see that they are releasing one major version of Firefox after another at shorter period of time. Before Firefox 9.0 is released, Firefox 8.0 went to public on November 8, 2011, that was about 6 weeks ago. The update is done automatically through auto update feature but if you still get the latest copy of Firefox 9.0 you can head over to Firefox official page to get it manually.
Firefox 9.0
What’s new on Firefox 9.0?
Add-on compatibility
There are major improvements associated to add-on compatibility issue because none of my add-ons appear to be disabled, not like in previous upgrades. Because there are literally thousands of Firefox add-on used by millions of people, you may not have the same experience as mine.
Little changes we can see on the surface but Mozilla claims that there are lot of things going on under the hood. The areas that Mozilla claims has significant changes include the CSS, HTML5 and MathML support. For those who want to learn in great details for the bugs and security fixes, you can do so by visiting the links given.
Improved JavaScript Performance
Firefox 9.0 brings Javascript performance boost up to 30%. This is achieved through the usage of Type Inference (TI). Basically it is a SipderMonkey feature that analyzes variable values and statement on a running program that result in more efficient code.
New support to CSS3
1. font-stretch property
This property allows a particular text to be stretched out or shrink-ed in. There are 8 values that can be assigned to font-stretch property
font-stretch: ultra-expanded;
font-stretch: extra-expanded;
font-stretch: expanded;
font-stretch: semi-expanded;
font-stretch: normal;
font-stretch: semi-condensed;
font-stretch: condensed;
font-stretch: extra-condensed;
font-stretch: ultra-condensed;
2. text-overflow: ellipses
text-overflow: ellipses was introduced since Firefox 7 where any overflow will have “…” appended to it at the right most end of an overflowed string. Firefox 9.0 brings more options on how the overflow text should be handled – you can end the text string with a hard clip, custom string or ellipses.
Example: If “abcdefgh” was centered in a small element, the following css property
text-overflow: ‘,’ ellipsis;
could result in “abcd…”
Firefox future
Mozilla seems to struggle to keep up with Google Chrome browser but the release of Firefox 9.0 seems to give a renewed hope for Mozilla to really push forward. As a happy Firefox fan, I’m impatiently waiting for Firefox 10.0 which is due on the end of this month.
