Mozilla is readying Firefox 8 for its official public release on November 8, but the final build is already available to download directly from Mozilla's servers. The release arrives six weeks after Firefox 7, continuing the rapid release schedule Mozilla has maintained since earlier this year. As with recent versions, the focus remains on performance rather than visual changes.
Add-on Management and Third Party Controls
One of the more significant user-facing changes in Firefox 8 is that add-ons installed by third party programs are now disabled by default. A one-time selection dialog has also been added to help you manage any previously installed add-ons, giving you a cleaner starting point and more control over what is actually running in your browser. It is a sensible security improvement that cuts down on unwanted extensions being silently activated.
New Features and Improvements
Twitter has been added to the search bar, making it easier to search social content without leaving the browser. Tab management has also been refined with improved animations when moving, reordering, or detaching tabs, and a new preference allows tabs to load on demand when restoring windows, which should noticeably improve start-up times for users who regularly resume large sessions.
On the technical side, Firefox 8 adds CORS support for cross-domain textures in WebGL, support for HTML5 context menus, support for insertAdjacentHTML, improved CSS hyphen support across multiple languages, and improved WebSocket support. Performance and memory handling have been further refined, and several stability issues have been resolved.
Download Firefox 8
- Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux from Mozilla's servers
Source: LifeHacker