What’s New in Mozilla Firefox 24 [Download]

One of the reasons why Mozilla’s Firefox browser is still among the best in the world is that there are frequent updates being applied to it. The agressive update cycle of the Firefox keeps regular users and developers happy. While Windows 8 users will have to wait until January or February next year to use a Firefox browser suitable for Microsoft’s Windows 8 “Modern” user interface, we are now “invited” to try out Firefox 24, with an official version being expected later on today.

What has changed in Firefox 24

At the time of writing this post, there is yet no official Firefox 24 changelog, but we will update this article once it becomes availble. We rely on the beta release notes from Mozilla’s website for the moment. As always, more features could be added or removed once Mozilla makes the Firefox 24 version official. Here’s what’s new, changed and also some modification for developers in Firefox 24:

• NEW: Support for new scrollbar style in Mac OS X 10.7 and newer
• NEW: Implemented Close tabs to the right
• NEW: Social: Ability to tear-off chat windows to view separately by simply dragging them out
•  CHANGED: Accessibility related improvements on using pinned tabs
• DEVELOPER: Major SVG rendering improvements around Image tiling and scaling
• DEVELOPER: Improved and unified Browser console for enhanced debugging experience, replacing existing Error console
• DEVELOPER: Removed support for sherlock files that are loaded from application or profile directory
• HTML5: Support for W3C touch events disabled

Also, there’s still an unresolved issue with Firefox 24, identified as bug 573369 which occurs when Firefox crashes when trying to start the browser against a locked profile. Along with the desktop version of Firefox, Mozilla is also going to update the Android browser. Here are some important features from its beta changelog:

• Enabled support for WebRTC
• Ability to share open tabs between NFC-enabled phones
• Easy access to your favourite share application from main menu
• Better night reading experience with Night mode functionality in Reader
• Baidu is now the default search engine for the Chinese locale

At the end of the article you can find links to download the final version of Mozilla Firefox 24.0 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X from the official Mozilla FTP servers.

[Download Mozilla Firefox 24.0 for Linux]
[Download Mozilla Firefox 24.0 for Windows]
[Download Mozilla Firefox 24.0 for Mac OS X]